What is it about getting behind the wheel of a car that brings out the Wee Willie Winkie in me?
I’ve never been a great sleeper, even as a baby, and these days it still takes me a couple of hours and at least two episodes of late night Law and Order and CSI before I feel even remotely tired.
But put a steering wheel in my hand, and in the same amount of time I turn into Tarmac Temazepam, snoring away while drivers around me beep, scream and shout, and try to wake me while waving bits of their vehicles I have managed to lob off in my slumber.
The first car I bought was in 1983. It was an orange Hillman Avenger, and I smashed it up when I had drunk too much during a bout of severe depression. No excuse. I woke to see a row of trees coming towards me at lightning speed, and when I had established that I was not in a production of Macbeth, and that this was not Burnam Wood, came to in time to turn the wheel away from them.
It wasn’t quick enough for me to regain balance, though, and the car went over. And over. And over. It landed bonnet side down. Had I not been wearing a seat belt, I would undoubtedly have been killed outright; had I been six inches taller, my head would have been crushed to pulp.
Although not drinking now, and feeling safe enough to get behind a wheel again without fear of endangering life, it hasn’t inspired me to get a car in LA. Despite the fact that everyone tells me that I just have to have one, I have resisted.
Well, resistance implies some degree of doubt; in reality, I don’t want one, don’t intend to get one, and if people want to see me that much, they can get in their own damned cars and come to me. I walk up to 10 miles a day, and when I’m not walking I catch the very cheap buses, which run all night.
Push came to shove, however, on the morning of Blake’s funeral. Readers of this column will know that Blake was my dear mentor and screenwriter friend who died suddenly in August. The funeral had been kept very quiet, but when I heard it was taking place felt I had to be there.
Blake’s death has hit me very hard, and the day before I heard he was to be buried I again hadn’t slept the entire night. Yet never having driven on the right hand side of the road, never having driven in the States, and in a hire car without sat nav, I set off, very tired, for Santa Barbara, over two hours’ drive away.
I had only ever heard tales of one Route - 66 – and it turned out to be a rather sanitised and romanticised version of what actually happens on these freeways. I had to take 401 and 405, and both were the closest to hell I think I will get before I actually take up residence in that place.
I have no idea whether there was a speed limit, I just went with the flow, which was fast. Very. I managed to veer off at a service station, but it was no Little Chef, and it took me about 30 minutes to find my way out of it and back onto my route, which, after 90 minutes, I still had no evidence was the one going in the right direction.
Getting to the church on time was fine, although the funeral itself was utterly devastating. Going back was the problem. I should not have been driving: first, with no sleep, and, second, severely traumatised.
Blake was one of the people who kept telling me that I had to get a car. The irony that my first one was ferrying me to and from his funeral, meant that I spent most of the journey both ways, blurry-eyed and sobbing.
On my return, I took the west, instead of the east exit, for Wilshire Boulevard, and ended up at Santa Monica beach. And it was in the slowness of the traffic getting back to the right road that I dozed off, hit a guy’s wing mirror, and endured my first experience of US road rage. Think Death Row on acid.
I took the car back instantly and went to the shop to stock up on change for my forthcoming bus journeys.
It’s incredibly hard steering our way without you, Blake: in more ways than one.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Blake Snyder 1957-2009: Dearest Friend, Mentor, In My Heart Forever 8/4/09
Readers of this blog will be familiar with the name of the screenwriter Blake Snyder.
It was through his encouragement that I first came to LA, having sent him the title and logline for my budding screenplay, Celebrity Stalker, in response to which I received the most incredible, encouraging e-mail.
I subsequently travelled to the city to do Blake’s Beats course, and it was the start of a friendship that would see me end up living 6000 miles across the Atlantic and pursuing my dream of being what I called a “real writer”.
Blake died suddenly this morning. I found out on Facebook, where I daily looked at his profile to see how many more inspiring stories there were from the people across the world whom he had helped in their screenwriting struggles.
His passion and enthusiasm for what he did never faltered, and everyone who came into contact with him became the beneficiary of that.
From my first contact with Blake in May 2008, he taught me many things, not only in relation to screenwriting. He was also a wonderful human being: full of compassion and love for his fellow men. The person I refer to in the blog Shopping For Niceness was him: a man who did not think that we were the best judges of other people’s foibles, and who saw the good in everyone he met.
When we had lunch two weeks ago, I remarked that although we had known each other face to face for just five months, it seemed that a lot had happened: I was living in LA, for starters. It was a move that he had positively encouraged, and he listened and supported me through what have been some very bleak moments.
I just cannot believe that he is gone, and my sympathies go out to his family, colleagues, and everyone whose lives were blessed to have been touched by this giving, wonderful man.
Facebook and his website are already full of entries expressing shock and disbelief at his sudden parting. But what comes through in all of them is his goodness, kindness, and ability to embrace people who reached out, both professionally and personally. He had that rarest of things: the gift of spirit.
My dearest Blake: my heart is breaking. In a screenplay, you would call it the All Is Lost moment that precedes Dark Night of the Soul. But as I sit here with your book before me – as you know, it never leaves my side – I look to the finale and the final image that follows. The final image, you say, is “the opposite of the opening image. It is proof that change has occurred and that it’s real.”
The image of my life now, compared to before you came into it, is very much the opposite of what it was, and I have you to thank for that.
I will celebrate your life, not with a drink (thank you for saving me from that, too), but by doing the work of which you constantly told me I was capable, and it will always be with immense gratitude and love that I remember you.
God bless, and, as you say in Save the Cat, when you describe dropping that script in the mail: “It is what it is.”
Your death is what it is.
Quite how we will all move on without you being among us is too early to say; but we will – and you will be with us in so many ways.
I told you over our last lunch that for me, everlasting life was about the things we left behind – the laughter, the ideas, the wisdom, the insight, the love – and that it was this, rather than any notion of God, that gave me great joy.
There's no joy today, and the Dark Night of the Soul looks never-ending.
But you will live on, my sweet, darling friend. Eternally.
It was through his encouragement that I first came to LA, having sent him the title and logline for my budding screenplay, Celebrity Stalker, in response to which I received the most incredible, encouraging e-mail.
I subsequently travelled to the city to do Blake’s Beats course, and it was the start of a friendship that would see me end up living 6000 miles across the Atlantic and pursuing my dream of being what I called a “real writer”.
Blake died suddenly this morning. I found out on Facebook, where I daily looked at his profile to see how many more inspiring stories there were from the people across the world whom he had helped in their screenwriting struggles.
