CHEMO BECOMES HER - CHASING LIFE (AND DEATH)

WHHHAAAAAAAAATTTT?

   

I haven’t screamed at the TV since The Good Wife dispensed with Will Gardner (Josh Charles), an event from which the show has yet to recover. I doubt it ever will, and I suspect the next one might be the last series.

   

But this week, I found myself screaming out loud again in ABC’s Chasing Life, when April (Italia Ricci) discovered her new husband, Leo (Scott Michael Foster), dead in bed when she delivered him an Italian dessert. It remains to be seen whether Leo died as a result of his previous cancer or April’s cooking on the Italian night she had lovingly prepared to make up for their not having had a honeymoon. Did Leo choke on a gnocchi dumpling? Did some spaghetti strangle his colon? At any rate, for the moment it’s put me off eating pasta before indulging in sex.

   

I wasn’t consumed by the same uncontrollable sobbing I had been when Will was shot in the courtroom, but it was still a stunner of a surprise (terrific writing from Joni Lefkowitz). Leo, after all, was the character who had come through and was being a rock for April, so to go in his sleep seemed so unjust (although I suspect that Scott’s contract for the part he landed in ABC’s new series Blood and Oil helped him through).

   

I love this series, which has evolved from the basic premise – a woman desperately trying to hang on to life – into a drama in which every single character is chasing life in his or her own way. It is amazingly well cast, with great performances and great writing. The screen loves Ricci, in particular, and she really is breathtakingly beautiful, especially with the short hair. I hope no one will take offence if I say, in relation to April, that chemo becomes her.

   

As a TV critic of 30 years, I see most things coming, but Leo’s death was another twist that completely passed me by because I was too busy thinking about other things: first, if The Man in the Mask (can’t remember his name, sorry) would have to take it off, if and were he ever to get the opportunity to perform oral sex (I don’t know, do I? I’m not very up on sexual germ warfare in the cancer world); and second, why Uncle George (Steve Weber) was destroying the book written by Thomas (Tom Irwin), April, Natalie and Brenna’s father.

   

Well, I’ll tell you why: because when Leo was choking on his gnocchi balls, I worked it out. The “baddie” in the novel is not Thomas at all, but George, who has recognised his own evildoing but needs it to be buried. I also suspect that George is behind Thomas’s death (if, indeed, Thomas IS dead). We might well be headed for a Cain and Abel scenario here.

   

It was clear it was going to go awry when April handed George the manuscript (which was very thin, by the way) and said: “It’s my only copy.” Oh, no! Not the only copy! Not the only copy that will be lost/burnt/put through a shredder never to be seen again!

   

This is a part of the story I’m just not buying. Number one: if Thomas was such a great secret agent (or whatever he turns out to be), he would surely have kept something on file or on a memory stick. Number two: if April is such a great journalist, she would never have handed over such an important piece of information without making a copy of it (small wonder she had the push from her job). We can only hope that Natalie has had the foresight to do that.

   

George is too good to be true, anyway, despite what his current girlfriend, Miss Pearl of the Orient, may think – or even Sara (Mary Page Keller) for that matter, a woman who is always gagging for it, so much so that she has now had to take up running to disperse all that sexual tension.

   

Talking of gagging for it . . . Will Brenna ever get through a sexual encounter without being interrupted, dumped, or being the dumper? She should take a leaf out of April’s book, who, for a cancer victim, gets more sex than anyone else within a 100 mile radius. True, her partners might not wake to see daylight, but you can’t have everything. Sometimes, it’s a thin line between getting laid and getting laid six feet under.

So, will April end up with Dominic (Richard Brancatisano) after all – the man we all really thought was “the one”? Who knows. But whatever you do, Dominic, heed this advice: no carbs before bedtime. 

And if April starts singing Tempo Di Dire Addio (Time to Say Goodbye) as she serves up the gnocchi, get out of there, pronto (or rapidamente, as the Italians say). 

