I Wanna Be Free (The Monkees)

Finally, after nearly four years on the market, my Cardiff house is under offer – funnily enough, to the couple who saw it the very first week but have had the same problems selling theirs. I always felt it was their house. They loved it – quite rightly, it’s beautiful – and I have resented all the nit-picking, critical people who have walked through the door since. Yes, I am selling for a lot less than I paid for it, and I have taken another hit on the asking price, but this feels right.

   

It hasn’t been the easiest decision and I have been through many moments when I thought that maybe I should hang on to it. But for what? I spend so much time in the States; I want to travel more; I don’t have anyone to leave anything to, and, as I have written (and talked about – thank you all for listening), the financial stress after losing a lucrative job in 2008 has been intolerable. When I was hospitalised before Christmas with stress-induced hypertension, resulting in a 36 hour nosebleed, I knew that life had to change. I’m not ready for the final wooden house just yet (or cardboard, depending on my finances).

   

Yesterday was nevertheless very emotional. I had a struggle to get the words “acceptance” and “offer” out there. I was born in Cardiff, went to university there, it is where my closest, dearest friends are . . . and it’s where my stuff is. Yes, my stuff.

   

In the garage sits the wooden desk my parents had handmade for me when I was about seven. It still has JEFF in purple nail varnish on the top – he was my schoolgirl crush who ended up dating my best friend and it broke my heart. My shelves are full of books I haven’t touched since I was at university – every Shakespeare textbook you can imagine – and books that date further back are all meticulously catalogued and priced. 

How did I decide upon 12/6d for Maurice Speed’s Film Review – my first introduction to the movies and passed on from my parents? Why is The Monkees album 10/6d? My entire house is in alphabetical order, from the books right down to the spices. Now, disorder threatens it all with the biggest move I am ever likely to make.

   

The worry of where it’s all going to go is a new stress. The job lot of pine I bought when in a relationship with someone I thought I would be living with forever is all going. It has followed me around for nearly 30 years, and I took it with me to each new city that marked a new man in my life. In fact, the pine forest is my longest relationship ever.

   

But I want to wake in the morning not worrying about money. I want to get off a plane and think, at the airport, when seeing the Departures board, “Ooh, that looks nice” – and get straight back on another flight for a new adventure. I don’t want to have to go another week with not even enough money to buy toilet paper (yes, I’m afraid the toilet paper famine hit me twice last year). I don’t want to have to walk three miles because I have no cash for any other means of transport. I want to be able to enjoy a glass of wine without thinking what I will have to go without in order to finance it (okay, you guessed it: the wine won out over the toilet paper).

   

I cried yesterday because I felt like a failure: the house that I had worked so hard for was going. What did I have to show for so many years of hard work and stress?

   

I’ve written about this before and know that what I have to show for it is a life well lived and, for the most part, hugely enjoyed with wonderful family and friends, who are loyal, trustworthy and the centre of my world. But we attach ourselves to things, mortgages, as if they define us. We know, in reality, that they don’t, but they give us a sense of everlasting life: we may not live forever, but in passing our stuff on, we have the illusion that we live on, too.

   

I have never regretted not having children, although I adore my friends’ children and am very close to so many of them. I like being the cool, eccentric “auntie” who disappears to far corners of the world at a moment’s notice. I like being the woman they love who hasn’t told them to eat their vegetables and do their homework. I like being the naughty, grown-up child they think they want to be.

   

My house has been my security. Irrespective of how often I went back, knowing that it was there has always felt like a solid foundation, literal and metaphorical, when so much around me was crumbling.

   

But although, yesterday, I cried, thanks to the support of my friends who have gathered on Facebook and privately, it’s time to find a new security. Financial stress has been a ghastly inhibitor for so long, I can’t remember what it is like to live without it. How will I feel when I hand over the keys? Sadness, yes. But, most of all, relief. And what will I do that night? Check into the Marriott in Cardiff City Centre. Or go to Heathrow and get on a flight to Florence. Or go to my dear friends Leisha or Mary (you’ve got my room ready, right, guys?). I have no idea. 

But this I know: my new security is freedom.