His passion and enthusiasm for what he did never faltered, and everyone who came into contact with him became the beneficiary of that.
From my first contact with Blake in May 2008, he taught me many things, not only in relation to screenwriting. He was also a wonderful human being: full of compassion and love for his fellow men. The person I refer to in the blog Shopping For Niceness was him: a man who did not think that we were the best judges of other people’s foibles, and who saw the good in everyone he met.
When we had lunch two weeks ago, I remarked that although we had known each other face to face for just five months, it seemed that a lot had happened: I was living in LA, for starters. It was a move that he had positively encouraged, and he listened and supported me through what have been some very bleak moments.
I just cannot believe that he is gone, and my sympathies go out to his family, colleagues, and everyone whose lives were blessed to have been touched by this giving, wonderful man.
Facebook and his website are already full of entries expressing shock and disbelief at his sudden parting. But what comes through in all of them is his goodness, kindness, and ability to embrace people who reached out, both professionally and personally. He had that rarest of things: the gift of spirit.
My dearest Blake: my heart is breaking. In a screenplay, you would call it the All Is Lost moment that precedes Dark Night of the Soul. But as I sit here with your book before me – as you know, it never leaves my side – I look to the finale and the final image that follows. The final image, you say, is “the opposite of the opening image. It is proof that change has occurred and that it’s real.”
The image of my life now, compared to before you came into it, is very much the opposite of what it was, and I have you to thank for that.
I will celebrate your life, not with a drink (thank you for saving me from that, too), but by doing the work of which you constantly told me I was capable, and it will always be with immense gratitude and love that I remember you.
God bless, and, as you say in Save the Cat, when you describe dropping that script in the mail: “It is what it is.”
Your death is what it is.
Quite how we will all move on without you being among us is too early to say; but we will – and you will be with us in so many ways.
I told you over our last lunch that for me, everlasting life was about the things we left behind – the laughter, the ideas, the wisdom, the insight, the love – and that it was this, rather than any notion of God, that gave me great joy.
There's no joy today, and the Dark Night of the Soul looks never-ending.
But you will live on, my sweet, darling friend. Eternally.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Keeping Up With The Beckhams 8/4/09
Peas in a pod. That’s what they were doubtless saying at the LA Sports Club this week, when they saw me working out on the treadmill just feet from Victoria Beckham.
Okay, so she’s younger, prettier, and even thinner than I have managed to become, but we both have dark, short hair.
Never mind that she is the tiny, sweet pea at the end of the pod, and I am the over-ripe, hard one in the middle: as peas in pods go, there’s likeness enough for me.
According to the papers, Victoria runs eight miles a day; I can’t say whether she does or not, because in my attempt to equal her performance, the paramedics always get to me long before she finishes her run. When they are scooping my body parts off the floor, I can usually see Victoria’s perfect, bobbing form in the distance, but then I lose consciousness again.
The Sports Club, which is reported to be the best in the world, has two branches: one in LA West, and one in Beverly Hills, which is where I see Victoria. Until this week, I hadn’t spoken to her and, I confess, I was beside myself with excitement when I did. So much so, that I had to calm myself down by eating two muffins, three slices of cranberry spice bread (a subliminal spice connection, perhaps?), and half a tub of Haagen Dazs vanilla ice-cream.
I’m a big fan of Ms Beckham, who was my favourite of all the Spice Girls. Not only did I think she was the most beautiful, but the most talented. I enjoyed her music as a solo artist, and she recorded some really catchy tunes. Even she would acknowledge she’s not Ella Fitzgerald, but she knows how to entertain and, in a tough industry, how to reinvent herself.
In her television work, she has displayed a wonderful sardonic wit in various documentaries; and her flair for fashion design has won her accolades from the highest in the industry. Add to all this, the fact that she is a wonderfully loyal and supportive wife, and a terrific, adoring mother, and you have to wonder what on earth the poor woman has done wrong to warrant abuse on a daily basis.
It doesn’t matter how much money you have, to manage a hugely successful career, while bringing up a young family – in different countries, to boot - is tough. Surely she deserves our admiration, not the admonition that has pretty much become a national sport.
The couple haven’t had an easy ride in LA, either, where David’s recent altercations with two fans earned him criticism. But all that seemed to dissipate on Sunday, when his brilliant free kick helped LA Galaxy save face in what was finally a 1-2 victory for Barcelona.
I watched the match on TV, and, for some reason, could only get the commentary in Spanish. My Spanish stretches on to “Una birra”, which is useless (a) because I don’t drink alcohol, and (b) because it is Italian. So all I heard were long stretches of what sounded like someone being very ill after a long night out – “Ellebrooghutrescuatenta” – followed by “Spicy Boy.”
I kid you not. Only once during the entire match did the Spanish commentator say the word “Beckham”; he was always Spicy Boy.
I didn’t get to meet David, but I did catch sight of the Barcelona team, who were staying at the Beverly Hills’ truly spectacular SLS Hotel. In an effort to lose the half stone I had acquired in my eating binge after meeting Victoria, I was very picky with the menu and ordered water melon and tomato cubes, with a Brussel sprout and lemon puree salad, topped with “lemon air”.
Under normal circumstances, you wouldn’t catch me in the same room as a Brussels sprout, unless there was also a Christmas tree and a whacking great sack of presents from Santa (I used to wonder whether all those presents were just a bribe to get kids to eat the sprouts on their Christmas dinner; and why ARE they compulsory, when we hate them for the other 364 days of the year?); but it all sounded very low-cal.
I was certainly right on that score; there aren’t many calories in lemon air, I can tell you. In fact, you can barely see it, because it is, well, mostly air, in a smidgen of white, citrusy foam.
It was fantastic. Honestly. Better than the muffins. I can’t wait to tell my new running mate about it. I’ll be slipping into a pair of her designer jeans before you can say Spicy Boy.
Okay, so she’s younger, prettier, and even thinner than I have managed to become, but we both have dark, short hair.
Never mind that she is the tiny, sweet pea at the end of the pod, and I am the over-ripe, hard one in the middle: as peas in pods go, there’s likeness enough for me.
According to the papers, Victoria runs eight miles a day; I can’t say whether she does or not, because in my attempt to equal her performance, the paramedics always get to me long before she finishes her run. When they are scooping my body parts off the floor, I can usually see Victoria’s perfect, bobbing form in the distance, but then I lose consciousness again.