Hanging around for the tiramisu is a big mistake. 

Just ask Leo’s embalmer. 

   

A Guardian Angel Speaks - Never Trust a Man with Wings, Part II

Dear Padre

You cannot imagine my delight when, out of nowhere, a flashing box popped up on my computer screen telling me that I had missed a message from my guardian angel. How had this happened? Not since I had been informed by a dating agency that “Bill the fireman is down the road and waiting for your call” had I been this excited (he wasn’t, on both counts). 

An angel, no less! What could he/she want with me? I'm not a virgin, I'm too old to bear children, and I don’t need an interpreter for my visions, so why would a winged creature from the celestial heavens be descending upon my weary shoulders?

   

So, I replied, and you kindly sent me the name of my guardian angel  - Sehaliah, the “45^th Kabbalah Angel”, dealing with “Virtues”, and a member of the “Angelical Choir”. You took no time at all in talking with him (I had rightly guessed it was a him, given that I could see the moral lecturing path he appeared to want to take) and I have been fascinated to read the details of your very lengthy chat. 

I can only think that it must have been a slow day for you both, given the volume of your reply, and I am sure my life is about to change for the better as a result of your communications. Quite why Sehaliah couldn’t have come directly to me and cut out the middle man (i.e. you) is anybody’s guess, though I suspect it has something to do with the credit card I will be asked for if I wish to keep asking for angel assistance.

   

You say that you “strongly” felt the need to see changes in my life. Have we ever met? I don’t think so, but I admire the depth of your commitment following the “celestial confirmation of the problem which worries you right now” (er, which one? There are so many). I specially like your going on to tell me that the changes in my life will occur within the next three weeks.

   

Now, about my running mate. You inform me that “Sehaliah is the Angel who embodies faithfulness” and the “Angel of pure souls”. Quite why you asked him about Love, Money and Good Luck over the next 30 days only you know, but I like his answers.

   

I specially like the bit about the windfall that is coming my way, probably on September 9^th. Apparently, it’s a “lot of money” that will leave me “speechless” (to be honest, any money at all would leave me speechless these days; times are tough), and it’s going to appear “as if by magic”. Love and success are on their way, too. Great. So far, so good. “But there is one condition . . . ” Oh, dear, here we go. 

I wonder if the Angel Gabriel did the same thing with Mary: “Here’s the good news . . . you’re going to have a baby and you won’t even have to have sex with the destitute carpenter . . . But there’s a condition. There’s no room at the Marriott, your kid is the Son of God, and you’ll have to watch him die on a cross.” Conditions. There are always conditions.

   

And this, you say, is mine: there is an “adverse karma” that is the source of all my difficulties. It’s built up from all my past lives and I’ve been paying a “Karmic Debt” that is not even of my own making! Yes, that’s right! Other bastards in my other lives have hijacked my brilliance, success and luck, and drained me of all the good things. People can be so mean. 

But now, it seems, I have paid back that debt (tell me about it!) and, as a result, have acquired a “Hyper-Beneficial Angelical Karma” that is about to turn things around.

   

However, nothing's that easy. It seems I need “The Divine Angelical Ritual of Release from past lives” in order for this to happen. Based on ancient magical rites written down in an old Angelical book of spells, you tell me that you are the only one who can perform it for me, Padre.

   

Much as I like the idea of being released “once and for all from this negative force” you claim is ruining my life (I want a list of all those past life reprobates; I’ll start targeting their descendants and see how they like their karma being hijacked), I’m suspicious that you are willing to perform it for free, especially when I visit your “Angel Boutique” and see the prices you charge once my initial free consultation is over.   

You’ve also gone a bit scary, to be honest, and I don’t think angels or their accomplices are supposed to be that. Stalked by a guardian angel? I'm pretty certain that's not a good sign.

You say that if I don’t reply immediately, you will be “forced” to offer the “Archangels’ Seal of Supreme Salvation” to someone else who finds themselves in a difficult situation. How spiteful is that! Can’t I just mull it over for a few days?

