Happy Birthday, Virgin - Now Sort Out the Socks!

For someone who once spent a decade land-bound out of fear of flying, my addiction to Air Miles comes as something of a surprise.

   

I blame Sir Richard Branson. Travelling between LA and the UK for the past five years on Virgin Upper Class, I have discovered a method to travel pretty much for free for half the year. At the risk of sounding like Sir Richard’s personal PR, I can recommend the Virgin Black Amex, which, if you buy Virgin products on it, clocks you up four points for every pound spent.

   

So (and skip this paragraph if the subject of Air Miles bores you), let’s say you buy a flight at £3000, that’s 12,000 points immediately. Then there is the 8174 miles x 2 (16,348) for each way LA/UK. As a Flying Club Gold member, I then get 100% each way on base miles flown – that’s another (honestly, feel free to glaze over . . . ) 5477 x 2 (10,954). So, we’re already up to 39,302 miles – and you need just 40,000 for an Upper Class ticket between New York and the UK. On top of that, there are booster miles that can be purchased at a relatively low cost . . . Anyway, you get the picture.

   

At the moment, I am able to fly First Class between LA and NYC for 75,000 points and a mere $5. I tell you, airport taxes in the US put the UK’s exorbitant fees to shame.

   

So, I am wishing Virgin a very happy 30^th birthday because I love them. Economy passengers tell me that things are not so good these days, with only one or two drinks being allowed on some flights. One friend yesterday told me that things are so bad, he was thinking of returning to British Airways, so I know that things must be really, really horrendous.

   

But the fantastic Virgin lounge at Heathrow keeps me loyal to the company, and the staff onboard both Virgin Atlantic and Virgin America are the best in the world. Friendly without being over-familiar, and efficient without being officious, they make every flight a joy.

   

The same cannot be said for American Airlines where, on a recent night flight, the crew talked so loudly, I had to ask them to keep it down. They rudely told me that they had to talk to keep awake. My letters of complaint to Customer Service have been ignored.

   

Having had my suitcase raided on an AA flight, coupled with their unsympathetic response and general lack of help in relation to that matter, has not exactly fuelled my desire to travel with them ever again.

   

For the most part, I now love flying, though I still have a few niggles. Socks, for example. I just don’t like the new Virgin Atlantic socks. They are such an odd shape and very uncomfortable. I can only imagine that the designer used a horse’s hoof as a model. I also don’t like the new Virgin safety instructions – a kind of weird rap song that is largely incomprehensible and makes you wish that the plane would go down just to stop the damn thing playing.

   

But here’s my biggest complaint: window blinds. On Virgin Atlantic and Air New Zealand, the captain announces that window blinds must be up for take-off and landing, and the crew check that this is done every time. On internal flights in the US on Virgin America and American Airlines, most people keep their blinds down, and the plane takes off and lands in relative darkness.

   

This really bothers me. Having been told that take-off and landing are the most dangerous parts of any flight, it seems to me only logical that the interior of the aircraft should be visible to both crew and passengers, in the event of any problem. An ex-pilot confirmed this to me and said that his preference would always be for them being up because (1) if there is an emergency, passengers will be better orientated spatially and more likely to get out if they have a reference for what’s going on, and (2) in take-off and landing, there are more turns and manoeuvres, and having visual references to what is happening helps to keep people from getting airsick.

   

Last year, I had a panic attack on an American Airlines flight and was a hair’s breadth from having to disembark (“Are you on meds?” asked the captain. “Meds?” I said. “I don’t even know what that means.”). It did not help that they booked me into a different class from the one I had booked online (again, no response to my letters from Customer Service), but I realised this week, when coming back from New York on Virgin America, what the problem was when it happened again. Most of the blinds in the cabin were down ready for take-off. I started to sweat and felt mounting claustrophobic sickness. I know I stand little chance of changing aviation history, but it seems to me a really important issue.

   

So, Sir Richard, on this your very special birthday, please sort this out for me. This, and the socks. 

Yes. The socks are very important. 

And I have, by the way, Sir, bought the domain virginpointsmillionaire.com, should you wish to know how to make better use of your points.

  

   

   

Straight Pride Day - Let's Celebrate!

Straight Pride Day.

It has a certain ring to it. 

After all the excitement in LA last weekend (yeah, thanks for those Village People hits blaring outside my window at dawn, folks), I realised that nearly everyone in the world is gay, and I am now a minority.

   

As a minority, I must surely be entitled to my own special day, but perhaps I should narrow my status down a little. Straight, female, single, short, menopausal – but then I don’t think that Straight, Single, Female, Short, Menopausal Pride Day has any ring to it whatsoever; in fact, I think I might be the only member.