   

My Heart Belongs to Telly

It’s the Marmite of the movie world: you either love it or you hate it. 

Never have I heard a movie going audience so divided; and never have I laughed so much in the face of Marmite lovers. So, here goes. Are you ready? 

I hate Marmite. 

I hate The Revenant.

   

The Irrelevant (yes, I hate it that much) has a lot of grunting in it. I am not averse to grunting per se, especially if said grunter is Leonardo di Caprio, but I just want something more. Yes, I know the movie’s allegorical, the bear’s great, it’s shot in natural light, blah-di-blah-di-blah, but just because a few actors got cold during the making of it doth not great art make.

   

For me, it hasn’t been the best of years in the movies. Every week, I see truly great art on TV – Suits, Law and Order, The Good Wife, Billions – and feel so blessed that we really do live in the golden age of television. But when it comes to the big screen, I am invariably disappointed.

   

This year, it astonished me that Aaron Sorkin’s adapted screenplay Steve Jobs did not make it on to the Oscar shortlist, whereas Grunthog Day looks all set to clean up in almost every category. The first half of Room was extraordinary, but then turned into something that made it seem as if the director had left that room and made room for an entirely different species altogether. In an instant, we seemed to go from Bergman to Danielle Steel.

   

I adored Brooklyn, not least because the struggle between one’s roots and one’s ambition is, for me, coming from Wales, something with which I battle my whole life. I really liked Spotlight, and, although it was no All the President’s Men, it made a gripping detective story out of a well-worn theme. The Big Short was watchable but incomprehensible (despite the patronising “star” inserts), and The Lady in the Van was just okay. If you like ladies. And vans.

   

Many years ago, I crawled through someone’s legs to reach Steven Spielberg, who had just won an award for Schindler’s List. I wanted to talk to him about another movie, though. After being introduced, I said: “I know you’ve just won for another movie, but can I just say that I think ET is the greatest movie ever made.” He replied: “Thank you so much. Do you know, I was thinking about that on Friday, and I think you could well be right.”

   

It remains my favourite movie of al time. It encompasses all the big, great themes – love, loss, friendship, separation, power, despair – and has the greatest cinematic moment (again, for me) ever. Those bicycles. The moment of transcendence: leaving the old world behind. Magic. Everything’s possible.

   

And then. Coming back to Earth. Literally and metaphorically. ET: Come. Elliot: Stay. And there you have it: the great human dilemma and the greatest story that can ever be told. I want you to come with me. I want you to stay with me. And it can’t, for whatever reason, ever happen. I am crying just writing about it. Ouch. Ouch. I’ll be right here. WAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!

   
I just don’t feel moved like I used to in the cinema, whereas TV regularly tears me apart. When Will Gardner (Josh Charles) died in The Good Wife, I howled. I never got over it (neither did the show, which CBS has just axed). I get very stressed every time something bad happens to Gibbs (Mark Harmon) in NCIS, and I bite off all my nails when Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht) in Suits sails too close to the wind (often - I have to move on to my toe-nails every time they threaten to put him back together with the totally unsuitable Scottie).

   

Television has been my life. It still amazes me that this 52- inch slice of black in the corner of my room consistently delivers such unspeakable joy every single hour of every week. When people say, trying to impress, “I don’t watch television”, I have just one response: Yes, it shows (cue sad face).

   

So, while I am sure that The Irrelevant will be picking up gongs, come February 28^th, my heart belongs to telly.

   

Be My Valentine? Fat Chance

Okay, it’s confession time. 

I’ve never seen Game of Thrones, I don’t like Downton Abbey, and I’ve never listened to an episode of The Archers. 

And, here’s the killer blow: I’ve never had a date on Valentine’s Day. No, not one. Ever. I almost had one when I was 16, when my 21 year old boyfriend bought me a huge satin card, but the evening came to nothing because I finished with him when he seemed about to propose.

   

My disastrous love life in the subsequent 41 years might well have been my punishment for that fateful non-romantic day. Surely Cupid couldn’t be that cruel? If he is, it means he’s been operating not with a bow and arrow but a veritable arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. All aimed at me.

