Above clouds, you can believe in anything.
Flying west to east, into daybreak, the sun is always rising; east to west, it sets in silence, always perfect.
Sometimes, I feel close to the heaven of my childhood imagination.
Up there. Beyond. Closer to the God I was told lived in the sky.
The transatlantic journeys that, just a year ago, were filled both with excitement at the prospect of change in a new country, or coming home to see family and friends, are now times of strange, intense reflection in a year that has seen so many loved ones disappear from my life.
My screenwriter friend Blake Snyder, who inspired me to come to LA, and who I have written about so much, died suddenly in August. My dear friend Keith Waterhouse died in September. Yes, he had enjoyed a long life, but that never makes a loss less keenly felt.
My Auntie Monica, who had known me since I was a baby, died suddenly in October. And, this week, my dear, beautiful and talented friend Angharad, who had been ill for some months, died, suspected of having taken her life at the age of just 47.
Each time I fly now, it is to attend a funeral, memorial service, or to be close to people with whom it is possible to share memories. This week, in particular, knowing the devastation that Angharad’s siblings and young daughter must be feeling back home, I just wanted to get on a plane again and head back to the UK.
Until I know what plans there are for any service, I am staying in LA, but have again been astounded by the enormous comfort Facebook has provided during this time.
I found out about Blake’s death on Facebook, and shocking (literally) as that was, over 600 people left messages on his page that made one feel part of a community united by a shared grief.
On Saturday, messages started to appear on Angharad’s Facebook page, too. A clever, funny and insightful woman, she still seems very much there, and it is hard to imagine the pain and desperation that brought about this tragic end.
Having spoken only to a couple of friends and left messages for one of her sisters, being such a long way away I felt able to make some kind of contact through Facebook, with strangers feeling just as helpless as I did.
The experience of these very personal losses is in stark contrast to death Hollywood style, and makes life here seem even more unreal. In 2009, the non-stop TV coverage of Michael Jackson’s death, and the way the town came to a standstill for what felt like weeks, turned death into the must-have accessory of the season. Some people have indeed turned their experience of the star’s passing into a full-time job.
Celebrity death is always big news here. Before Christmas, we saw the death of actress and singer Brittany Murphy and, last week, the Johnson and Johnson heiress Casey Johnson. TV cameras were outside the latter’s home for hours, continually reporting that there was no news and nothing to report. But that didn’t stop journalists standing outside the dead woman’s Hollywood home, continually reporting that there was (still) nothing to report.
Then, on Friday, there suddenly was. There was a fracas outside the home, from which Casey’s two small dogs were being taken, allegedly to be put down so that they could be buried with their owner. Casey’s girlfriend/fiancee Tila Tequila, was hysterical, as the pooches were bundled into another friend’s car.
Hollywood death is such big business here; there is even a site called hollywoodmemoir.com, which features “recently died famous Hollywood celebrities, actors’ health, accidents, and major news”. “Searching for Hollywood death?” says one headline, before pointing you in the direction of “Death Hollywood at Amazon”.
There are discussion boards and blogs to which you can contribute, too. “Is it just me?” asks one, “or are there almost no deaths in Hollywood lately?” Moral: never write a blog like this on 8th December.
Death can be a niche market, too: for example the section detailing “Wrestlers Who Died” (Bad News Brown, aged 63; Hercules, 46; Johnny Grunge of Public Enemy, 39 – of sleep apnea complications - there really is a Hollywood movie just crying out to be made here).
And should you wish to do your research according to method of passing rather than profession, you can just click on one of the headings under “Major Causes of Death”, which are: accidental, cancer, drug, heart attack, heart failure, lung, natural cause, suicide.
It all feels a far remove from the real thing, yet for every one of these Hollywood deaths, too, there is a band of friends and relatives mourning their loss.
Life doesn’t get any easier.
But above clouds, you can sometimes believe.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Sunday, January 3, 2010
New Year Chimes At 4pm 1/3/10
Did everyone go to Barbados for New Year?
Simon Cowell, Sir Philip Green, Emma Forbes, Michael Winner . . . Oh, no, I forgot: Michael Winner decided, for the first time in 30 years, to spend it in Miami, with Michael Caine.
Knowing that neither of them would be in Barbados was the only thing that made the island sound remotely appealing to me, both men having been appallingly rude to me at various points in my career; but still, I was happy to be spending the festivities in LA.
I can’t ever remember a New Year’s Eve when I have been so hot, I thought I would have to don a bikini. As my friends froze in temperatures of minus six back at home, I delighted in texting them to inform them that I was off to Santa Monica to celebrate in Ye Olde King’s Head, a British pub near the beach.
Transport is so ridiculously cheap, not to mention efficient, here (the buses run 24/7), I still have no need of a car. The journey from Beverly Hills took just under half an hour and cost $1.25 (about 75p), and as a bus is going to be sitting in the same traffic as any car, it still seems to me the best way of getting around.
I also ensure that I make friends only with people who come to Beverly Hills in their cars, or who are on my bus route, or within walking distance of my home. So far, it’s worked out rather well.
Ye Olde King’s Head was so packed, I had to beg to gain entrance. It’s the place to go if you want to watch sport, too, although I didn’t make it to their 5am showing of Leeds United’s 1-0 FA Cup victory over Manchester United on Sunday morning.
A pity. I am a lifelong Leeds United supporter and remember their only FA Cup final win over Arsenal in 1972. I only became a Leeds supporter because they beat Manchester United in some game, and there was a big anti- Man U faction even in my day.
I adored Eddie Gray and when I met him in southern Spain last year, spent an hour reminiscing about the good old days. It’s just a pity that it was Andy Gray to whom I was chatting, and when I later realised my mistake, Andy confessed that he had been a tad confused as to why I had been banging on about Leeds for so long.
Clearly, after my Gareth Edwards/Tom Shanklin case of mistaken identity two weeks ago, I need to pay more attention to sports personalities’ photographs.
The sun was streaming into the YOKH as customers counted down the last minute to midnight/4pm local time, and that was really weird. In the UK I am usually wiping somebody’s vomit off my dress by that time, but YOKH was a very civilised affair, and I met some really terrific people – French, German, American, as well as Brits - in what appears to be quite a friendly community down in Santa Monica.