   

But the truth is, I really feel I am one of a very small number now. Don’t get me wrong. Easily 50% of my friends are gay, male and female; I think it is joyous that we live in a society that celebrates sexual preference and which joins together against rich hotel owners who advocate stoning of gays (no, I won’t be going to the Dorchester or Beverly Hills Hotel again, either); I believe in equality, irrespective of gender, or who one wishes to sleep with. But being straight isn’t as easy as it once was.

   

Maybe I’ve brought it on myself. When I am in LA, I reside in West Hollywood; when in New York City, Hell’s Kitchen – both gay epicentres of their respective cities. My gay friends from the UK visit both often and, when I am in town, I go out and have a blast with them.

   

They all enjoy a very wide social circle and always have somewhere to go, people to see, dogs to babysit etc. I never get invited anywhere. My friends who are in couples, straight and gay, invite only other couples around for dinner; my single gay friends are always out partying; my single straight friends are too depressed or too poor to go anywhere and prefer to stay indoors with their box set of Mad Men, enjoying a night of binge viewing. 

   

So, most of my life is spent among gay strangers. But here’s one of the things I’ve noticed – and I know I risk the wrath of the gay gods when I say this: LA gays are so much more backbiting and bitchy than New York gays.

   

I am not going to try to analyse why that might be, other than to say that a village mentality (and LA is far more a village than NYC) tends to harbour prejudices and insecurities, which generally bring out the worst in people, more than large cities do.

   

It’s not something that I notice in other aspects of LA life. For the most part, people are merely desperate to make it big, and they do not have the time or energy to waste bitching about others; self-promotion is all. But when it comes to the gay life I have witnessed in LA, it is much more akin to the rather infantile nastiness I saw in the UK long before it was cool to be gay.

   

In New York, it just doesn’t seem to be a big deal. If the gay guys there are ogling fresh meat walking on the sidewalk, they are not so rude as to comment on it when they are talking to me (don’t even get me started on the level at which Miami gays do this); I am regularly invited to join groups of gay guys I have never met before for drinks or dinner – which has never happened once during five years of living in LA. Even my gay realtor invited me to his barbecue.

   

There is a general tendency in society at large to regard any older woman as being on the scrapheap, yet I am invariably the last person to leave any bar or event in any establishment. It’s not that I like to keep drinking (I can do that at home if I want to), but I love company and have what has recently been labelled FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). I’ve always been the same. Even as a baby, my parents couldn’t get me to close my eyes at bedtime “Don’t she stare?” said my grandmother, during one spectacularly inquisitive moment.

   

I do stare. I listen. I love observing people of all cultures, shapes and sizes, and hearing the stories that got them to where they are. Stories of joy, pain, loss, love, hope – the humanity that walks our streets every day.

   

In the end, it doesn’t matter if those people are gay or straight, but please, just for one day, let me celebrate Straight Single Female Short Menopausal Pride Day. 

And it’s today. 

Officially. 

June 13^th. 

Friday 13^th. 

I’m feeling lucky.

  

   

Rik Mayall - A Young One Gone Too Soon

The news of another friend’s death strikes me more keenly when in the US. It makes me ponder the fragility of life and the time I wish I had spent – and should be spending – with so many people.

   

For the most part, I consider the UK a mere ocean away; in fact, one Christmas, flying from LA, I arrived back at my mother’s house in Bristol in less time than it took my brother to drive there from Clacton, thanks to the joyous M5.

   

But when I receive a call or read on Twitter (which is always first with the news) about another death, that ocean feels very wide, and the UK another planet.

   

The news of Rik Mayall’s death spread quickly on Twitter, and people were quick to pay tribute to his genius and place in comedy history. The suddenness and unexpectedness of it added to the heartfelt sadness among friends, colleagues and fans; his wife and children’s tribute to him on Facebook put them and their loss uppermost in our thoughts.

   

I first met Rik through my first job as TV critic on the Evening Standard in the late Eighties. I had reviewed him in The New Statesman, the political comedy penned by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, and raved about him. It was an extraordinary performance: full of menace and, at a time when we weren’t fully aware of just how vile politicians could be (well, I wasn’t, anyway), something of a prophecy.

   

For women, Rik had that rare thing among men: the ability to talk with you, not at you. He was not only a brilliant actor, comedian and lover of life, but a great listener. Having survived a near fatal accident in 1998, he came back from the dead after being in a coma for five days (beating Jesus, he said), and we were lucky for the extra years he gave us.