   

I feel about Valentine’s Day the way Scrooge felt about Christmas. Bah humbug, I scream, when yet another card from Interflora pops through my door, asking me to send flowers to my loved one. Bah humbug to the red hearts, ribbons and grinning teddy bears in every shop window. And especially Bah humbug to the paella or the Chateaubriand “for two” (that restaurants bizarrely insist upon, making singletons feel alone on every other day of the year, too).

   

Like Scrooge and the visitations from his Christmas ghosts, this is the time of year when I am visited by the Ghosts of Men Past, the Ghosts of Men Present, and the Ghosts of Men Yet to Come.

   

Where do I begin with the Past? The older man who ruined 30 years of my life (and counting) and whose shadow still looms in an unconscious damaged by what I now know to be a disturbed and disturbing predator? 

The broadcaster on a diet, who brought his Lean Cuisine for supper but decided to eat my food as well (no surprise he never lost any weight)? The journalist who was going to leave his girlfriend for me but decided to give it three months “so that she can lose enough weight to be attractive enough to meet someone else” (yes, at that point, I decided he wasn’t for me, after all). 

My Australian Hungarian Jewish dentist who said “I’m falling for you in a big way”, then came out in a facial rash and dumped me? The ginger, boring graphic designer who once bought Bollinger for women he fancied at another table (on my tab) and left me for a nurse (that’s all over, too, and his life’s a mess. Karma)? The Liverpudlian who claimed to be in the SAS based in Hereford and robbed me (How was I to know? He had a one-way rail ticket from Hereford to London; that seemed good enough evidence for me)?

   

The Ghosts of Men Present don’t fare much better: the journalist I started seeing 30 years ago and still have the hots for (it’s just a pity his hots extended to so many other women); a writer in the US who promised “I’ll take you to a wonderful place and treat you to the best meal you’ve ever had”, which quickly became “Shall I pick up a salad and bring it to your apartment?” 

My crush on yet another man I can’t have (married, and wouldn’t want me even if he were single). And, would you believe it, the graphic designer, who contacted me after 15 years, bemoaning his now terrible life on the grounds that I might “understand”.

   

Small wonder that I’m not optimistic about the Ghosts of Men Yet to Come. But that’s the thing about love: its inherent optimism continues to survive its own history, no matter how bad it might have been. It’s emotional childbirth: it might be tough when you’re going through it, but the memory of what love might be again resurrects itself and is what keeps us going.

   

At the end of every relationship, I always say: “I won’t make that mistake again.” I may not, but, being human, I’ll just make different mistakes.

   

And I’ve learnt from most of those mistakes. I say no to salads when I’m expecting Chateaubriand for two at the Ritz; I don’t lend men money; I also no longer believe anything that comes out of their mouths. Men are rotten liars, and I’ve learnt to trust my gut, which is what I should have done years ago. But hey, ho, hindsight and all that.

   

This, alas, is the problem with the Ghosts of Men Yet to Come. The Past is a wasteland of distrust and pain; the Present would be that, if I were not finding it all so hilarious; the Future, despite the survival of good memories, is inevitably tainted with everything that has gone before. Suspicion, doubt and insecurity are inseparable triplets.

   

But I love my life. I am surrounded by wonderful family and friends and there is never I day I wake up when I don’t love my work. I have always known I was a writer, and being what I actually am, rather than harbouring fantasies about what I wanted to be, is a blessing every day. 

The Ghosts of Men Past have gone; the Ghosts of Men Yet to Come are unknown (just as well; who knows what monsters are lurking in the shadows). The present is all we really have, or can ever hope for. So we might as well live it and enjoy it while we can.

So, Happy Valentine’s Day to me. 

Now, where’s that Chateaubriand?

The Non-Journey from Hell with Virgin America

Contrary to speculation, I did not miss my flight from New York to Los Angeles because I was in the bar. 

Just to fill everyone in: I was six hours early for a Virgin America flight (I had an appointment at the airport), had lunch in the bar and, making sure I left it at least 90 minutes before take-off (I'd paid $50 - wasn't going to waste that!), sat patiently in the American Airlines lounge, working (Virgin America does not have a lounge at Newark International).