I returned to Beverly Hills, thinking what a strange year 2009 had been. I came to LA to do a writing course in March, and, encouraged by the screenwriter and teacher Blake Snyder, moved here on April 1st.
Under his guidance and support, I felt more creatively inspired than I had done in years. When he died suddenly on August 4th, I felt, and continue to feel, a hole in my life that makes me breathless with the disbelief of losing what once filled it with such joy and love.
I can only try to work as I know Blake would have wanted me to, and try to fulfil the potential he recognised and which had lain dormant for so much of my pre-LA life.
Blake’s third book on screenwriting has just come out (Save the Cat! Strikes Back), and I know that it will it inspire me just as much as his first two did.
I’ve also been reading Rilke (not in the original German, I hasten to add), a poet whose verses and prose are full of such wisdom and insight, it is impossible not to feel the stirrings of optimism, even in the face of grief.
In Letters to a Young Poet, he writes to Franz Xaver Kappus on the nature of sadness, a “new thing” that enters our hearts and changes us “as a house changes into which a guest has entered.” It is these moments, he says, in which “our future sets foot in us”, “in order to transform itself in us long before it happens.”
Blake believed in the power of transformation; it is what predominantly informed his life and the screenwriting techniques that he so brilliantly taught.
At the end of the decade, I regard my coming to LA and meeting him as one of the most transformative, blessed, and, yes, lucky, experiences of my life.
The American Dream may not be all it’s cracked up to be, but there are still some pretty good slumber parties to enjoy.
Welcome, 2010.
Simon Cowell, Sir Philip Green, Emma Forbes, Michael Winner . . . Oh, no, I forgot: Michael Winner decided, for the first time in 30 years, to spend it in Miami, with Michael Caine.
Knowing that neither of them would be in Barbados was the only thing that made the island sound remotely appealing to me, both men having been appallingly rude to me at various points in my career; but still, I was happy to be spending the festivities in LA.
I can’t ever remember a New Year’s Eve when I have been so hot, I thought I would have to don a bikini. As my friends froze in temperatures of minus six back at home, I delighted in texting them to inform them that I was off to Santa Monica to celebrate in Ye Olde King’s Head, a British pub near the beach.
Transport is so ridiculously cheap, not to mention efficient, here (the buses run 24/7), I still have no need of a car. The journey from Beverly Hills took just under half an hour and cost $1.25 (about 75p), and as a bus is going to be sitting in the same traffic as any car, it still seems to me the best way of getting around.
I also ensure that I make friends only with people who come to Beverly Hills in their cars, or who are on my bus route, or within walking distance of my home. So far, it’s worked out rather well.
Ye Olde King’s Head was so packed, I had to beg to gain entrance. It’s the place to go if you want to watch sport, too, although I didn’t make it to their 5am showing of Leeds United’s 1-0 FA Cup victory over Manchester United on Sunday morning.
A pity. I am a lifelong Leeds United supporter and remember their only FA Cup final win over Arsenal in 1972. I only became a Leeds supporter because they beat Manchester United in some game, and there was a big anti- Man U faction even in my day.
I adored Eddie Gray and when I met him in southern Spain last year, spent an hour reminiscing about the good old days. It’s just a pity that it was Andy Gray to whom I was chatting, and when I later realised my mistake, Andy confessed that he had been a tad confused as to why I had been banging on about Leeds for so long.
Clearly, after my Gareth Edwards/Tom Shanklin case of mistaken identity two weeks ago, I need to pay more attention to sports personalities’ photographs.
The sun was streaming into the YOKH as customers counted down the last minute to midnight/4pm local time, and that was really weird. In the UK I am usually wiping somebody’s vomit off my dress by that time, but YOKH was a very civilised affair, and I met some really terrific people – French, German, American, as well as Brits - in what appears to be quite a friendly community down in Santa Monica.
I returned to Beverly Hills, thinking what a strange year 2009 had been. I came to LA to do a writing course in March, and, encouraged by the screenwriter and teacher Blake Snyder, moved here on April 1st.
Under his guidance and support, I felt more creatively inspired than I had done in years. When he died suddenly on August 4th, I felt, and continue to feel, a hole in my life that makes me breathless with the disbelief of losing what once filled it with such joy and love.
I can only try to work as I know Blake would have wanted me to, and try to fulfil the potential he recognised and which had lain dormant for so much of my pre-LA life.
Blake’s third book on screenwriting has just come out (Save the Cat! Strikes Back), and I know that it will it inspire me just as much as his first two did.
I’ve also been reading Rilke (not in the original German, I hasten to add), a poet whose verses and prose are full of such wisdom and insight, it is impossible not to feel the stirrings of optimism, even in the face of grief.
In Letters to a Young Poet, he writes to Franz Xaver Kappus on the nature of sadness, a “new thing” that enters our hearts and changes us “as a house changes into which a guest has entered.” It is these moments, he says, in which “our future sets foot in us”, “in order to transform itself in us long before it happens.”
Blake believed in the power of transformation; it is what predominantly informed his life and the screenwriting techniques that he so brilliantly taught.
At the end of the decade, I regard my coming to LA and meeting him as one of the most transformative, blessed, and, yes, lucky, experiences of my life.
The American Dream may not be all it’s cracked up to be, but there are still some pretty good slumber parties to enjoy.
Welcome, 2010.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Another Year, Another Decade 12/27/2009
As 1999 moved towards the new Millennium, I was sitting down for a New Year’s dinner with my mother and brother in the St David’s Hotel in Cardiff.
This year, I will be spending it in LA with a whole new set of friends that I didn’t even know at the start of the decade. Heck, I didn’t even know them at the start of the year.
Isn’t life strange?
I’m still not sure what I’ll be doing on Thursday night. I’ve always found New Year’s Eve a bit depressing, but if there is one thing worse than paying over-the-top prices for a bad meal and clinging to strangers as the chimes strike, it’s sitting alone watching people do the same on TV – especially if the post-midnight revelry is taking place in Scotland to the tune of bagpipes.