   

It is, therefore, with regret, that owing to the threatening tone of your final paragraphs, I must decline your kind offer to sort out my karmic debt. However, if you or Sehaliah could see your way to paying off my real debt at the bank, I would be extremely grateful.

   

In this expectation, I look forward to September 9^th, when you will hopefully be sending me a vast sum of money that will sort out and secure my future once and for all.

   

Thank you again for the speedy response from you and your feathered friend.

   

Jaci

PS Is the cheque in the celestial post?

  

Never Trust a Man with Wings - Part I

Far be it for me to poke fun at anyone else’s ideas or beliefs.

If you are certain that fairies live at the bottom of your garden, ghosts lurk in your closets, UFOs skim our skies, or whatever god you worship runs your life, that’s up to you.

I haven’t got to accept it and I will always demand an empirical argument to support whatever dodgy case I think you are putting forward; but it’s everyone’s right to live in the fantasy world they choose to inhabit.

Personally, I don’t swallow any of it, because every single one of these “beliefs’ (which is all they are, at best) has built into it one single thing: the need to believe in something “other” that services the one basic human fear: we are all going to die. Any inkling that there may be something beyond the grave is what people cling to in that fear: a desperate hope that it might not all have been for nothing.

  

To be honest, I’m too wrapped up in what’s happening in this life to be worrying about another one. I don’t want to go now, but if I did, it would be in the knowledge that I have lived a better life than most people could ever hope to do. Despite money worries (and who doesn’t have those), I’ve been fairly lucky with my health and am surrounded by the most wonderful family and friends. Every day I try to learn something new – about the world, people, ideas – and every day I count my blessings rather than dwell on the negative. It’s not always easy, but looking for goodness becomes a habit if you work hard enough at it.

  

I am, nevertheless, fascinated by the idea of beliefs of any sort because they are the offspring of brain function. We use but a tiny part of that mighty organ, as we know, and will never get to know its full potential or capacity in any of our lifetimes. It governs not only our thoughts but every cell in our bodies and is as fragile as it is strong.

  

In my effort to be fair to people with views other than my own, I am therefore going to explore some things that are totally alien to me. And I’m going to start with angels.

  

I grew up with angels through Sunday School. They were the humans in my Children’s Bible who dressed in white, had long hair and beards and a pair of wings sprouting from their shoulder blades. They were prone to turn up at the most inopportune moments, invariably telling women that they were going to bear children.

“You’re a virgin? Oh, don’t worry about that. I’m an angel; I can do anything.” And so it came to pass . . . And the rest is history.

My brother was named Nigel because I had wanted a baby brother called Angel, and Nigel was the closest my parents could get. I’m not sure he has ever forgiven me.

Then there was Angel Clare in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles. What a wuss he turned out to be, dumping her when he discovered she was not a virgin.

  

I started writing this blog because I was waiting to hear the name of my angel. I didn’t request to have one at all, but while I was filling in the answers to a quiz (more work avoidance), a flashing advert appeared telling me that I had missed a message from my assigned guardian. 

Angels aren't just for virgins - or Christmas - it seems.

Padre, the “Messenger of the Angels” (grey haired man with beard, no wings), confirmed my e-mail address and told me to keep an eye on my inbox, which I did for half an hour while I awaited the revelation of my angel’s name.

  

I started to worry about the name. What if my guardian angel was called Bob? I don’t know why, I just didn’t want a Bob. That was the name of someone you go to the pub with, not someone you want flapping their wings around you of an evening when you’re trying to eat your curry and watch Law and Order: SVU.

I quite fancied the idea of having a French angel – I’ve always liked the name Célange. Yes, that would be a very nice name for an angel.