The Sports Club, which is reported to be the best in the world, has two branches: one in LA West, and one in Beverly Hills, which is where I see Victoria. Until this week, I hadn’t spoken to her and, I confess, I was beside myself with excitement when I did. So much so, that I had to calm myself down by eating two muffins, three slices of cranberry spice bread (a subliminal spice connection, perhaps?), and half a tub of Haagen Dazs vanilla ice-cream.
I’m a big fan of Ms Beckham, who was my favourite of all the Spice Girls. Not only did I think she was the most beautiful, but the most talented. I enjoyed her music as a solo artist, and she recorded some really catchy tunes. Even she would acknowledge she’s not Ella Fitzgerald, but she knows how to entertain and, in a tough industry, how to reinvent herself.
In her television work, she has displayed a wonderful sardonic wit in various documentaries; and her flair for fashion design has won her accolades from the highest in the industry. Add to all this, the fact that she is a wonderfully loyal and supportive wife, and a terrific, adoring mother, and you have to wonder what on earth the poor woman has done wrong to warrant abuse on a daily basis.
It doesn’t matter how much money you have, to manage a hugely successful career, while bringing up a young family – in different countries, to boot - is tough. Surely she deserves our admiration, not the admonition that has pretty much become a national sport.
The couple haven’t had an easy ride in LA, either, where David’s recent altercations with two fans earned him criticism. But all that seemed to dissipate on Sunday, when his brilliant free kick helped LA Galaxy save face in what was finally a 1-2 victory for Barcelona.
I watched the match on TV, and, for some reason, could only get the commentary in Spanish. My Spanish stretches on to “Una birra”, which is useless (a) because I don’t drink alcohol, and (b) because it is Italian. So all I heard were long stretches of what sounded like someone being very ill after a long night out – “Ellebrooghutrescuatenta” – followed by “Spicy Boy.”
I kid you not. Only once during the entire match did the Spanish commentator say the word “Beckham”; he was always Spicy Boy.
I didn’t get to meet David, but I did catch sight of the Barcelona team, who were staying at the Beverly Hills’ truly spectacular SLS Hotel. In an effort to lose the half stone I had acquired in my eating binge after meeting Victoria, I was very picky with the menu and ordered water melon and tomato cubes, with a Brussel sprout and lemon puree salad, topped with “lemon air”.
Under normal circumstances, you wouldn’t catch me in the same room as a Brussels sprout, unless there was also a Christmas tree and a whacking great sack of presents from Santa (I used to wonder whether all those presents were just a bribe to get kids to eat the sprouts on their Christmas dinner; and why ARE they compulsory, when we hate them for the other 364 days of the year?); but it all sounded very low-cal.
I was certainly right on that score; there aren’t many calories in lemon air, I can tell you. In fact, you can barely see it, because it is, well, mostly air, in a smidgen of white, citrusy foam.
It was fantastic. Honestly. Better than the muffins. I can’t wait to tell my new running mate about it. I’ll be slipping into a pair of her designer jeans before you can say Spicy Boy.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Shopping For Niceness 7/30/2009
Give or take the odd earthquake or two, my life here is quite undramatic.
Imagine my shock, therefore, when I was walking back from the gym this week, and witnessed an outburst of such uncharacteristic abuse, I nearly licked my ice-cream scoop clean from its cone.
Standing outside Whole Foods (I am seriously considering getting therapy for my addiction to that shop – it has easily replaced alcohol in my life), I was just minding my own business. I had just purchased a Baskin Robbins 50% fat-reduced vanilla cone, having tried the full-fat variety and instantly thrown it in the trash for being too sweet and creamy.
But I digress. So there I was, licking away, when I heard a commotion coming from the car-park opposite. Suddenly, a man with a red face emerged, shouting back at whoever had caused him such distress. “You homosexual!” he yelled. “Your mother’s a whore!”
The horror! The horror! Having spent most of my life in the UK, where insults are traded on a daily basis, and in just about every conceivable circumstance, I hadn’t realised how immune I had become to abuse. Since arriving in LA, I haven’t heard one person swear, much less raise their voice to another human being.
In fact, apart from the sound of my own screams when I am told how much I owe at the end of my daily shop in Whole Foods, noise of any kind is pretty absent from my life.
So, hearing the word “homosexual” being hurled with such venom (something I do not think I have ever experienced, even in the UK, although doubtless it occurs – probably in kids’ playgrounds) rather upset my equilibrium. And as for “whore” being used in conjunction with anyone’s mother, well, that was straight out of Cagney and Lacey, I was sure; and when did that come off the air? About 110 years ago?
You just don’t normally get this kind of behaviour in Beverly Hills 90210, the home of the TV series of beautiful people and even more beautiful Chihuahuas who everyone wants to make movies about.
Everyone here is so incredibly, wonderfully, nice, nice, nice. In Whole Foods, they ask me, every day, when I arrive at the cash register: “Did you find everything you wanted today?” and I always answer, very politely: “Yes, thank you very much.”
They are so nice to me, and I am so nice back, I have taken to helping pack my own bags, a gesture that has impressed them so much that they this week offered me a job.
But the man in the suit temporarily put me in a different frame of mind and reminded me how good it can feel sometimes just to let rip. I decided that next time the cashier asked me if I found everything I wanted, I was going to answer:
I wanted yoghurt and found it reduced to $2.69, and also white peaches at $2.49 a lb. I picked up cinnamon spiced bread at $7.49 a loaf which, quite frankly, is a joke – not least, because I didn’t want it until I saw it.
And besides: what do you mean by “want”? I want to find the meaning of life, but did I find it hidden among the packages of Vindaloo sauce at $4.99 a pack? If I bought a pot of your ridiculously priced water melon at $6.99, would I find the meaning of life in there?
I want to find a man who prefers to collect Marriott Rewards points than save money by going camping (fat chance, as I am discovering, among LA’s rather keen outdoor enthusiast males); or, failing that, any man.
I want to be able to play the piano to classical concert standard. Heck, I want to have a piano, which I think would help me in trying to accomplish this.
So, when you ask me if I found everything that I wanted today, the answer would have to be No.
Calming as all this LA niceness is, I’m still rather suspicious of the whole upbeat thing. I’ve always been a fan of what we call “healthy scepticism” in the UK, and have found the endless flow of LA goodness rather indiscriminate. How do you know what’s good or bad, if you don’t have some kind of scale by which to measure things by?
I mentioned this to an LA friend, who oozes kindness and generosity in his relationships with each and every person he meets. But how can you judge anything, if you don’t place the bar somewhere, I squealed across my salad, desperately trying to goad him into non-niceness.