Was there ever a more hideous sounding musical instrument? I swear that the bagpipes are the suicide watch of the musical world, and I am just praying that LA will be a bagpipe-free zone for the festivities.
I suspect that I may not be able to escape them if I go to Ye Olde King’s Head in Santa Monica. This is a British pub that, at 4pm, is celebrating the UK New Year, which will be followed at midnight by the LA one.
I quite fancy celebrating the New Year in daylight, which might make it marginally less depressing than it normally is, although if they have bagpipes on the telly, I might be reaching for that razor blade and not even make it to my first US New Year.
I mustn’t be too horrible about Scotland’s national instrument, because a man called Jim from Scotland saved me from the razor blade on Christmas Eve.
I arrived back in the UK to discover that my Sky Plus box had gone kaput. Now, for a TV critic to be without TV at all is bad enough, but at Christmas, with several couch potatoes to keep happy, it is an event of monumental devastation.
I phoned Sky – no one was available until well after the New Year. I wailed, I cried, all to no avail. Despite having paid for a special plan in case of breakdown (my own, in addition to the equipment, I had presumed), there was just no one around.
Hurumph! The Sky’s the limitations I screamed at my family, munching peanuts and staring hopefully at the blank screen in the corner of the room.
I tracked down Sky’s VIP service, on whose list I had once been, but they couldn’t help because I didn’t have a special code from the “plan” department. So it was back to them. Back to VIP with the code, only to discover I am no longer a VIP.
“You’re going to lose a very good customer,” I whimpered.
“I’m very sorry about that,” said Scottish Jim.
Then Scottish Jim rang me back. He was going to see what he could do. Suddenly, I wanted to marry Scottish Jim; then I wanted to marry Welsh Kevin, who was on my door within half an hour, taking away the defunct box and replacing it amid such screams of delight that have not been heard since the Wise Men delivered their gold, frankincense and myrrh to a woman who, a couple of hours before, didn’t have a Marriott Reward point to her name.
Fair play, that was great service. Having constantly praised LA service as being infinitely superior to its UK counterparts, I have to say that Sky surpassed itself. I might even take up the bagpipes as a tribute to Scottish Jim.
For the most part, my LA life allows me to stay in the UK loop. Rolling news on the internet, and also Facebook, mean that I am never out of touch with anything or anyone for very long. Oh, yes – and Sky! Lovely, lovely Sky!
But ten hours on a plane is a long time out of the loop, as I discovered when I arrived back home for Christmas and was instantly told by my uncle that: “Gareth Edwards has come out as being gay.” Apparently, he said, it had broken up his marriage, and he had also contemplated suicide.
‘GARETH EDWARDS?!” I screamed. The great Welsh rugby scrum half of the Eighties? “No wonder he never fancied me.”
I reached for my phone to text Gareth, offer support, blah blah, while trying to conceal my delight at hearing the most exciting news to have come out of Wales since . . . Well, Henry VII’s ascension to the throne, to be honest.
I rang my brother with the bulletin. “No,” he said. “Gareth Thomas.”
Oh, good grief. That wasn’t news. The ex-Welsh captain? Those of us in the rugby world had known that for years. Still, I was pleased for Gareth and thought his coming out in the macho world of rugby, and also Wales, was an incredibly brave move on his part.
So much so, that I went up to him in my local club, the Cameo, to tell him when I saw him there before Christmas. All well and good – had it not been his lookalike team-mate (well, both balding) Tom Shanklin.
Apparently, in the bus on the way back from Cardiff Blues’ match against Toulouse before Christmas, Gareth received a call from Elton John. The team celebrated by singing Candle in the Wind for the remainder of the journey.
Much as I am looking forward to celebrating my first New Year in LA, there are some things about home that you just can’t beat.
This year, I will be spending it in LA with a whole new set of friends that I didn’t even know at the start of the decade. Heck, I didn’t even know them at the start of the year.
Isn’t life strange?
I’m still not sure what I’ll be doing on Thursday night. I’ve always found New Year’s Eve a bit depressing, but if there is one thing worse than paying over-the-top prices for a bad meal and clinging to strangers as the chimes strike, it’s sitting alone watching people do the same on TV – especially if the post-midnight revelry is taking place in Scotland to the tune of bagpipes.
Was there ever a more hideous sounding musical instrument? I swear that the bagpipes are the suicide watch of the musical world, and I am just praying that LA will be a bagpipe-free zone for the festivities.
I suspect that I may not be able to escape them if I go to Ye Olde King’s Head in Santa Monica. This is a British pub that, at 4pm, is celebrating the UK New Year, which will be followed at midnight by the LA one.
I quite fancy celebrating the New Year in daylight, which might make it marginally less depressing than it normally is, although if they have bagpipes on the telly, I might be reaching for that razor blade and not even make it to my first US New Year.
I mustn’t be too horrible about Scotland’s national instrument, because a man called Jim from Scotland saved me from the razor blade on Christmas Eve.
I arrived back in the UK to discover that my Sky Plus box had gone kaput. Now, for a TV critic to be without TV at all is bad enough, but at Christmas, with several couch potatoes to keep happy, it is an event of monumental devastation.
I phoned Sky – no one was available until well after the New Year. I wailed, I cried, all to no avail. Despite having paid for a special plan in case of breakdown (my own, in addition to the equipment, I had presumed), there was just no one around.
Hurumph! The Sky’s the limitations I screamed at my family, munching peanuts and staring hopefully at the blank screen in the corner of the room.
I tracked down Sky’s VIP service, on whose list I had once been, but they couldn’t help because I didn’t have a special code from the “plan” department. So it was back to them. Back to VIP with the code, only to discover I am no longer a VIP.
“You’re going to lose a very good customer,” I whimpered.
“I’m very sorry about that,” said Scottish Jim.
Then Scottish Jim rang me back. He was going to see what he could do. Suddenly, I wanted to marry Scottish Jim; then I wanted to marry Welsh Kevin, who was on my door within half an hour, taking away the defunct box and replacing it amid such screams of delight that have not been heard since the Wise Men delivered their gold, frankincense and myrrh to a woman who, a couple of hours before, didn’t have a Marriott Reward point to her name.