  

Finally, it came through: Sehaliah. What? I can’t even pronounce it. He or she is apparently the “45^th Kabbalah Angel” . . . Oh, hang on a minute, it’s a recruitment agency for Kabbalah? He/she belongs to “Virtues”, and the Angelical Choir. Oh, yeah. That’s right up my bloody street. Not only will Angel Boy be telling me that I can't drink or have sex (I decided he was definitely a man the way he was already coming down on me on the moral front), he’ll be bringing along his goddamn mates to sing to me about it.

  

I was also dubious about the red wax seal on the scroll informing me of my new companion. What did the “D” stand for? Devil? Dummy? No, it turned out to be the “D” in the middle of PADRE, the messenger par excellence, who will allegedly, within a few hours, be giving my reading for free, before asking me to sign up to the Angelical Choir with my credit card.

  

I tell you: those virgins and their feathered friends had it easy.

  

  

   

Cilla Black - RIP

I have never been a fan of summer. 

As a child, I felt an inherent sadness in all things associated with that time: the smell of freshly cut grass, the tide going out at the end of a day at the seaside, brushing the last of the sand from between my toes. 

My grandfather died in June, and I recall the visits to the hospital and the starkness of the greenery at Cefn Mably hospital that felt like a mockery of the shadows surrounding his bedside. I remember the darkness of his bedroom at the Old Globe pub he ran with my grandmother in Rogerstone; the sticky ring of a half drunk Lucozade bottle the only small light on his bedside table.

   

We are now in August, and I am thinking that I spent most of this July in tears. I saw two friends lose their sons in tragic circumstances and I cannot begin to imagine their pain. This morning, I woke to the news that TV legend Cilla Black has died, and I am in tears again.

   

I know that none of these people are close family members, but as I wrote in my last blog, we have, and should value, our ability to empathise with others. Stripped of all material possessions, we are basically the same: humans with common emotions, the most important being the capacity to love.

   

I met Cilla when I started out as a TV critic in the mid-Eighties. She was the presenter of Blind Date, and my visit to a recording was the first time I had ever visited a set. I was absurdly excited. Her energy and ability to light up a room were breathtaking. She was funny, smart, and had the audience in the palm of her hand from the outset.

   

She died in her villa in Marbella, which was where I last saw her. We had a mutual friend in Andy Anderson, an astonishingly talented singer who performed in local bars and who also, sadly, died a few months back. Cilla had gathered a group together, and we sat in her garden, Andy singing on his guitar, drinking Cilla’s champagne from the bar in her living room. She was a very generous host and the evening was, as others had been before, full of laughter.

   

It nearly wasn’t. She had swallowed one of the larger hors d’ouevres and it had become stuck in her throat. Fortunately, paramedics were not required.

   

It was impossible to find a taxi by the time the party ended, and Cilla kindly offered to let me stay over in “Cliff’s room” (Cliff Richard was a very close friend). I joked that I would always be able to say that I had slept in Cliff’s bed. She adored him and I know that they spent many great times together. She was also passionately loyal to him during the allegations that surfaced about his private life.

   

She was loyal to all her friends. She was especially fond of Paul O’Grady, to whom she had become close after he wrote to her following Bobby’s death. Paul is as exhilarating off screen as he is on, and one of the most naturally funny people I have ever met. It’s not hard to see why she would have embraced his company.

   

On the last night I saw her, we talked for a couple of hours after everyone left, and she was, as always, wonderful company. She was both interesting and interested, and she gave me sound advice about decisions I was trying to make. Her love for her husband, Bobby, who died in 1999, was always central to her life, and she spoke of him often, as she did her children, especially her son Robert, who became her manager.

   

I confess to feeling completely in awe of the woman whose music I grew up with, and whose shows were (and still are) the best that Saturday night entertainment had to offer. She was the top of her tree in two of the most difficult industries in the world to conquer – especially for women. She set the bar high for everyone who followed, and she was tough and ambitious, as the recent ITV three-parter, Cilla, showed.

   

Sheridan Smith delivered an extraordinary performance as the young woman from a working class Liverpool background who made it to the top of the charts. I am glad Cilla got to see it.