   

I got to chat to him a lot when he was performing in the West End with Adrian Edmondson, in Waiting for Godot. It was the only time I ever enjoyed the play, and, after the show, I would see him and/or Adrian in the Groucho Club (sans Godot – I tell you, we’ll be waiting forever for that guy), the private members’ establishment in the heart of Soho.

   

I was very new to London, very insecure and pretty depressed. Rik was someone who lent an ear to my woes. Not without his own insecurities, he made me laugh so much at a time when a lot of my hours were spent sobbing.

   

He had beautiful eyes, a gorgeous smile, and a mellifluous voice that brought instant calm. He was caring, sweet, and nobody had a bad word to say about him.

   

His contribution to the world of comedy is assured, but we have lost not only a great performer, but a lovely man.

   

No matter how much we hear about death, no matter how many times we are forced to confront it, no matter how much we acknowledge its inevitability, it still has the ability to shock. 

Hearing about Rik was one such moment.

      

Sex, Death and the Fear Inbetween 29/5/14

Pelvic mesh. 

What’s that all about? 

When I first moved to the US five years ago, I was struck by how many cures there were advertised on TV for conditions I never knew I potentially had. What fun I had trawling the aisles devoted to female hygiene in my local Rite Aid, as opposed to the 12 inch shelf in my local Boots Pharmacy back in the UK. Now, though, it seems to me, there has been a sea change: forget the cures, it’s all about drawing your attention to something not only you never knew you had, but for which there is no cure.

   

Take this pelvic mesh scare. I have no idea what pelvic mesh is, because every time I hear the word “vagina”, I tend to put my hands over my ears. Unlike a lot of women, I am a much bigger fan of the C word than the V word. The V word sounds like you’re offering a nice little boat trip around the coves of a Greek Island; the C word actually sounds like what it is: a whacking great cavernous hole whose main job is to trap unsuspecting penises and never let them out until the alimony cheque comes through. 

   

The States is far more graphic than the UK on BTW (Below The Waist) problems both for men and women. In the UK, women’s monthly cycles on TV are still represented by somebody pouring coloured ink on an all too absorbable material, as opposed to the advertised product, which could, according to the pictures, absorb a Hewlett Packard ocean of ink before you can say “Replace this cartridge now”.

   

Durex has come a small way (geddit?) to change the nature of TV commercials, but they are still on the tame side. Among the most recent, a man and a woman are in bed, both in rather nice nightwear, and then . . . To be honest, I’m not sure what happens then, because I’m always distracted by the glamorous nightie (do people still wear clothes to bed? Heck, I don’t wear underwear in the daytime, having worked out you could save eight years of your life by not buying and donning unnecessary clothing – but that’s another story). I’m also distracted by the mystery of how anyone, without eight pints of Stella, would end up in bed with either of these people.

   

I have managed to glean  that the commercial is for a gel that will get women excited in a way they have apparently never been before (again – what’s wrong with Stella?). Trust me on this: the price of said gels when you look at your receipt will quickly diminish any excitement you might have anticipated before you reached the other side of the cash register.

   

By far the biggest BTW problem in the US appears to be an erection lasting over four hours (or is it six? Or eight? I forget; when you’re used to the UK average of 40 minutes - or 40 seconds, in some cases), including tea and biscuits, I’m hardly going to call 911 for a couple of extra hours.

   

These commercials are quite terrifying in their graphic descriptions, but apparently there are even greater horrors out there on the BTW front. Aaron Spelling’s widow, Candy, has just published a new book, Candy at Last, in which she describes dating a man called Larry who, owing to his “penile implant” (I believe the correct word is penial; penile is about slavery . . . actually, on second thoughts . . .) could keep at it for five or six hours. No one, she says, wants to have sex for that long. Speak for yourself, love. I would imagine that having been married to Aaron Spelling, she would have been well used to non-stop serial drama (or should that be penial?).

   

The reality is that all these commercials represent an inherent fear of growing older, especially for men. In the UK, when men start to lose their sexual prowess, they just shrug their shoulders and spend more time in the pub, ogling women they couldn’t even get the first time around, let alone with the melting wax candle between their legs in these later years. But in the US, the ability to keep going is what makes not only men, but women, keep popping pills, because hey, if you’re still having sex, you must still be young. Right? 

Sex is the cross we hold to the vampire of death to keep it at bay for as long as we can.