Fair play, that was great service. Having constantly praised LA service as being infinitely superior to its UK counterparts, I have to say that Sky surpassed itself. I might even take up the bagpipes as a tribute to Scottish Jim.
For the most part, my LA life allows me to stay in the UK loop. Rolling news on the internet, and also Facebook, mean that I am never out of touch with anything or anyone for very long. Oh, yes – and Sky! Lovely, lovely Sky!
But ten hours on a plane is a long time out of the loop, as I discovered when I arrived back home for Christmas and was instantly told by my uncle that: “Gareth Edwards has come out as being gay.” Apparently, he said, it had broken up his marriage, and he had also contemplated suicide.
‘GARETH EDWARDS?!” I screamed. The great Welsh rugby scrum half of the Eighties? “No wonder he never fancied me.”
I reached for my phone to text Gareth, offer support, blah blah, while trying to conceal my delight at hearing the most exciting news to have come out of Wales since . . . Well, Henry VII’s ascension to the throne, to be honest.
I rang my brother with the bulletin. “No,” he said. “Gareth Thomas.”
Oh, good grief. That wasn’t news. The ex-Welsh captain? Those of us in the rugby world had known that for years. Still, I was pleased for Gareth and thought his coming out in the macho world of rugby, and also Wales, was an incredibly brave move on his part.
So much so, that I went up to him in my local club, the Cameo, to tell him when I saw him there before Christmas. All well and good – had it not been his lookalike team-mate (well, both balding) Tom Shanklin.
Apparently, in the bus on the way back from Cardiff Blues’ match against Toulouse before Christmas, Gareth received a call from Elton John. The team celebrated by singing Candle in the Wind for the remainder of the journey.
Much as I am looking forward to celebrating my first New Year in LA, there are some things about home that you just can’t beat.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
A Christmas Treat For Your Cervix 12/20/09
Christmas shopping in LA promised to be a darn sight cheaper than it has been in Paris the last couple of years.
Where the exchange rate between the pound and the euro just gets worse and worse, the dollar against the pound has been pretty solid around the $1.60 mark for some time (and even higher). With consistently falling prices in the US now reflecting the depth of the recession, I was looking forward to a bit of a spree.
US TV commercials have been full of gift suggestions, although not many that really appealed to me.
“Give her a gift that even Santa can’t deliver,” said one, presented by a man in a suit. “Give her a pap smear.”
How does that work? I don’t know about you, but a pap smear isn’t something that would have me rushing down the stairs on Christmas morning, checking to see whether Santa’s reindeer had drunk their saucer of milk, and squealing: “Oh, I really hope this is the year there’s a pap smear in my stocking!"
Breast enlargements, yes; a tummy-tuck too (you might as well be sliced for a sheep as a lamb, if you’re having the general anaesthetic anyway); but I ask you, a pap smear?
For men not in the know and really, really stuck for a present for the lady in their life (or ladies – I’m sure they could run to a discount for a bulk purchase), pap is short for Papanicolaou, and is a screening test in gynaecology to detect abnormal cells in the cervix.
I didn’t check out the details, so have no idea whether the gift is just the appointment with a doctor, or a DIY kit to conduct your own test while the turkey’s browning; but either way, any man who bought me a pap test for Christmas wouldn’t live to taste the pudding.
Williams Sonoma e-mailed about yet another set of pointless holiday-themed gadgets and foodstuffs, none of which I want but suddenly feel I cannot live without. Having missed out on their mandolin chipper, I was thrilled to see a mandolin dicer, before remembering that I buy everything ready-chopped, sliced and diced these days (I suspect it is only a matter of time before I start buying “ready-eaten” to save time).
I also resisted buying their gingerbread house – a snip at just under $60. I’ve always associated gingerbread houses with paedophiles, after a child-devouring witch lured Hansel and Gretel to one (child-eater my arse; we know what that was all about). I could no more eat a gingerbread house than . . . well, do my own pap smear.
The American Tea Room has taken over from Williams Sonoma as my favourite gadget shop, even though tea-pots and kettles are the main gadgets on offer. But oh, what pots and kettles.
Exquisite sculptures from China, ultra-modern electric kettles that keep water at different temperatures, according to what tea you are making; a tea-pot and kettle in one, that you can keep boiling on the stove.
And dozens upon dozens of teas – my current favourite being the fruity Martinique (it is actually a bark) that I drink hot, but also make by the gallon and keep chilled in the fridge.
The ATR is not a shop, it’s a shrine to the best drink in the world. I’m not quite at the stage when I can give up my three mugs of PG Tips in the morning, but I now have an entire cupboard containing nothing but exotic leaves.
The only problem with doing my Christmas shopping there was that I ended up keeping everything for myself.
The Beverly Hills branch of the Taschen bookshop kindly provides me with PG Tips when I am out and about, but this week there was champagne, as Hugh Hefner (whom I interviewed a few weeks ago) launched his six-volume autobiography.
It was the only Christmas party I went to and was rather jolly. Centrefolds Stacey and Deanna, dressed as Bunny Girls, greeted me, and Beautiful Barmaids had provided waiting staff for the night – all women well over six feet tall.
I even met Benedict Taschen, the man behind the great bookshop, and stacked up on several Christmas presents, which, like the teas, are sitting on a shelf in my apartment.
I took respite from this exhausting gift-buying for myself in the Montage Hotel, where a man sidled up to me and said: “Is that your perfume I can smell?” It was Estee Lauder’s White Linen, which I told him women really like, should he be looking for Christmas present ideas.
“Yes,” he said. “It smells . . . oily. Would that be right?” I wasn’t sure whether he meant oil as in aromatherapy, or oil as in Castrol GTX, but it just didn’t have quite the ring of compliment I normally hope for from a man.
But then the kind of men I meet generally aren’t the complimenting sort; they’re the kind who’d buy me a pap smear for Christmas, but check on Amazon before ordering from the TV, in case they could get it just that little bit cheaper.
And if you do happen to be one of the unfortunate women who gets given one on Friday, worry not.
Remember, a pappy is only for Christmas, not for life.