His answer was that he doesn’t think we make the best judges, and he has no desire to acquire scepticism.
You see what I mean? Nice, nice, nice. God, I could have tipped his fish in Bechamel sauce over his head.
When I heard my car-park man in the suit ranting his rather feeble insults, it awoke in me a very strange desire: I suddenly wanted to hear someone say “You f*****g c**t” – just briefly; anything to remind me of who I once was and where I came from. So I phoned a British friend, who duly obliged.
The truth is, though: all this niceness is rubbing off on me. I realise how little time we Europeans spend in saying thank you to people for past and present kindnesses. We operate as individuals, often struggling against the tide, angry, and wondering why things are so against us. We are permanently suspicious, and not just sceptical, but often cynical to the point of nihilistic-induced depression.
Is it so bad to try to see goodness where you can? There’s more of it around than I realised. I may be suspicious of it, and probably, to an extent, always will be; I am, after all, a European at heart.
But no heart needs to be set in stone: the notion of its having the capacity to melt is not an utterly meaningless one. And I am finding that my suspicions are, to a large extent, unfounded.
So next time they ask me in Whole Foods whether I was able to find everything I wanted, I will acknowledge the truth, if only to myself.
For the reality is, that slowly, I am finding everything I wanted. I just hadn’t realised how long I’d been looking in the wrong aisles.
Imagine my shock, therefore, when I was walking back from the gym this week, and witnessed an outburst of such uncharacteristic abuse, I nearly licked my ice-cream scoop clean from its cone.
Standing outside Whole Foods (I am seriously considering getting therapy for my addiction to that shop – it has easily replaced alcohol in my life), I was just minding my own business. I had just purchased a Baskin Robbins 50% fat-reduced vanilla cone, having tried the full-fat variety and instantly thrown it in the trash for being too sweet and creamy.
But I digress. So there I was, licking away, when I heard a commotion coming from the car-park opposite. Suddenly, a man with a red face emerged, shouting back at whoever had caused him such distress. “You homosexual!” he yelled. “Your mother’s a whore!”
The horror! The horror! Having spent most of my life in the UK, where insults are traded on a daily basis, and in just about every conceivable circumstance, I hadn’t realised how immune I had become to abuse. Since arriving in LA, I haven’t heard one person swear, much less raise their voice to another human being.
In fact, apart from the sound of my own screams when I am told how much I owe at the end of my daily shop in Whole Foods, noise of any kind is pretty absent from my life.
So, hearing the word “homosexual” being hurled with such venom (something I do not think I have ever experienced, even in the UK, although doubtless it occurs – probably in kids’ playgrounds) rather upset my equilibrium. And as for “whore” being used in conjunction with anyone’s mother, well, that was straight out of Cagney and Lacey, I was sure; and when did that come off the air? About 110 years ago?
You just don’t normally get this kind of behaviour in Beverly Hills 90210, the home of the TV series of beautiful people and even more beautiful Chihuahuas who everyone wants to make movies about.
Everyone here is so incredibly, wonderfully, nice, nice, nice. In Whole Foods, they ask me, every day, when I arrive at the cash register: “Did you find everything you wanted today?” and I always answer, very politely: “Yes, thank you very much.”
They are so nice to me, and I am so nice back, I have taken to helping pack my own bags, a gesture that has impressed them so much that they this week offered me a job.
But the man in the suit temporarily put me in a different frame of mind and reminded me how good it can feel sometimes just to let rip. I decided that next time the cashier asked me if I found everything I wanted, I was going to answer:
I wanted yoghurt and found it reduced to $2.69, and also white peaches at $2.49 a lb. I picked up cinnamon spiced bread at $7.49 a loaf which, quite frankly, is a joke – not least, because I didn’t want it until I saw it.
And besides: what do you mean by “want”? I want to find the meaning of life, but did I find it hidden among the packages of Vindaloo sauce at $4.99 a pack? If I bought a pot of your ridiculously priced water melon at $6.99, would I find the meaning of life in there?
I want to find a man who prefers to collect Marriott Rewards points than save money by going camping (fat chance, as I am discovering, among LA’s rather keen outdoor enthusiast males); or, failing that, any man.
I want to be able to play the piano to classical concert standard. Heck, I want to have a piano, which I think would help me in trying to accomplish this.
So, when you ask me if I found everything that I wanted today, the answer would have to be No.
Calming as all this LA niceness is, I’m still rather suspicious of the whole upbeat thing. I’ve always been a fan of what we call “healthy scepticism” in the UK, and have found the endless flow of LA goodness rather indiscriminate. How do you know what’s good or bad, if you don’t have some kind of scale by which to measure things by?
I mentioned this to an LA friend, who oozes kindness and generosity in his relationships with each and every person he meets. But how can you judge anything, if you don’t place the bar somewhere, I squealed across my salad, desperately trying to goad him into non-niceness.
His answer was that he doesn’t think we make the best judges, and he has no desire to acquire scepticism.
You see what I mean? Nice, nice, nice. God, I could have tipped his fish in Bechamel sauce over his head.
When I heard my car-park man in the suit ranting his rather feeble insults, it awoke in me a very strange desire: I suddenly wanted to hear someone say “You f*****g c**t” – just briefly; anything to remind me of who I once was and where I came from. So I phoned a British friend, who duly obliged.
The truth is, though: all this niceness is rubbing off on me. I realise how little time we Europeans spend in saying thank you to people for past and present kindnesses. We operate as individuals, often struggling against the tide, angry, and wondering why things are so against us. We are permanently suspicious, and not just sceptical, but often cynical to the point of nihilistic-induced depression.
Is it so bad to try to see goodness where you can? There’s more of it around than I realised. I may be suspicious of it, and probably, to an extent, always will be; I am, after all, a European at heart.
But no heart needs to be set in stone: the notion of its having the capacity to melt is not an utterly meaningless one. And I am finding that my suspicions are, to a large extent, unfounded.
So next time they ask me in Whole Foods whether I was able to find everything I wanted, I will acknowledge the truth, if only to myself.
For the reality is, that slowly, I am finding everything I wanted. I just hadn’t realised how long I’d been looking in the wrong aisles.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Living In The Now 7/25/09
This self-improvement lark is becoming a bit stressful.
I can just about manage the four mile round trip to the bookstore to buy the materials for my transformation, but it’s putting what they contain into action that is proving more difficult.