   

My friends’ sons were in their late twenties when they died; Cilla was 72 – which, by today’s standards, is still young. Had she been 100, I would still feel sad. She was a part of my history and also of TV history.

   

I like to think of her knocking on the pearly gates with the words “Surprise, surprise, it’s Cilla ’ere.”

    

  

  

   

Only Connect

Time goes slowly for the traveller. 

Every hour brings new places, people, experiences. Then, you return to your familiar surroundings, often a changed person, and find that you slot right back in as if you had never been away. Are you the same person – only different?

    

I’ve been away a lot over the past month – four countries in two weeks, at one point – and I haven’t enjoyed it that much, apart from a great week in Los Angeles, possibly my favourite city on Earth. I missed my sunrises and sunsets over the Hudson in New York; the fabulous welcoming staff at Mr Biggs, my local bar in Hell’s Kitchen; Suits and Mistresses on the telly. I always take a couple of days off upon my return to slob around on the sofa, catching up on my shows with a bowl of pasta and glass of Rioja before rejoining the human race. It’s the part of jetlag I adore: the best excuse not to have to sit at one’s desk.

    

The reasons for my lack of enthusiasm during this trip are various, and I’ll write about that in another blog. Today, however, all I can think of is my friend Lyn, who has had the devastating ordeal of waiting for her son’s body to arrive from Thailand, where he was killed in a road accident last week.

    

I have no children and cannot begin to imagine the pain of parents who lose them. My mother’s sister, Auntie Barbara, and my Uncle Brian lost their beloved daughter, Sarah, my cousin, and their never-ending pain is heart-wrenching to witness. It’s a clichéd phrase, but as Lyn wrote to me this week, the clichés are what come automatically; I wonder if, drained of everything, we rely on them to keep us going: a linguistic backbone when all else fails to compute.

    

A couple of weeks back, the writer Julie Burchill wrote about her son Jack, who committed suicide, aged 29. Although no longer with Jack’s father, Cosmo Landesman, it was clear they came together in grief; Julie wrote that she could not bear the pain of the funeral, but she reprinted and praised Cosmo’s breathtakingly poignant tribute to their son.

    

She also had the guts to reprint a piece she wrote many years ago in which she appeared to be unsympathetic to the victims of suicide. Easily the bravest (and probably the best and most influential) writer of her generation, she made important philosophical points that still hold true, even when revisiting them in the light of Jack’s death.

    

One Facebook “friend” admonished me for empathising, but it is clear that the social networking community provided Julie and Cosmo with immense support during this devastating time. It’s not the first time I have “unfriended” someone who has mistaken my empathy for a declaration of what they perceive to be my own misery. 

I am far from being an unhappy person, irrespective of whatever happens in my life, but I am affected by world events, personal tragedies, the minutiae of the pain a human being is forced to endure; and, after that, the incredible strength they are able to muster to pull through. If someone is incapable of empathy, then I don’t want that person as my friend anyway.

    

Lyn is someone I have come to know through Facebook. We share a mutual friend, Phillip Arran, a wonderful actor and amazingly kind, warm and hilarious man, who I met when I judged him in a talent show called Presenters 15 years ago. Phil has been working on cruise ships and he put me in touch with Lyn, who is a mega talented writer and musical performer and someone who I hope to work with. In recent months, she has been writing on Facebook about different shows she has been giving onboard, and the joy she gets from her job has been exhilarating to witness.

    

And then this. 

Her beloved son, Ross, who went back to Thailand to hand in his notice and change direction in his life, as he had done before. I never met him, but everything I am reading and hearing makes it clear that he is someone who lived life to the full and gave much laughter and love to everyone he met.

   

I am not a hijacker of grief, but, as with Julie’s loss, this has affected me deeply. I know it does not compare to what Lyn, Ross’s brother Scott, and his father, Alex, are going through; nor Ross’s many friends. But the comfort of strangers cannot be underestimated: people who, through social networking, reveal what it is simply to be human.