Where the exchange rate between the pound and the euro just gets worse and worse, the dollar against the pound has been pretty solid around the $1.60 mark for some time (and even higher). With consistently falling prices in the US now reflecting the depth of the recession, I was looking forward to a bit of a spree.
US TV commercials have been full of gift suggestions, although not many that really appealed to me.
“Give her a gift that even Santa can’t deliver,” said one, presented by a man in a suit. “Give her a pap smear.”
How does that work? I don’t know about you, but a pap smear isn’t something that would have me rushing down the stairs on Christmas morning, checking to see whether Santa’s reindeer had drunk their saucer of milk, and squealing: “Oh, I really hope this is the year there’s a pap smear in my stocking!"
Breast enlargements, yes; a tummy-tuck too (you might as well be sliced for a sheep as a lamb, if you’re having the general anaesthetic anyway); but I ask you, a pap smear?
For men not in the know and really, really stuck for a present for the lady in their life (or ladies – I’m sure they could run to a discount for a bulk purchase), pap is short for Papanicolaou, and is a screening test in gynaecology to detect abnormal cells in the cervix.
I didn’t check out the details, so have no idea whether the gift is just the appointment with a doctor, or a DIY kit to conduct your own test while the turkey’s browning; but either way, any man who bought me a pap test for Christmas wouldn’t live to taste the pudding.
Williams Sonoma e-mailed about yet another set of pointless holiday-themed gadgets and foodstuffs, none of which I want but suddenly feel I cannot live without. Having missed out on their mandolin chipper, I was thrilled to see a mandolin dicer, before remembering that I buy everything ready-chopped, sliced and diced these days (I suspect it is only a matter of time before I start buying “ready-eaten” to save time).
I also resisted buying their gingerbread house – a snip at just under $60. I’ve always associated gingerbread houses with paedophiles, after a child-devouring witch lured Hansel and Gretel to one (child-eater my arse; we know what that was all about). I could no more eat a gingerbread house than . . . well, do my own pap smear.
The American Tea Room has taken over from Williams Sonoma as my favourite gadget shop, even though tea-pots and kettles are the main gadgets on offer. But oh, what pots and kettles.
Exquisite sculptures from China, ultra-modern electric kettles that keep water at different temperatures, according to what tea you are making; a tea-pot and kettle in one, that you can keep boiling on the stove.
And dozens upon dozens of teas – my current favourite being the fruity Martinique (it is actually a bark) that I drink hot, but also make by the gallon and keep chilled in the fridge.
The ATR is not a shop, it’s a shrine to the best drink in the world. I’m not quite at the stage when I can give up my three mugs of PG Tips in the morning, but I now have an entire cupboard containing nothing but exotic leaves.
The only problem with doing my Christmas shopping there was that I ended up keeping everything for myself.
The Beverly Hills branch of the Taschen bookshop kindly provides me with PG Tips when I am out and about, but this week there was champagne, as Hugh Hefner (whom I interviewed a few weeks ago) launched his six-volume autobiography.
It was the only Christmas party I went to and was rather jolly. Centrefolds Stacey and Deanna, dressed as Bunny Girls, greeted me, and Beautiful Barmaids had provided waiting staff for the night – all women well over six feet tall.
I even met Benedict Taschen, the man behind the great bookshop, and stacked up on several Christmas presents, which, like the teas, are sitting on a shelf in my apartment.
I took respite from this exhausting gift-buying for myself in the Montage Hotel, where a man sidled up to me and said: “Is that your perfume I can smell?” It was Estee Lauder’s White Linen, which I told him women really like, should he be looking for Christmas present ideas.
“Yes,” he said. “It smells . . . oily. Would that be right?” I wasn’t sure whether he meant oil as in aromatherapy, or oil as in Castrol GTX, but it just didn’t have quite the ring of compliment I normally hope for from a man.
But then the kind of men I meet generally aren’t the complimenting sort; they’re the kind who’d buy me a pap smear for Christmas, but check on Amazon before ordering from the TV, in case they could get it just that little bit cheaper.
And if you do happen to be one of the unfortunate women who gets given one on Friday, worry not.
Remember, a pappy is only for Christmas, not for life.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Campaign For Hug A Martini Day 12/9/09
Each time I go back to the UK, it takes me a while to get back into the spiritual groove I have been establishing since I moved here.
It’s tough, when you’re surrounded by a hundred Welshmen, spilling their pints of Stella over you, while drowning their sorrows at another Welsh rugby loss, to stay calm.
So when I come back, I have to re-group, as they say, and have to immerse myself back in the culture that seems such a far remove from home.
My bookshelves here are packed with self-help books of various sorts. My latest read was Eat, Pray, Love, a rather earnest quest by US journalist Elizabeth Gilbert to “find herself” in Italy, India and Indonesia.
It all sounded a bit energetic for me, and I specially wasn’t drawn to the India bit, where she rose every day at 3am to meditate.
Good grief: I’m hardly ever in bed by 3am.
I’m a bigger fan of Andrew Gottlieb’s take on it – Drink, Play, F@*k – although having no hash key on my Apple computer keyboard (as I have just discovered), I have had to insert a star where a hash should be. Life’s never easy, is it?
Outside my local grocery store, I picked up a magazine called Awareness, billed as “California’s premier bi-monthly holistic magazine”. It’s a rather unprepossessing publication – all muted colours and men who look like aliens on the cover – but I thought it might serve as a pick-me-up for my dilapidated spirit.
The cover provided information about forthcoming events, including a “Raw Spirit Festival” (rustic 100% proof Russian vodka, I wondered? Somehow, I doubted it). There was also an “Alchemy Conference”.
The only thing that would draw me to that would be if it were to alchemise into a Jimmy Choo "all shoes ten cents" sale before I got there.
Inside the magazine, there were even more treats – a tree-hugging day in Santa Monica, for instance. I’ve never quite got tree-hugging. Why would you hug a tree while there are still men in the world? And why is there not a Martini-Hugging Day?
People have told me that tree-hugging is a very rewarding experience – well, not people I hang out with, you understand, just people who don’t wash their hair much and prefer Glastonbury digs to a Marriott. Weird people.
The magazine is very big on angels (and disturbingly, I really do know people who claim to hang out with their angels), and there is even a website on which you can “Listen to Archangelic Messages”.