   

As I was also dealing with some issues relating to family illness in the UK and sending texts and e-mails, I didn’t notice the time (the American Airlines lounge boards list only their flights) and had to run for the gate, where I was informed it was closed. I was there with 23 minutes to spare, but it was very much a case of computer says no. My bag was on the plane and travelled without me.

   

The woman at the desk offered me absurdly expensive flights to places nowhere near LA; the alternative was returning in the morning and going on stand-by. She kept telling me that she had a family and just wanted to get home to her kids. I phoned my friend Chrissy to speak with her as I was finding it impossible to talk through my tears. She told Chrissy, too, that she wanted to get home to her kids.

Ah, right. So was that the reason the gate was closed early? Whatever happened to passenger care? A comforting word, a hint of understanding? I was told she had tried to call me. Yes, on a number I haven’t had for five years, and my Virgin America account very clearly states the one I have had since then. And, to cover all bases because the flight had been booked through a third party, I phoned them that very morning to give them all my information.

   

Apart from the appalling customer service, the security issue really worries me. I have sat on many a plane waiting for passengers and, if they do not turn up, we have to wait while their luggage is taken out of the hold. When I questioned why my bag had been allowed to fly without me, I was told that it and I had both cleared security. 

Yes - but now they were sending me out of the airport. 

Apart from the fact that not every bag in the hold is thoroughly checked, it raises the question of how easy it is to get your bag on without you - just check it in and turn up to the gate late. That’s a massive, gaping flaw in security, and deeply disturbing.

   

So, I had to to toddle off to the Marriott and spend $300 dollars I could ill afford to try for the morning flight (fabulous staff at Newark International, by the way; I love Marriotts). I rang Virgin America later and was informed that they could give me a seat on the morning flight, after all. They assigned me the number - 3D - and I was ecstatic. 

When I arrived in the morning, however, I was told that no seat had been assigned and I was on standby. Again, the like of comforting customer care was negligible. More tears. Finally, with only one available seat, I made it, the last person to board. I was stressed. Exhausted. Yes, I know I was late at the gate and I take responsibility for that. 

But closing the gate early and somebody being so damned unhelpful because she has a family waiting for their tea, is just shoddy and unprofessional. 

   

I fly with Virgin Atlantic all the time and had used the points I have accumulated there to fly with Virgin America - a Virgin Atlantic partner, but a different airline altogether. Virgin Atlantic had already messed up, for three days telling me that I would be able to upgrade with more points if a seat became available, and then informing me the day before that no, 72 hours’ notice was required. So why had they kept telling me to call back at regular intervals and also told me that I could ask at the airport and points could be added with one phone call to them? 

   

Virgin America were worse. Everyone I spoke to there didn’t even seem to know that Virgin Atlantic is a partner. 

   

I fly a lot and am a very trouble free passenger, but so much stress is caused by airline staff either not knowing basic information about their jobs, or simply not doing them. 

I could go on about Virgin America - and will. The absence of anyone to meet at greet because staff are chatting with the pilot; the non-checking of seat belts; the rubbish that is allowed to accumulate in the cabin over five hours (not even my kitchen trash bin ever has as debris as what I had to sit with at my feet); the demand that all blinds be closed (on a daytime flight, for goodness’ sake); the blinds being closed for take-off and landing (the most dangerous part of the flight, when light is needed); the seeming inability of any member of staff - ground or airborne - to smile. 

The airline is, quite simply, a shambles.

   

Reunited with my bag in LA, the same non-smiling faces and rude Virgin America staff were as nonchalant as those in New York. Next week, I have to do it all again (the journey, not the missing the plane bit) and am dreading it. 

The whole experience has cost me money, time, stress, and left a very sour taste in the mouth about a once terrific airline. 

East to West coast on a camel might well prove less traumatic. 

Anyone find me a ride from Camels R Us, by any chance?

P.S. I am now on my return journey and have encountered yet ANOTHER unsmiling, rude person at check-in at LAX. Same thing happened last time at LAX. This time, Monique was so busy slagging off the previous "guest" to her colleague, I had to ask for her attention three times. Then, after removing some weight from my luggage, she started to walk off saying she had finished (without having checked me in!). BIG sighs when I asked her to finish the check-in. Get your act together Virgin America!