   

Never mind about the warnings – do stop taking X, if you suffer blurred vision, cramps, muscle weakness, forgetfulness, numbness, or have an erection lasting until Christmas – we all want to believe that we will live forever; and, whether it be good or bad, sex is the one thing that makes us momentarily forget that we won’t.

Another pint of Stella, please.

    

Cops and Robbers

My predilection for being robbed or losing valuables every time I take a trip has been well documented in my blogs. After a month away, first in the UK and then in New York, I can this time report that my travels were almost incident free.

   

I was parted from my iPhone just once, after leaving it on the subway, but it was picked up and, thanks to Find My iPhone on my computer, I was able to trace it and retrieve it.

   

For the first time ever, baggage security staff resisted going through my bags and rifling anything they could sell on eBay, and I made it back to my LA apartment with everything I had taken away, apart from my iPhone earphones.

   

In fact, this trip started to bring me closer to items stolen in the past. Suddenly, the messages “Jaci Stephen’s iPad has been found” and “Jaci Stephen’s Airbook has been found” appeared on my computer. These related to the items I had in my hand baggage that was stolen from LAX when I returned from Miami in January. The messages show up when the items are connected to the internet, and would also have flashed up a message from me, saying that they have been lost and giving a number to reach me on. No one has.

   

Trying to get anyone to do something about this is as stressful as losing the valuables. When the same thing happened in Miami, the Miami police were on it in an instant, racing to the house within half an hour, where, alas, they were still unable to locate the thief. Los Angeles’ Burbank police are showing no such enthusiasm. They say it’s not their case and I have to go back to the airport police, who will then pass it on to them.

   

I have decided against going to the house myself. While never having had so much as a parking ticket (I was brought up to be terrified of the law, which may explain my obsession with that profession), I am unlucky when it comes to law enforcement, having a propensity to over-react.

   

When in Paris for Six Nations France vs Wales rugby match last year, I saved an entire bar from almost certain attack when I yelled at everyone to get down on the floor when a sinister figure in a motorcycle helmet tore in, brandishing what appeared to be a gun. When I, the only person lying prostrate on the ground, finally stood up, it was to be greeted with howls of laughter – the man was a friend of the owner and had been “joking”. Ha bloody ha.

   

A similar incident, also in Paris, took place several years before, when I saved the city from almost certain terrorist annihilation. On that occasion, it had been prompted by a man reading an Arab newspaper, refusing to move his bag from his seat because he said it was a bomb.

   

One emergency cord, one halted train and a dozen armed men later, the centre of Paris was at a standstill. As I sat in a café with my glass of wine, watching the gendarmerie tear down the steps of the rue de Bac metro (naturally, I had waited until my stop before pulling the cord), I pondered whether the “terrorist” had actually said that his bag was on the seat. I only hope that the poodle, yanked at breakneck speed from the train by its screaming owner, survived.

   

I have been just as much a law-abiding liability in my own country. When I lived in Bath, women’s greatest fear was a rapist who had been on the loose for over a decade. Finally, though, it seemed as if the police were moving in, and there were posters all over town of a possible suspect, whose hunting ground was local night clubs.

   

I was having lunch at the Garrick’s Head, a city pub in which one side of the bar was largely occupied by gay men. On the other side, as the afternoon wore on, the man who had joined us from out of town began to look suspiciously like the man on the poster. When he asked me and my friend if we would like to go to a night-club later, that was it: I was sure I had my man. I went round to the gay side of the bar and asked the guys if they thought the interloper looked anything like the man on the poster. 

Asking a gay man not to dramatise a situation is like expecting the Pope to give you directions to a sperm bank: it ain’t gonna happen. Yes, they insisted, the man was the spitting image of the poster suspect.

   

I called 999, which gave the event an air of urgency it did not perhaps warrant, but asked the police to tread lightly and just question the man. Too late. Within seconds, three armed cops were in the bar, frogmarching the bloke out onto the street for questioning. I really hope he made it to the Verdi concert he was in town for, in which he was going to be a starring tenor.

   

So, no, I don’t think I will be heading to Burbank to rescue my items, and I only hope that the LAPD start to act a bit more like they do on the telly, or, at the very least, like the cops do in Miami.

   

In the meantime, it’s back to the Apple Store to replace my earphones. 

The inevitability of that journey after every trip back home is something I have learned to live with.

  

   

Will Gardner - The World is in Mourning

So far, it’s been a very traumatic year in my TV viewing life. First came the news that my daily lunchtime fix, the courtroom show Judge Alex, was ending; then Harvey Specter found himself a girlfriend in Suits (she will, quite simply, have to go); and, last week, The Good Wife killed off Will Gardner. That’s three of the men in my life suddenly out of reach.