I don’t think that Christmas is the time to tune in, to be honest, a time when archangels have a habit of delivering messages along the lines of: “Lo, you will become pregnant without having sex and not be able to find a Marriott within walking distance.”
If you’re not keen on chatting to angels, guess what: you can “Get in touch with your personal gatekeeper”. Should you be as ignorant as I am on this, your gatekeeper is “The producer/director of the play your soul wrote before you came into this lifetime.”
Having just had possibly the worst year of my entire life, here’s a message, gatekeeper: you should have done a re-write of the middle act; it’s shit.
Despite some strange practices described within, Awareness is quite encouraging about money and does not rule out material riches going hand in hand with spiritual ones (just as well, the packet these people must be making on the back of the gullible and/or stupid).
Niurka, for instance, is a glamorous businesswoman and author of Supreme Influence; she offers techniques on how to become aligned with your true nature in order to increase prosperity and yet stay true to your spiritual self.
I am quite drawn to this you can have the penny and the bun philosophy, and Niurka has a strong background in NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), of which I am already a strong advocate.
“Make a decision to go deep within yourself,” advises Niurka. “Focus on the essential nature of your being and everything around you will change.”
My bank balance, in particular, I hoped, although I suspect my damned gatekeeper wrote: “No money. Ever” into my script in his/her first draft.
I already meditate twice a day, but decided to up it a bit, in the hope of changing a few things.
When I first learned Transcendental Meditation, I found that it lowered my blood pressure and made me generally less anxious and depressed – well, apart from on the day when I went for my initiation ceremony, couldn’t find anywhere to buy the required handkerchief on Oxford Street, and nearly went under a double-decker bus in my rush to get there.
It’s a powerful tool, though. Within an hour of upping my 20 minutes to 40, I was in Sports Club LA spa, asking for more information about the Four Seasons Amex special massage offer.
“We’re not the Four Seasons,” explained the receptionist. “Yes, you are,” I insisted. “The Beverly Hills Hotel is, and you, the Beverly Wilshire, are part of the same group.”
“But we’re not the Beverly Wilshire,” she said.
Oh, no, you’re the gym. Silly me.
It’s all very well diving into your psyche in search of greater awareness, but nobody ever tells you that it can make you mad.
Barking mad, if you’re a tree-hugger.
It’s tough, when you’re surrounded by a hundred Welshmen, spilling their pints of Stella over you, while drowning their sorrows at another Welsh rugby loss, to stay calm.
So when I come back, I have to re-group, as they say, and have to immerse myself back in the culture that seems such a far remove from home.
My bookshelves here are packed with self-help books of various sorts. My latest read was Eat, Pray, Love, a rather earnest quest by US journalist Elizabeth Gilbert to “find herself” in Italy, India and Indonesia.
It all sounded a bit energetic for me, and I specially wasn’t drawn to the India bit, where she rose every day at 3am to meditate.
Good grief: I’m hardly ever in bed by 3am.
I’m a bigger fan of Andrew Gottlieb’s take on it – Drink, Play, F@*k – although having no hash key on my Apple computer keyboard (as I have just discovered), I have had to insert a star where a hash should be. Life’s never easy, is it?
Outside my local grocery store, I picked up a magazine called Awareness, billed as “California’s premier bi-monthly holistic magazine”. It’s a rather unprepossessing publication – all muted colours and men who look like aliens on the cover – but I thought it might serve as a pick-me-up for my dilapidated spirit.
The cover provided information about forthcoming events, including a “Raw Spirit Festival” (rustic 100% proof Russian vodka, I wondered? Somehow, I doubted it). There was also an “Alchemy Conference”.
The only thing that would draw me to that would be if it were to alchemise into a Jimmy Choo "all shoes ten cents" sale before I got there.
Inside the magazine, there were even more treats – a tree-hugging day in Santa Monica, for instance. I’ve never quite got tree-hugging. Why would you hug a tree while there are still men in the world? And why is there not a Martini-Hugging Day?
People have told me that tree-hugging is a very rewarding experience – well, not people I hang out with, you understand, just people who don’t wash their hair much and prefer Glastonbury digs to a Marriott. Weird people.
The magazine is very big on angels (and disturbingly, I really do know people who claim to hang out with their angels), and there is even a website on which you can “Listen to Archangelic Messages”.
I don’t think that Christmas is the time to tune in, to be honest, a time when archangels have a habit of delivering messages along the lines of: “Lo, you will become pregnant without having sex and not be able to find a Marriott within walking distance.”
If you’re not keen on chatting to angels, guess what: you can “Get in touch with your personal gatekeeper”. Should you be as ignorant as I am on this, your gatekeeper is “The producer/director of the play your soul wrote before you came into this lifetime.”
Having just had possibly the worst year of my entire life, here’s a message, gatekeeper: you should have done a re-write of the middle act; it’s shit.
Despite some strange practices described within, Awareness is quite encouraging about money and does not rule out material riches going hand in hand with spiritual ones (just as well, the packet these people must be making on the back of the gullible and/or stupid).
Niurka, for instance, is a glamorous businesswoman and author of Supreme Influence; she offers techniques on how to become aligned with your true nature in order to increase prosperity and yet stay true to your spiritual self.
I am quite drawn to this you can have the penny and the bun philosophy, and Niurka has a strong background in NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), of which I am already a strong advocate.
“Make a decision to go deep within yourself,” advises Niurka. “Focus on the essential nature of your being and everything around you will change.”
My bank balance, in particular, I hoped, although I suspect my damned gatekeeper wrote: “No money. Ever” into my script in his/her first draft.
I already meditate twice a day, but decided to up it a bit, in the hope of changing a few things.
When I first learned Transcendental Meditation, I found that it lowered my blood pressure and made me generally less anxious and depressed – well, apart from on the day when I went for my initiation ceremony, couldn’t find anywhere to buy the required handkerchief on Oxford Street, and nearly went under a double-decker bus in my rush to get there.
It’s a powerful tool, though. Within an hour of upping my 20 minutes to 40, I was in Sports Club LA spa, asking for more information about the Four Seasons Amex special massage offer.