The major stress is deciding which books are going to be the most helpful. My non-drinking lifestyle now means that I can happily pass the “You’re a pisshead, nobody likes you” rows; I am never tempted to stop at the “Madonna’s into it so you can’t afford it” section; and I automatically reject any book written by a man sporting a full-grown beard in his bio pic.
I am a big advocate of the adage “A man with a beard is a man with a secret”, and although I think that all men have secrets, it is my experience that men with beards have bigger ones than most – or, at the very least, they are better at hiding them. Probably because of their disguise.
I made a semi-exception in the case of the latest addition to my ever-expanding shelves of rejuvenation print matter in the case of Eckhart Tolle, but only because his books come highly recommended by the Oprah Winfrey Book Club.
Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have gone near him; his beard lies in a half-crescent at the bottom of his face, as if he was caught mid-shaving when the doorbell rang and forgot to return to the bathroom mirror.
His basic premise is that we spend too much time dwelling on the past and the future and miss the joy of living in the present. Quite why it takes him 236 pages to say that is anybody’s guess, and nothing contained therein really gives any indication as to quite how difficult his idea is to implement.
I manage quite all right when I go out for a walk. The streets around my apartment block in Beverly Hills are particularly beautiful as the sun goes down, and when I go for my evening stroll, I can really feel as if I am in a presence of nature. NOW.
Alas, the arrival of dusk then reminds me that everything fades, and I’m back to square one – worrying about losing the moment, when I’ve only just started to experience it.
But I am nothing if not persistent in my Californian optimism these days and looked to other ways in which I might put The Bearded One’s ideas to good use.
I thought that with my dwindling finances, the chapter headed “Mind Strategies for Avoiding the Now” might prove particularly useful.
“Tomorrow’s bills are not the problem,” states Mr Eckhart. If I make them so, I am apparently holding on to a “core delusion” and turning a “mere situation, event or emotion” into a personal problem, which is the real cause of the suffering. Not the fact that I can't afford two boxes of $5.99 muffins at Whole Foods.
I tried it out with my bank manager, who is curious to know when my overdraft might be paid back.
Right, the thing is, I explained: what we have here is not a problem, it is a mere situation, and if you were to free yourself from yours, and the bank’s imprisonment in psychological time, you would start to see my debt in a different way. In fact, you would begin to see it as something in which to be joyous, because it is of the moment, the now; in losing the Now, you are losing your essential loss of Being, which is a common problem the egoic mind faces when it takes over from presence being your dominant state. Okay?
He said I still have to pay back my overdraft.
Mr Eckhart also says that waiting is just a “state of mind” and that if you find yourself doing it, you should just “snap out of it”. Given the distances everyone has to travel in LA, just to pop in for a cup of tea, that’s an awful lot of snapping, and to be honest I’m finding the snapping more stressful than the waiting.
When my friend turned up late for tea this week (I have taken to having English tea, which I never did in the UK), I had been drumming my fingers next to the muffin tray for nearly an hour.
“Sorry to have kept you waiting,” she said, when she finally arrived.
I did what the book recommends and replied: “That’s all right, I wasn’t waiting. I was just standing here enjoying myself – in joy in my self.”
Well, that’s what I thought, but the words didn’t come out that way. They came out more along the lines of: yes, you bloody well have kept me waiting, and I’m sick of it. It’s what everyone does in this damned town, and I’m tired of everyone making an excuse about the traffic, when they’ve damn well lived here for long enough to know that it’s going to be bad, and that’s why they should have set off earlier . . . “ Happy just waiting in the joy of myself? Bollocks to that.
I’m giving up on The Power of Now halfway through, as it has just denounced modern art, architecture, music and literature as being devoid of “inner essence” and beauty. That’s a fairly broad statement, so I’ve decided that my NOW could be better spent in exploring things other than books whose inner essence wouldn't fill up one side of a postage stamp.
I am already regretting having bought his follow-up book, A New Earth, which promises an “Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose”. I’m just not optimistic. My bank manager’s life’s purpose seems to be to get me to pay back my overdraft; my life’s purpose is not to do so.
You see what I mean? Stress, stress, stress. Sometimes I wonder whether all this enlightenment stuff is just leading me in a new kind of darkness. But I’m already too far gone on the journey to turn back.
I’ve already forgotten what it used to be like to be me.
I can just about manage the four mile round trip to the bookstore to buy the materials for my transformation, but it’s putting what they contain into action that is proving more difficult.
The major stress is deciding which books are going to be the most helpful. My non-drinking lifestyle now means that I can happily pass the “You’re a pisshead, nobody likes you” rows; I am never tempted to stop at the “Madonna’s into it so you can’t afford it” section; and I automatically reject any book written by a man sporting a full-grown beard in his bio pic.
I am a big advocate of the adage “A man with a beard is a man with a secret”, and although I think that all men have secrets, it is my experience that men with beards have bigger ones than most – or, at the very least, they are better at hiding them. Probably because of their disguise.
I made a semi-exception in the case of the latest addition to my ever-expanding shelves of rejuvenation print matter in the case of Eckhart Tolle, but only because his books come highly recommended by the Oprah Winfrey Book Club.
Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have gone near him; his beard lies in a half-crescent at the bottom of his face, as if he was caught mid-shaving when the doorbell rang and forgot to return to the bathroom mirror.
His basic premise is that we spend too much time dwelling on the past and the future and miss the joy of living in the present. Quite why it takes him 236 pages to say that is anybody’s guess, and nothing contained therein really gives any indication as to quite how difficult his idea is to implement.
I manage quite all right when I go out for a walk. The streets around my apartment block in Beverly Hills are particularly beautiful as the sun goes down, and when I go for my evening stroll, I can really feel as if I am in a presence of nature. NOW.
Alas, the arrival of dusk then reminds me that everything fades, and I’m back to square one – worrying about losing the moment, when I’ve only just started to experience it.
But I am nothing if not persistent in my Californian optimism these days and looked to other ways in which I might put The Bearded One’s ideas to good use.
I thought that with my dwindling finances, the chapter headed “Mind Strategies for Avoiding the Now” might prove particularly useful.
“Tomorrow’s bills are not the problem,” states Mr Eckhart. If I make them so, I am apparently holding on to a “core delusion” and turning a “mere situation, event or emotion” into a personal problem, which is the real cause of the suffering. Not the fact that I can't afford two boxes of $5.99 muffins at Whole Foods.
I tried it out with my bank manager, who is curious to know when my overdraft might be paid back.