   

Love, Loss, and Gratitude

The cliche goes: “It’s always around Christmas.” 

Illness. Death. Heartbreak. But, the truth is, “it” is around us just as much every other day of the year; it’s just that at Christmas, it feels more poignant because it is a time when we are all supposed to be feeling jolly with the yo-ho-ho-ness of it all. 

The reality, in adulthood, is invariably different; it doesn’t mean that we are incapable of joy, but pleasure comes tempered with the knowledge of corresponding sadness.

   

I lost my father just after Christmas nearly 26 years ago. A close friend lost her father on Boxing Day a few years back. In December just gone, two friends lost their mothers. 

   

It is hard to think of anything new to say about the one thing that every living creature has in common. We are all born, and we will all die - there you go, another cliche, but no less poignant for its being so.

   

But it is in times of loss that we find comfort in cliches: they are a uniting force in a world that continues to separate us in so many ways. Cliches are the emotional levellers: the things that strip us to the core and reveal that, at their deepest level, our raw, primal instincts are the same: we want to love and we want to be loved, and the pain of either being taken away is, at best, painful; at worst, unbearable.

   

The manifestation of those two primal urges leads us into all sorts of difficult territory - desire, jealousy, insecurity, paranoia . . . I could go on - but when we lose love, it hauls us back to the heart of the matter: the very beating of existence, physically and emotionally, that defines our existence, independent of the social mores and other “stuff” we find ourselves heaping upon it to make life more difficult than it need be.

   

Because, as better people have said, in superior cliches from those I am managing, love is all. Corinthians 13 tells us everything that love should be, in its purest form, but it’s pretty unsustainable in the modern world. But, when the physical body of a loved relative or friend departs, one is left with that very spirit, the essence, of love - at least, if you have been lucky in the people with whom you have encountered it. 

We may delude ourselves in sugar-coating the less than savoury aspects; we may hide our grievances and guilt in shadows me might not wish to revisit for many years; we may lie to ourselves and others about life, death, and everything in between. But in that moment of departure and what it entails, we become as babies once more, especially when that death is one’s mother: the being who brought you into the world; the person who, literally, gave you life. You really are on your own now; the umbilical cord severed.

   

This wasn’t quite how I imagined wishing everyone a Happy New Year, but I’d like to change it slightly and wish you all a loving new year. 

For me, 2015 was a year of some great stuff, some less than good, to say the least; a time in which I learnt a lot and, I hope, shared knowledge I have been lucky to glean, with others. It was a year in which I was a joy and, I have to be honest, at times a right pain in the arse. A year in which my friends loved me for the former and forgave me for the latter - and in which I, too, loved and forgave them for both, too.

   

Because we’re human beings. That’s what we do. We mess up and we repair. None of us sets out to do a bad job, and the fact that we end up doing so at times doesn’t really matter; it’s how we put it right that counts. And the people who love us know that. 

   

And so, my sincere condolences to my friends who have lost people dear to them this year; and my thoughts go out to the many people who I know face a difficult year ahead with treatment for their various illnesses.

   

I am blessed having you all in my life, and thank you for your patience, kindness, acceptance of my eccentricities (even though, to me, I am the most normal person on the planet, obviously), and I send you all the love I have for the year ahead. 

   

   

   

   

   

Bloody Christmas!

Vampirism is not all it’s choked up to be. In fact, vampirism really sucks. 

Of all the resolutions I was planning for 2016, the vow never, ever to become a vampire had not made it to the list. 

   

It’s not something I’d ever fancied, really. Vampire movies terrified me as a child, and I have a bit of a phobia about people with bad teeth. So, two pointed, dripping red oral talons descending upon my neck in the middle of the night was never going to hold much appeal.

   

But over the festive period, I drank a lot of blood. And I mean a lot. I could have saved entire hospital wards with the profusion of platelets, clots and rivers of bloodiness pouring from my nose.