“We’re not the Four Seasons,” explained the receptionist. “Yes, you are,” I insisted. “The Beverly Hills Hotel is, and you, the Beverly Wilshire, are part of the same group.”
“But we’re not the Beverly Wilshire,” she said.
Oh, no, you’re the gym. Silly me.
It’s all very well diving into your psyche in search of greater awareness, but nobody ever tells you that it can make you mad.
Barking mad, if you’re a tree-hugger.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Keeping A Welcome In The Welsh Beverly Hillsides 12/2/09
Hiraeth.
It’s a word I used on my Facebook page this week, saying that I was suffering from a rather severe bout of it. It is a Welsh word that, as far as I can gather, doesn’t have an English equivalent, and it means, quite simply, a deep longing for home.
It’s not a longing for your house or any specific individual, and the only way I can explain it is in terms of its being a longing for one’s homeland: the place where you left your heart.
No matter how far you travel and how much you enjoy every new experience and people that you meet, hiraeth is the rhythm of your innermost being, always reminding you of the place from which you came and gave you life.
There is also, in my case at least, the inevitability of its returning there.
It came upon me suddenly this week, and although I described my sudden feelings of isolation in terms of homesickness to my non-Welsh friends, I could say “hiraeth” to my countrymen and know that they would know exactly what I meant.
I love LA. I love the sun, the easier pace of life, the lower utility bills, the great service in bars, restaurants, and at the end of the phone. I love the fact that you can eat out at a really good restaurant without having to take out a second mortgage; and I love being able to go to the gym and eat healthily with such ease and without being considered a bit of a freak.
In contrast, there is very little I miss about the UK. Appalling train services, expensive gas, electric and phone, rudeness pretty much everywhere you turn – on a point by point chart, LA would win over the UK every time.
But then there is that little corner of a foreign field that is, to me, forever Wales, and I am as attached to it now as the day I came out of the womb at Glossop Maternity Home in Cardiff in 1958.
I know how lucky I am to be living in Beverly Hills, where the sun rises in my living room and sets in my office. I know that for many people, this would be the trip of a lifetime, and that even to see the Hollywood sign on the hills just once, let alone every day, would be one of life’s great joys.
And I know that I am blessed to have a job that enables me to travel and meet new people all the time, and that I have been equally blessed to have the good health that enables me to do that.
All of this I know in my head. But then there’s hiraeth. That aching, longing, tugging of the heart that, this week, has seen me sobbing uncontrollably to go home – to my family, my friends, my homeland. To where I belong.
I’ve been looking at the languages of other cultures to see if they contain a word that conveys the same sentiment.
Arabic has the word “ghurba”, which is a derivative of the word for stranger, and in the Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic is explained as: "absence from the homeland: separation from one’s native country, banishment, exile; life or place away from home.” it is also often translated as “Diaspora”.
Like hiraeth, “ghurba” also carries with it an intense, melancholic feeling of longing, nostalgia, homesickness and separation: of, according to the Canadian newspaper columnist Ghada Al Atrash Janbey (thank you, yet again, Google), “a severe patriotic yearning for a place where one’s heart was not only living, but . . . to a place where one’s heart danced to the silence of a homeland’s soul.”
There is a word for it in Portuguese, too – saudade – and it expresses a feeling of nostalgic longing for something or someone that one loved but is now gone.
It also carries fatalist undertones and the repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never return – or even, as one translation puts it: “a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist.”
Apparently, this state of mind has subsequently become pretty much part of the Portuguese way of life – a feeling of absence, something missing, and yet a desire for presence rather than absence – or, as they say in Portuguese, a strong desire to “matar as sauddasa” (literally, to kill the saudades).
I don’t know about you, but that kind of thinking isn’t going to put Lisbon top of my must-see holiday destinations next year.
My favourite word so far to describe my 6000 miles away from home hiraeth is the Dutch one, “weemoed”, which is apparently a “fuzzy form” of nostagia. Being Dutch, their definition means that we don’t have to guess for very long quite why it might be regarded as fuzzy, but I like the word.
The Fins have “kaiho” – a state of involuntary solitude, in which the subject feels incompleteness and yearns for something unobtainable or extremely difficult and tedious to attain (I tell you: my Welsh hiraeth buddies and I are a veritable choir of laughing policemen among this lot).
In Korean, “keurium” is the closest to saudade, and reflects a yearning for anything that has left a deep impression on the heart – a memory, place, person etc. The Japanese word for a longing of the heart is “natsukashii”. While in Armenian, the word “karot” describes the deep feeling of missing something or somebody.
Different words, same emotion, but to me there is something about just saying the Welsh word hiraeth that pulls at exactly the part of your body from which the longing comes.
It’s the part I feel when seeing my friends’ names on Facebook late at night, and the pictures of my close friends Mary and Liam's first grandchild.
It’s my Mum’s voice, 6000 miles away on the phone, telling me about Maddie the bichon frise’s latest crimes (breaking into my old bedroom and opening the M & S biscuits, an aunt’s Christmas present).
It’s knowing that there’s a rugby game being played just a couple of miles from my house, and my brother calling me from my home to tell me who was asking after me.
I want to know how Sioned and Gareth’s wedding plans are going.
I want to see Leisha who, for my birthday when I went back home, decorated my table with flowers, bought a cake with candles, and reduced me to tears with her thoughtfulness.
I want to know what Liz and Ronw are filming and share with them the hysterical laughter than never fails to leave me uplifted.
I want to go to the Robin Hood pub, chat to Dave, and hear Gwerfyl and Heulwen's latest adventures.
I want to see the Tuesday lunchtime rugby blokes in Llandaff's Butchers Arms, still reminiscing about the Lions tour 30 years ago.
Although "hiraeth" is a word not linked to specifics, all of these people are inherently linked to the home I love. And each brings extraordinary qualities and joys to a life that, even as I look to the sun setting on Beverly Hills, fills me with a longing I haven't felt in many years.
It’s a longing for the warmth of the Welsh, the humour and laughter (oh, God, how I miss the laughter here), Sunday roast in the Cameo Club, the wet leaves in autumn – yes, the rain. I never thought I’d say it: but I really miss the rain.