Right, the thing is, I explained: what we have here is not a problem, it is a mere situation, and if you were to free yourself from yours, and the bank’s imprisonment in psychological time, you would start to see my debt in a different way. In fact, you would begin to see it as something in which to be joyous, because it is of the moment, the now; in losing the Now, you are losing your essential loss of Being, which is a common problem the egoic mind faces when it takes over from presence being your dominant state. Okay?
He said I still have to pay back my overdraft.
Mr Eckhart also says that waiting is just a “state of mind” and that if you find yourself doing it, you should just “snap out of it”. Given the distances everyone has to travel in LA, just to pop in for a cup of tea, that’s an awful lot of snapping, and to be honest I’m finding the snapping more stressful than the waiting.
When my friend turned up late for tea this week (I have taken to having English tea, which I never did in the UK), I had been drumming my fingers next to the muffin tray for nearly an hour.
“Sorry to have kept you waiting,” she said, when she finally arrived.
I did what the book recommends and replied: “That’s all right, I wasn’t waiting. I was just standing here enjoying myself – in joy in my self.”
Well, that’s what I thought, but the words didn’t come out that way. They came out more along the lines of: yes, you bloody well have kept me waiting, and I’m sick of it. It’s what everyone does in this damned town, and I’m tired of everyone making an excuse about the traffic, when they’ve damn well lived here for long enough to know that it’s going to be bad, and that’s why they should have set off earlier . . . “ Happy just waiting in the joy of myself? Bollocks to that.
I’m giving up on The Power of Now halfway through, as it has just denounced modern art, architecture, music and literature as being devoid of “inner essence” and beauty. That’s a fairly broad statement, so I’ve decided that my NOW could be better spent in exploring things other than books whose inner essence wouldn't fill up one side of a postage stamp.
I am already regretting having bought his follow-up book, A New Earth, which promises an “Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose”. I’m just not optimistic. My bank manager’s life’s purpose seems to be to get me to pay back my overdraft; my life’s purpose is not to do so.
You see what I mean? Stress, stress, stress. Sometimes I wonder whether all this enlightenment stuff is just leading me in a new kind of darkness. But I’m already too far gone on the journey to turn back.
I’ve already forgotten what it used to be like to be me.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Ready When You Are, God 7/21/09
The road to spiritual enlightenment is a bit like Bank Holiday traffic: one minute you’re zipping along on the motorway, hardly able to believe your luck that it’s all so easy; the next, you’re stuck on the hard shoulder with an overheated engine, wondering why you ever bothered setting out in the first place.
Everyone in LA is out to make the best of themselves, whether it be physically, emotionally, mentally or spiritually. It’s what fills the place with so much optimism.
I feel rather refreshed, having taken such a long break from the cynicism that informs so much of life in the UK, and although no fan of organised religion, am continuing to re-explore the interest I developed in all sorts of spirituality when I was younger.
But it’s a bit of a stop and go journey.
My return to the Transcendental Meditation I learned nearly 20 years ago has done wonders for my blood pressure. I just have to make sure that I time it right with the consumption of my detox teas, which can have me taking up residence in the bathroom for anything up to an hour at a time.
I can get through the whole of Psychology magazine and make good head-road into Oprah’s, too, on a particularly enthusiastic cleansing day, so have to ensure that my whole meditation is not spent repeating the mantra “I’m not sure I’m going to be able to hold this in for 20 minutes.”
My enthusiasm for Deepak Chopra, who I came across when I learned meditation, hasn’t diminished, either: The Book of Secrets is an inspiring book that makes you truly grateful to be alive and part of a remarkable universe.
I quickly made it through Buddhism for Dummies, too, but was less successful with Judaism for Dummies, as I got a little more enthusiastic about the kosher breakfasts I started to prepare than the actual text.
I don’t rule anything out on this quest and have done what the books recommend and asked the cosmos for a bit of support. It’s not going well. Maybe I’m a bit deaf. Maybe the cosmos isn’t taking me very seriously. Maybe I’ve tuned in to so many different wires, they can’t help but get crossed.
Whatever, it is: at the moment, confusion reigns.
I thought that perhaps in my desire to keep sober, I might try AA. I had always been put off by the God aspect that seemed to be quite central to it, but had been assured that it had nothing to do with organised religion, but God “as we understood Him.”
Well, I didn’t understand him as a him that warranted a capital letter, for starters; come to that, I didn’t understand him as a him. But I liked the otherwise broadness of the statement.
I remembered the film The Player, in which it is said that AA was where all the best deals were done in LA, so that was all right, then: my understanding could be that God was going to help me meet someone who would put me on the path to my first Oscar. Like I said: it was a broad statement.
So, I looked for a sign as to which meeting I should go to, and felt drawn to one a couple of miles away in an unfamiliar postcode. I walked there, full of hope that this was yet another step towards a goal I had to define.
I arrived at the address: Molly Malone’s Irish Sports Bar. I kid you not. Given that it was in an Irish Sports Bar in Dublin in 2008 that I had finally decided to curb my out of control drinking habits, it was hard to see how this was a step forward.
So I went to the 99 cent store a few doors down and bought a muffin. As I now understood God, he/she/it was a bit of a piss-taker.
I’ve signed up to so many spirit-enlightening sites, my name is turning up on Google as a sort of pathologically obsessed, certifiable nutcase, who is making so many demands on the cosmos, it doesn’t have any time for anyone else (so, sorry if you’ve lost your job/marriage/house, but the cosmos has bigger things on its plate right now).
This week, I had an e-mail from “Ganeesha speaks”. Goodness knows when or why I signed up to that (or even what it is), but it sounded rather hopeful, as it promised to tell me how the forthcoming solar eclipse was going to change my life forever. Now that’s what I call a sign.
A solar eclipse, it said, has the power to “turn your life upside down”. Well, having already come 6000 miles across the Atlantic, I was ready for anything.
The sun, it explained, was about to become overpowered by the moon; “this rare event”, it told me, was going to “increase your problems manifold”. And they weren’t just going to be problems; they were going to be “problems of astronomical proportions.”
Blimey, this cosmos lark wasn’t exactly working for me, was it? I remembered that the last time I had asked, in deepest contemplation, for a “sign” as to the way my life should go, the editor of the Mail on Sunday rang up the next day to say that he was axing my column. These latest signposts seemed equally wonky.