    

We have the capacity, and the need, to share; it’s in our DNA. 

As E M Forster said in Howards End: Only connect. 

It is our greatest gift to each other.

    

It’s a cliché, but my heart aches for you, Lyn. 

Rest in peace, dear Ross.

  

  

  

The Price of Love

From penultimate section of my book Broke: A Life of Small Change

40-50

THE PRICE OF LOVE

Why do women spend money on men? Why do they give them money they haven’t a hope in hell’s chance of getting back?

   

Take Alan, my Hungarian, Australian, Jewish dentist. We met when I was lying on my back (obviously) and he was doing x-rays for my new porcelain veneers. I’d gone in only for a check-up, but as he offered a special price of £500 for the cosmetic surgery and I fancied him, I readily agreed.

   

On our first date, we went for a pizza in Soho. It was the only thing he ever paid for.

   

Alan was recently separated and had two young sons, who lived with his ex. A month into our relationship, I spent £200 on an electronic chess set for his birthday. He loved his chess, but he specially liked his new toy; so much so, that he had far less time for me, as he was too busy playing with it.

   

Then I financed a trip for us to take his kids to see Sooty, who was shooting on location in Chiswick Park, where I was to be granted a one on one interview with the famous glove puppet. As this was the first time I would be meeting the boys, I bought a lovely white linen suit, which, on the beautiful sunny day in question, made me look rather glamorous.

   

The four of us arrived at the park at 8am, when the photographer suggested that I get the photos out of the way before filming began. So, over I went to Matthew Corbett (who was Sooty’s owner until 1998), who was chatting to Sooty in a black box in his hand.

   

I had my notebook out and was engaging with the puppet (absurdly excited to meet him at long last), when Matthew started to talk about the weather.

  

“It’s such a hot day, isn’t it? Sooty thinks it’s a hot day, Sooty’s very hot, Sooty thinks Jaci looks really, really hot . . . “ (I thought I was looking rather hot myself that day). “What’s that, Sooty . . . You think she needs cooling down?”

   

Sooty’s paw reached into the box, pulled out his familiar water pistol and squirted me all over my face. Round and round and round. My perfectly blow dried hair was drenched. The exquisite make-up I had spent two hours doing that morning was ruined; black mascara dripped onto my white suit. I wanted to cry. The small group of children who had gathered to watch thought it hilarious. 

“Isn’t Sooty a funny bear!” I squealed, while thinking: “I’m going to rip your sodding head off, you stupid piece of inanimate fluff.”

   

The dentist finished with me shortly after that. One day, he said: “I’m falling for you in a big way.” The next morning he woke up with a facial rash and said we were over.

   

Alan was positively on the poverty line of my generosity compared to Dick (yes, let’s call him Dick). I met him at the 1999 Bafta Awards, where he had won a craft/technical award and gave what was possibly the worst, incompetent, rambling speech in the history of the Awards; in fact, any awards. Ever.

   

I was living in something like my tenth Soho apartment in as many years, even though most of the pine had now migrated to Bath, where I moved after my Dad died to be nearer Mum. Having made a loss of £8k on my Belsize Park flat, I did very well in Bath, catching the market at the right time to purchase a six bedroom detached house for £250,000. It was on for £275,000 and I had set my limit at £225,000, but it was the only house I have ever owned that I felt I couldn’t live without.

   

Conversation among my friends had taken a dramatic turn. Having spent our twenties bemoaning the lack of potential partners on the market (although men never seemed to have a problem finding women as women did men), by our late thirties we spoke of little but the property market: how we had bought at the bottom and sold at the top, moved quickly to accumulate more equity, bought a second property as an investment, bought overseas because the euro was strong and we needed a place to escape the British weather. We were high on the seemingly easy means of getting rich quickly and couldn’t wait to tell our stories, forever engaged in a property one-upmanship that seemed the only real barometer of our success.