I miss being among people who "get" me. The rugby team were shit against Australia, but I don't care. I miss being Welsh.
Whatever you want to call it in any language, it’s a longing for home. Like most clichés, "Home is Where the Heart Is" didn’t earn its cliché status for nothing.
It’s a word I used on my Facebook page this week, saying that I was suffering from a rather severe bout of it. It is a Welsh word that, as far as I can gather, doesn’t have an English equivalent, and it means, quite simply, a deep longing for home.
It’s not a longing for your house or any specific individual, and the only way I can explain it is in terms of its being a longing for one’s homeland: the place where you left your heart.
No matter how far you travel and how much you enjoy every new experience and people that you meet, hiraeth is the rhythm of your innermost being, always reminding you of the place from which you came and gave you life.
There is also, in my case at least, the inevitability of its returning there.
It came upon me suddenly this week, and although I described my sudden feelings of isolation in terms of homesickness to my non-Welsh friends, I could say “hiraeth” to my countrymen and know that they would know exactly what I meant.
I love LA. I love the sun, the easier pace of life, the lower utility bills, the great service in bars, restaurants, and at the end of the phone. I love the fact that you can eat out at a really good restaurant without having to take out a second mortgage; and I love being able to go to the gym and eat healthily with such ease and without being considered a bit of a freak.
In contrast, there is very little I miss about the UK. Appalling train services, expensive gas, electric and phone, rudeness pretty much everywhere you turn – on a point by point chart, LA would win over the UK every time.
But then there is that little corner of a foreign field that is, to me, forever Wales, and I am as attached to it now as the day I came out of the womb at Glossop Maternity Home in Cardiff in 1958.
I know how lucky I am to be living in Beverly Hills, where the sun rises in my living room and sets in my office. I know that for many people, this would be the trip of a lifetime, and that even to see the Hollywood sign on the hills just once, let alone every day, would be one of life’s great joys.
And I know that I am blessed to have a job that enables me to travel and meet new people all the time, and that I have been equally blessed to have the good health that enables me to do that.
All of this I know in my head. But then there’s hiraeth. That aching, longing, tugging of the heart that, this week, has seen me sobbing uncontrollably to go home – to my family, my friends, my homeland. To where I belong.
I’ve been looking at the languages of other cultures to see if they contain a word that conveys the same sentiment.
Arabic has the word “ghurba”, which is a derivative of the word for stranger, and in the Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic is explained as: "absence from the homeland: separation from one’s native country, banishment, exile; life or place away from home.” it is also often translated as “Diaspora”.
Like hiraeth, “ghurba” also carries with it an intense, melancholic feeling of longing, nostalgia, homesickness and separation: of, according to the Canadian newspaper columnist Ghada Al Atrash Janbey (thank you, yet again, Google), “a severe patriotic yearning for a place where one’s heart was not only living, but . . . to a place where one’s heart danced to the silence of a homeland’s soul.”
There is a word for it in Portuguese, too – saudade – and it expresses a feeling of nostalgic longing for something or someone that one loved but is now gone.
It also carries fatalist undertones and the repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never return – or even, as one translation puts it: “a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist.”
Apparently, this state of mind has subsequently become pretty much part of the Portuguese way of life – a feeling of absence, something missing, and yet a desire for presence rather than absence – or, as they say in Portuguese, a strong desire to “matar as sauddasa” (literally, to kill the saudades).
I don’t know about you, but that kind of thinking isn’t going to put Lisbon top of my must-see holiday destinations next year.
My favourite word so far to describe my 6000 miles away from home hiraeth is the Dutch one, “weemoed”, which is apparently a “fuzzy form” of nostagia. Being Dutch, their definition means that we don’t have to guess for very long quite why it might be regarded as fuzzy, but I like the word.
The Fins have “kaiho” – a state of involuntary solitude, in which the subject feels incompleteness and yearns for something unobtainable or extremely difficult and tedious to attain (I tell you: my Welsh hiraeth buddies and I are a veritable choir of laughing policemen among this lot).
In Korean, “keurium” is the closest to saudade, and reflects a yearning for anything that has left a deep impression on the heart – a memory, place, person etc. The Japanese word for a longing of the heart is “natsukashii”. While in Armenian, the word “karot” describes the deep feeling of missing something or somebody.
Different words, same emotion, but to me there is something about just saying the Welsh word hiraeth that pulls at exactly the part of your body from which the longing comes.
It’s the part I feel when seeing my friends’ names on Facebook late at night, and the pictures of my close friends Mary and Liam's first grandchild.
It’s my Mum’s voice, 6000 miles away on the phone, telling me about Maddie the bichon frise’s latest crimes (breaking into my old bedroom and opening the M & S biscuits, an aunt’s Christmas present).
It’s knowing that there’s a rugby game being played just a couple of miles from my house, and my brother calling me from my home to tell me who was asking after me.
I want to know how Sioned and Gareth’s wedding plans are going.
I want to see Leisha who, for my birthday when I went back home, decorated my table with flowers, bought a cake with candles, and reduced me to tears with her thoughtfulness.
I want to know what Liz and Ronw are filming and share with them the hysterical laughter than never fails to leave me uplifted.
I want to go to the Robin Hood pub, chat to Dave, and hear Gwerfyl and Heulwen's latest adventures.
I want to see the Tuesday lunchtime rugby blokes in Llandaff's Butchers Arms, still reminiscing about the Lions tour 30 years ago.
Although "hiraeth" is a word not linked to specifics, all of these people are inherently linked to the home I love. And each brings extraordinary qualities and joys to a life that, even as I look to the sun setting on Beverly Hills, fills me with a longing I haven't felt in many years.
It’s a longing for the warmth of the Welsh, the humour and laughter (oh, God, how I miss the laughter here), Sunday roast in the Cameo Club, the wet leaves in autumn – yes, the rain. I never thought I’d say it: but I really miss the rain.
I miss being among people who "get" me. The rugby team were shit against Australia, but I don't care. I miss being Welsh.
Whatever you want to call it in any language, it’s a longing for home. Like most clichés, "Home is Where the Heart Is" didn’t earn its cliché status for nothing.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)