“You, in particular,” Ganeesh spoke on, “will be grossly out of luck.” Blimey, this just got better and better. There would be a series of “unfortunate incidents” (not quite managing to co-ordinate the actions of the detox tea with the meditation, perhaps?), even more “misfortune”, and my relationship with my siblings (I have one brother) might suffer.
Gee, thanks. You have a good day, too.
I am wondering whether, in requesting assistance from whatever power is out there, I have inadvertently tapped into the one that fancies itself as a bit of a joker who is just using me to gauge its material before taking it to the Comedy Store.
But I’m going to persevere. I may be on the hard shoulder at the moment, but I can sense a service station coming up. There always is. And not knowing exactly when, is all part of the thrill of the journey.
Maybe there will be muffins.
Everyone in LA is out to make the best of themselves, whether it be physically, emotionally, mentally or spiritually. It’s what fills the place with so much optimism.
I feel rather refreshed, having taken such a long break from the cynicism that informs so much of life in the UK, and although no fan of organised religion, am continuing to re-explore the interest I developed in all sorts of spirituality when I was younger.
But it’s a bit of a stop and go journey.
My return to the Transcendental Meditation I learned nearly 20 years ago has done wonders for my blood pressure. I just have to make sure that I time it right with the consumption of my detox teas, which can have me taking up residence in the bathroom for anything up to an hour at a time.
I can get through the whole of Psychology magazine and make good head-road into Oprah’s, too, on a particularly enthusiastic cleansing day, so have to ensure that my whole meditation is not spent repeating the mantra “I’m not sure I’m going to be able to hold this in for 20 minutes.”
My enthusiasm for Deepak Chopra, who I came across when I learned meditation, hasn’t diminished, either: The Book of Secrets is an inspiring book that makes you truly grateful to be alive and part of a remarkable universe.
I quickly made it through Buddhism for Dummies, too, but was less successful with Judaism for Dummies, as I got a little more enthusiastic about the kosher breakfasts I started to prepare than the actual text.
I don’t rule anything out on this quest and have done what the books recommend and asked the cosmos for a bit of support. It’s not going well. Maybe I’m a bit deaf. Maybe the cosmos isn’t taking me very seriously. Maybe I’ve tuned in to so many different wires, they can’t help but get crossed.
Whatever, it is: at the moment, confusion reigns.
I thought that perhaps in my desire to keep sober, I might try AA. I had always been put off by the God aspect that seemed to be quite central to it, but had been assured that it had nothing to do with organised religion, but God “as we understood Him.”
Well, I didn’t understand him as a him that warranted a capital letter, for starters; come to that, I didn’t understand him as a him. But I liked the otherwise broadness of the statement.
I remembered the film The Player, in which it is said that AA was where all the best deals were done in LA, so that was all right, then: my understanding could be that God was going to help me meet someone who would put me on the path to my first Oscar. Like I said: it was a broad statement.
So, I looked for a sign as to which meeting I should go to, and felt drawn to one a couple of miles away in an unfamiliar postcode. I walked there, full of hope that this was yet another step towards a goal I had to define.
I arrived at the address: Molly Malone’s Irish Sports Bar. I kid you not. Given that it was in an Irish Sports Bar in Dublin in 2008 that I had finally decided to curb my out of control drinking habits, it was hard to see how this was a step forward.
So I went to the 99 cent store a few doors down and bought a muffin. As I now understood God, he/she/it was a bit of a piss-taker.
I’ve signed up to so many spirit-enlightening sites, my name is turning up on Google as a sort of pathologically obsessed, certifiable nutcase, who is making so many demands on the cosmos, it doesn’t have any time for anyone else (so, sorry if you’ve lost your job/marriage/house, but the cosmos has bigger things on its plate right now).
This week, I had an e-mail from “Ganeesha speaks”. Goodness knows when or why I signed up to that (or even what it is), but it sounded rather hopeful, as it promised to tell me how the forthcoming solar eclipse was going to change my life forever. Now that’s what I call a sign.
A solar eclipse, it said, has the power to “turn your life upside down”. Well, having already come 6000 miles across the Atlantic, I was ready for anything.
The sun, it explained, was about to become overpowered by the moon; “this rare event”, it told me, was going to “increase your problems manifold”. And they weren’t just going to be problems; they were going to be “problems of astronomical proportions.”
Blimey, this cosmos lark wasn’t exactly working for me, was it? I remembered that the last time I had asked, in deepest contemplation, for a “sign” as to the way my life should go, the editor of the Mail on Sunday rang up the next day to say that he was axing my column. These latest signposts seemed equally wonky.
“You, in particular,” Ganeesh spoke on, “will be grossly out of luck.” Blimey, this just got better and better. There would be a series of “unfortunate incidents” (not quite managing to co-ordinate the actions of the detox tea with the meditation, perhaps?), even more “misfortune”, and my relationship with my siblings (I have one brother) might suffer.
Gee, thanks. You have a good day, too.
I am wondering whether, in requesting assistance from whatever power is out there, I have inadvertently tapped into the one that fancies itself as a bit of a joker who is just using me to gauge its material before taking it to the Comedy Store.
But I’m going to persevere. I may be on the hard shoulder at the moment, but I can sense a service station coming up. There always is. And not knowing exactly when, is all part of the thrill of the journey.
Maybe there will be muffins.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Not Helping Cops With Their Enquiries 7/14/09
There are many times I have wanted to resort to violence while standing in line, waiting to be served in Vodafone; but in Beverly Hills’ AT & T phone shop, today a man really did threaten to come back and shoot everyone.
I was standing patiently, waiting to make my own complaint. It’s become something of a habit there. The first time I complained about my i-Phone, which I still think is the worst toy ever to have been produced. I swopped it for a Blackberry, but had to take that back, too, because the red message indicator didn’t light up.
I was supposed to have received a $100 rebate after buying the Blackberry, but when it never arrived I went back to complain. That was six weeks after the purchase. They told me to come back after eight, hence my presence in the shop.
The violent man, who must have been about 103, was quite well dressed, speaking with a German accent, and wearing a hearing-aid. He was also shouting very, very loudly. They had been happy enough to take his money, he screamed, but now they wouldn’t do anything to help him. Nein! (Okay, maybe I imagined that bit).
The female assistant was nonchalant, to say the least. She never even looked at him, didn’t seem to be listening and, as his voice escalated, just fingered his receipt.
Then she called the cops.
Oh, yes. They really don’t mess around in Beverly Hills. Apparently, if you ever want to get anyone off your back, you just have to say four words: “I’m calling the cops.” Not only is your botherer gone within the first five seconds, the cops arrive within the next five.