   

I remember only once having a nosebleed when I was about seven, and it didn’t last very long. So, 50 years later, it was pretty scary to suddenly find myself in Sainsbury’s in Paddington Station, dripping onto my discount mince pies and feeling helpless as terrified passengers all but ran screaming from the exorcism that appeared to be taking place before their eyes.

   

The staff were very nice and offered me a chair, but I was rushing for a train, as I had arranged to look after my mum in Bristol, where she was due to have an operation the following day. The nosebleed did not stop en route. In fact, it got so bad, they had to call for a doctor on board. He arrived quickly, courtesy of the lovely steward Dean Jones on First Great Western Railway. And gosh, was he a hot doctor - straight out of Central Casting. A gorgeous Scot called Douglas. In the brief moment when he managed to stop the bleeding, I managed a quick selfie with him. A wheelchair was waiting for me at Bristol Parkway and I made it to my mother’s house without flooding the taxi.

   

No sooner had I made it through her door than it started again. And I mean really started. When the NHS helpline gave up with advice about bags of frozen peas on my neck and pinching my nose, and there was a trail of blood through every room of my mother’s house, they told me to call an ambulance and get to a hospital asap.

   

The ambulance took two hours to arrive. It was four hours before I saw a doctor in the hospital. I could not fault the staff, who work unbelievable hours for very little money and in not very salubrious conditions. But the time it takes to get anything done is horrendous. It’s not the staff’s fault; they are stretched to the extreme, and I have nothing but admiration for anyone who would put up with these conditions - not to mention the difficult patients.

   

I happened to be a rather good one. I’ve never spent a night in hospital in my life, and I was happy to surrender to those who know better than I do in medical matters. I’d had the foresight to take my laptop in with me, as I had a ton load of work to do, and my only offence was to keep Googling my condition in the many spare hours I had, and checking with staff that they had tested me for every possible ailment ever recorded in the history of mankind. 

   

There are many causes for nosebleeds, and the overall consensus was that mine had been caused by high blood pressure due to extreme stress; I had literally burst a blood vessel. I won’t fill you in on the gory details of what had to be done to stop the flow, but it took 36 hours and involved bowls, nose blowing, inflated tubes up my nostrils, and no sleep as I couldn’t lie down (that last one was a blessing when the gorgeous Polish nurse came to take my blood pressure at midnight; I’d really hit the jackpot with hot male medics that week).

   

But back to the vampirism. Because your nose is connected to your throat (finally, I learnt what an Ear Nose and Throat specialist is for), you end up swallowing a lot of blood when you have a nose bleed. Then, because your stomach doesn’t like blood and is begging you to explain where the spaghetti Bolognese it usually enjoys has gone, it throws it back up. By the bucketload. The taste is vile. Metallic. It feels as if it’s filling every orifice in your head. The lettuce leaf you just about managed to consume at lunch (no hot foods or liquids for me) returns like a piece of seaweed caught in the tide of the Red Sea.

   

All of this was no good for my blood pressure, which was going up and up. So was my heart rate. I had two lots of blood tests and two ECGs. They said they were going to keep me in with the balloon up my nose for at least a couple of days. I started to worry that I hadn’t made a will. Meanwhile, my poor mum was on her way to a different hospital, and her poor little Bichon Frise was about to be abandoned for the day while I tried to arrange cover. The good news is, the operation went well, and I managed to cook for them both over Christmas. Alas, I couldn’t touch a thing. All I could see when I looked at the turkey was blood. I’m not a big meat eater anyway, but my foray into vampirism might well have turned me vegetarian for good.

   

And so begins the real hard task - trying to keep my blood pressure at safe levels so that I am not put on medication. There are plenty of things one can do to bring it down naturally - meditation, diet, exercise - but without removing the main source of stress, it’s not going to come down fast.

   

So, unless you are going to buy my Cardiff house, please don’t offer any advice. There is nothing I haven’t read on the subject. Heck, I’m almost a doctor now. 

   

And don’t send me any Get Well reading such as Bram Stoker, who wrote the Gothic novel, Dracula: “The blood is life . . . It shall be mine!” 

A bottle of red wine will do very nicely, though.