   

Tears were shed over Judge Alex; spitting blood was more the case with Harvey; while with Will, I have entered a depression so deep, we are talking coma.

   

How the cast and crew kept Will’s death (I can hardly bear to write those words) a secret for a year is, in itself, a small miracle. Josh Charles, who plays him (utterly brilliantly) . . . I should say played now, I suppose . . . will undoubtedly go on to do other great things; but that doesn’t lessen the devastation on the part of fans of this terrific show.

   

You will notice a common theme here – all the above-mentioned shows relate to the law in some way. I have always been, and am, fascinated by the law. At one stage in my life, I was going to train as a barrister, but on reflection I think I would rather play a lawyer than be one: fewer exams – and you may get to see Gabriel Macht (Harvey Specter) with his kit off.

   

I put it all down to doing The Merchant of Venice at a very early age. Durham Road Junior School in Newport started its kids young with Shakespeare – I was eight, to be precise. I recall the horror when the money lender Shylock set the bond of a pound of flesh, should Antonio fail to repay his loan (I was, and remain in adulthood, happier about the idea of borrowing money you will never be able to afford to pay back). 

But then I was even more horrified when Antonio got out of the deal on the grounds that Shylock could have his pound of flesh, provided that he did not shed a drop of Antonio’s blood when taking it. Even aged eight, I knew that this was some smart defense lawyer (apologies to British readers for my having adopted US spelling; I am an attorney now, you know), but I felt that it was a very unfair loophole. Call yourself a Christian, Antonio? At least Jesus took death on the chin like a real man.

   

I’ve always thought that being a defense lawyer must be a lot tougher than being a prosecutor. If they’re in court in the first place, they must be guilty, that’s my instant reaction (Guilty until proven more guilty, in other words). In defense, you have to come up with so many more ridiculous excuses. Take the televised trial of Oscar Pistorius case going on in South Africa at the moment. He claims that he accidentally shot his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, mistaking her for a burglar on the other side of the bathroom door. Neighbours claim to have heard her terrified screams; Pistorius’s defense lawyer is arguing that the athlete screams like a girl. 

Frighteningly, I think the judge (there is no jury in the case – how weird is that?) might go for it, not least because the defense lawyer, Gene Hackman lookalike Barry Roux, has cut a rather impressive figure. “Teeeellll me,” he says, in his thick South African accent, “how keeeen eeeet beeee. . . ?” And off he goes with his absurd, unbelievable concoction of stories about cricket bats and gunshots and men who scream like girls when they’ve just committed murder. “Eeeeet keeeennnnnnnot beeeee!” he insists, at every turn; and, for a moment, you sort of believe him.

  

Then, reality hits home, and, quite frankly, I’m not buying into the girlie screaming defense. If you can win an Olympic medal with a couple of blades strapped to the leg stumps you’ve had from birth, I imagine you done all the girlie screaming you’ll ever need in one lifetime. Let’s get Oscar on the stand, poke him with a very hot stick, and let’s test that screaming is what I say.

   

Alas, the case has been halted because one of the two assessors who accompany the judge has been taken ill. If she can’t return, the whole case will have to start again from scratch; I suspect Barry is already clearing a space on his mantelpiece for that Oscar he undoubtedly deserves – in both senses of the word.

   

Anyway, back to the lovely Will Gardner. Will is – or, rather, was – a very good defense lawyer. In fact, it was defending his client that got him shot, when the man grabbed a police officer’s gun and went berserk in the courtroom. I still haven’t quite worked out why one of Will’s shoes came off in the fracas, but then I haven’t seen Sunday’s flashback episode yet, which might explain why a man so fastidious in his work can’t tie his shoelaces properly.

   

I’m going to have to wait a few weeks before seeing it, too, as I’m off traveling again (or travelling, as they say in the UK). I'll be going back to LA via New York, where I would love to meet Joey Jackson, the defense lawyer expert who regularly appears on Vinnie Politan’s On the Case show on HLN (Vinnie’s another hot lawyer, by the way – again, in both senses of the word; and he’s a prosecutor, to boot). With Judge Alex, Harvey Specter and Will Gardner out of my life, it’s my new fix.

   

I tell you: Joey could get Judas off on the grounds that he thought the 30 pieces of silver were chocolate coins. I’ve told him that if I’m ever in trouble, I want him heading up my team. 

And if he fails in his duty, let’s just hope it’ll be Judge Alex, Harvey Specter or Will Gardner putting me in the handcuffs.