   

By comparison, Dick had very little. Divorced, he had a small house in Kent and was struggling to keep his business afloat. I quickly discovered that he had very expensive tastes but no money to satisfy them  - or so he said. At this point, I had the Bath house, the London rental, and had, yet again, rented a place in Cardiff, all financed by several jobs in print and on TV. I felt sorry for him and met up with him every day in Soho near his office, and gave him emotional support by treating him to drinks and lavish lunches, not only for him but for the increasing number of friends he started to bring along. 

One lunch in Signor Zilli’s in Brewer Street cost me £650. Dick even ordered a bottle of Bollinger (on my tab) to send over to some attractive women sitting at another table.

  

Then he asked if he could borrow money as he needed to keep his French bank account in credit. I remember crossing Oxford Street to go to my bank and feeling sick, as I would have to go overdrawn in my UK account to help him out. But I did it anyway. Five months down the line, I was already in excess of three grand down. 

In addition to meals and the free loan, I took him to Paris and the south of France, and pretty much kept him in a manner to which he had never become accustomed. In retrospect, the high living was really only a smokescreen to hide the reality. 

I had hit 40 and thought I was in the last chance saloon of love. 

“He’s not funny, interesting, or articulate. He’s boring, overweight, and he’s got ginger hair. He’s mean; he keeps me waiting for hours. He’s raiding my bank account, and the sex is awful,” I told my friend Simon. 

“Then dump him,” he said. 

“But he’s 34 and single,” I wailed.

Simon: “But it doesn’t mean he’s the right 34 and single.”

Belongingness - a Human Need

Belongingness. 

Until today, I had never heard the word. To me, “belonging” has always been sufficient: the longing to be. To be part of a group, the “in” crowd, the social or professional people from whom you feel excluded; anyone who says No, you’re not part of our gang. Acceptance gives us validation; refusal makes us doubt ourselves. Feeling like the outsider always looking in on others’ lives seems like a betrayal of what life promised us – free entry into the human race. Why would we not all get on? We’re all the same. Human. Yes, belongingness, I suppose.

   

I’ve never made any secret of having spent chunks of my life feeling isolated, but then I think most people do. We have to live external lives, owing to the commitments of work, family, or social mores that are regularly at odds with what we feel internally. If we wore our hearts on our sleeves on a daily basis, not only would be intolerable to be around, we would be intolerable to ourselves.

At the moment, I have never felt such a complete sense of un-belongingness. I don’t fit in the US where I have spent so much of the past seven years, because the humour really is too different. People take offence at me; I take offence at them. We are, as Oscar Wilde or George Bernard Shaw said (depending on your source), two countries separated by the same language. For the most part, irony does not travel oceans heading west.
   

And then I don’t feel I belong when I return to Europe. I am so passionate about the many things I have seen in the United States, and I have met some extraordinary people from whom I learn new things on a daily basis. I love the optimism and passion; the patriotism; the incredible commitment on the parts of individuals to try to make the world a better place. Europeans are far more dismissive of Americans than they are of us, and, yes, most US citizens don’t travel outside their country; but neither do a lot of people in the UK – and there is far less on offer here.

   

So I’m feeling a little bit lost and tearful these days but wondering whether any of us ever really feels that we were truly anything other than individuals treading water, rather than somebody onboard helping to steer the boat.

   

As a young kid, I was never part of the “in” crowd. No matter how well I did in sport, no matter how many goals I scored in hockey, I was still bottom of the barrel next time when the captains cherry-picked their teams.

But it started way before that. In infants’ school, I could see that the “in” crowd was made up of girls who were tenants of the gem of the play area, the Wendy House, not ones like me, who had to queue outside it, angling for an invitation, only to be told at the end of break that there was no room at the inn. The Wendy House, by the way, was supposed to be a protected area for Wendy after she was shot by the "bad boys" in J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan. I don't remember that kind of solace. The Wendy House tenants were tall, quiet and blonde; I was short, brunette and very talkative. People like me had to be content with the sandpit, which didn’t hold the same excitement of secrecy, because everyone could see what you were doing.

Nevertheless, I loved the smell of seaside and plastic, the yellow bucket bright under the artificial light of a dim winter classroom. I loved the dry grains running through my fingers, the light trickle as they hit my palms, the fists of tightly clenched roughness. Unless somebody hit you over the head with a spade, or threw sand in your eyes, it was a happy place to be. You could play with others, building dams and moats and mountains, or you could sit quietly, imagining the ringing of an ice-cream van in the distance, or a dog running to meet the tide.

But I would have given up the whole sandpit world for the secrets I imagined being shared in the Wendy House. The enormous square of hard, red canvas held all sorts of mysteries for those of us excluded from it. Once inside, the playmates would stay there for hours, emerging only occasionally to invite another to join them as an exclusive guest, or to play servant and fill the plastic kettle with water for a tea party. They had cakes, too: purple plasticine buns with yellow blobs on top; long, brown fingers; orange sponges. They made them in the art section of the classroom and took them spitefully away when they relocated to the house. 

   

I thought that making a glamorous collection of plasticine cakes and biscuits would make me a welcome visitor in the house, so I set to work on the long, ribbed sticks, determined, as I would be throughout the rest of my life, to do the work better than anyone else. I was, as yet, too young to know that the only thing that guarantees universal popularity is failure, and I began my creation with only the thought that my cake-making was the quickest way to win friends, influence people and scrounge an invite to the tea party.

   

How I wanted to be among them. I saw the plasticine cakes as my ticket to a better life. As I ran my fingers down each strip, still perfect in its see-through wrapping, I was already anticipating the cries of delight and warm, open arms that would greet my offering when I arrived at the Wendy House front door.  

   

When you pulled the cellophane off a new pack of plasticine, it felt criminal to disturb the perfect keyboard of strips. If you touched just one with the tip of your finger, the smell stretched all over your hand; you could still smell it in your nostrils when you went to bed at night. I liked the blue and orange the best. Sometimes, I rolled a piece of each together and made a marble pillar, even though our teachers warned us not to mix the colours.

   

I made cup cakes: blue bowls with orange filling, orange bowls with tiny, rounded balls of blue filling.  I made pancakes, alternating layers with every colour from the pack - green, yellow, blue, brown, orange, pink. I made eclairs: yellow tubes of cream wrapped in brown, light folds of pastry. There were sweets, too: yellow bon bons, brown toffees, pink chewing gum. I took my hamper of goodies to the Wendy House door but always received the same negative reception. Next time, I vowed, I would make an even more impressive batch of cakes.

   

When the door flap was pulled aside to welcome new guests, the rejects in the sand pit could catch a brief glimpse of the house’s inviting interior. Everything was red in there, including the faces of the residents, who looked as if they had been sitting too close to an open fire. Their heads were always bent conspiratorially together, their voices hushed. The tea set was placed like an altar in the middle of the floor, along with the plasticine cakes; hands circled the air dramatically, raising sweetmeats to mouths; and, accompanying all, the mmming and aaahing that was the taste of the mock feast.

   

I was never enough of a recluse to be pushed into the Wendy House by a teacher encouraging better communication among her pupils; nor was I enough of a joiner-inner ever to be invited to become a member of the exclusive clique. I therefore had to be content with imagining what took place among the shadows behind closed doors: the sound of pouring water, the clearing of dishes, and the dreams of those who, after feasting, were allowed to lie down and take a nap.

   

And now, whether I am in LA looking at the Hollywood sign, in the UK among the people who know me the best and understand me the most, or in New York watching sunrise and sunset over the Hudson, I feel grateful for all of it, and still know I have a better life than most people in the world. But at 56, I’m still outside the Wendy House. 

   

And still, that ache to belong. 

The need for belongingness.