And there they were. Already outside. But my war criminal (naturally, I had built up a little story around him, in which I had made a citizen’s arrest on a Goebbels-type monster hiding in the Hollywood Hills) had fled.
The cops started asking the assistant questions, and by now I was at the front of the queue and able to eavesdrop. How old was he? She reckoned in his seventies; no, sixties, contradicted the male assistant. Weight? She reckoned 190 lbs. No, no, no, said the male: 160.
They were hopeless! Whereas I, who had been watching the whole scene, had taken in every single detail. As I would in the UK, I felt it my citizen’s duty to add my two penneth.
“Was he bigger than me?” the very plump cop asked.
Yes, said the assistant.
“No, no he wasn’t,” I chirruped. “He was actually quite slight . . . And nowhere near 160lbs even . . . And . . . “
“We’re askin’ them,” said the cop.
I was crestfallen. In the UK, the butcher, the baker and candlestick maker would, by now, all have gathered from neighbouring shops, each to give their own account of what they had heard (or not) or seen (definitely not).
En masse, we would have retired to a bar to mull over the details, united in citizen solidarity against the ever-increasing tide of violent crime.
Yet here I was, being told to keep my nose out: I, the only proper witness, who had taken in every single morsel of the man, and who, for goodness sake, as a writer, did this for a living.
The cops weren’t like this on CSI or Law and Order. Witnesses were forever stepping over barriers they had been told not to cross in order to fill the cops in on missing bits of information that might prove useful. Next thing, they were dating the cop they had spoken to, before being shot in the chest and dying, ensuring that the cop continued to live out the rest of his days in loneliness and misery. But I digress.
The assistant went on to say that the man had said he would come back and shoot a couple of people; then, that he would definitely come back and shoot her. What had been his complaint, the cops asked.
Wait for it: the phone his friend had bought the day before did not have Bluetooth and was incompatible with the equipment in his car. Oh, ye gods! Hand me that Magnum.
My own complaint took just five seconds, as I was handed a phone number to call about my rebate. “But I was told to come back to the store,” I tried, as a delaying tactic, hoping to chip in again with a bit more info.
“No, just call that number.”
I thought I had better apologise to the cops for what was clearly a breach of criminal etiquette. “I’m really sorry,” I said, “but I saw it all when nobody else was looking . . . “
“That’s fine, ma’am.”
They just weren’t getting it, were they?
“And he had a hearing aid in his right ear!” I whispered conspiratorially on my way out, just in case the man’s name, address and phone number in their hands was not enough to lead them directly to him.
“Hearing aid, right ear,” said my cop to his partner. Ha! Result.
To date, my only other brush with the law took place in the five star Beverly Wilshire Hotel, when I was witness to a local hooker throwing a dish of wasabi nuts (“That’s W-A-S-A-B-I”) at a man who had accused her of, er, being a hooker. Naturally, I had had a front row seat and saw everything. At this rate, I might soon have to ask for witness protection.
Or maybe not. Instinct tells me that next time, I should keep my gob shut and let the cops get on with their job. I just don’t envy the staff in Cardiff next time I visit my local Vodafone shop, as I’ve picked up a lot of tips to get myself to the front of the queue.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
I was standing patiently, waiting to make my own complaint. It’s become something of a habit there. The first time I complained about my i-Phone, which I still think is the worst toy ever to have been produced. I swopped it for a Blackberry, but had to take that back, too, because the red message indicator didn’t light up.
I was supposed to have received a $100 rebate after buying the Blackberry, but when it never arrived I went back to complain. That was six weeks after the purchase. They told me to come back after eight, hence my presence in the shop.
The violent man, who must have been about 103, was quite well dressed, speaking with a German accent, and wearing a hearing-aid. He was also shouting very, very loudly. They had been happy enough to take his money, he screamed, but now they wouldn’t do anything to help him. Nein! (Okay, maybe I imagined that bit).
The female assistant was nonchalant, to say the least. She never even looked at him, didn’t seem to be listening and, as his voice escalated, just fingered his receipt.
Then she called the cops.
Oh, yes. They really don’t mess around in Beverly Hills. Apparently, if you ever want to get anyone off your back, you just have to say four words: “I’m calling the cops.” Not only is your botherer gone within the first five seconds, the cops arrive within the next five.
And there they were. Already outside. But my war criminal (naturally, I had built up a little story around him, in which I had made a citizen’s arrest on a Goebbels-type monster hiding in the Hollywood Hills) had fled.
The cops started asking the assistant questions, and by now I was at the front of the queue and able to eavesdrop. How old was he? She reckoned in his seventies; no, sixties, contradicted the male assistant. Weight? She reckoned 190 lbs. No, no, no, said the male: 160.
They were hopeless! Whereas I, who had been watching the whole scene, had taken in every single detail. As I would in the UK, I felt it my citizen’s duty to add my two penneth.
“Was he bigger than me?” the very plump cop asked.
Yes, said the assistant.
“No, no he wasn’t,” I chirruped. “He was actually quite slight . . . And nowhere near 160lbs even . . . And . . . “
“We’re askin’ them,” said the cop.
I was crestfallen. In the UK, the butcher, the baker and candlestick maker would, by now, all have gathered from neighbouring shops, each to give their own account of what they had heard (or not) or seen (definitely not).
En masse, we would have retired to a bar to mull over the details, united in citizen solidarity against the ever-increasing tide of violent crime.
Yet here I was, being told to keep my nose out: I, the only proper witness, who had taken in every single morsel of the man, and who, for goodness sake, as a writer, did this for a living.
The cops weren’t like this on CSI or Law and Order. Witnesses were forever stepping over barriers they had been told not to cross in order to fill the cops in on missing bits of information that might prove useful. Next thing, they were dating the cop they had spoken to, before being shot in the chest and dying, ensuring that the cop continued to live out the rest of his days in loneliness and misery. But I digress.
The assistant went on to say that the man had said he would come back and shoot a couple of people; then, that he would definitely come back and shoot her. What had been his complaint, the cops asked.
Wait for it: the phone his friend had bought the day before did not have Bluetooth and was incompatible with the equipment in his car. Oh, ye gods! Hand me that Magnum.
My own complaint took just five seconds, as I was handed a phone number to call about my rebate. “But I was told to come back to the store,” I tried, as a delaying tactic, hoping to chip in again with a bit more info.
“No, just call that number.”
I thought I had better apologise to the cops for what was clearly a breach of criminal etiquette. “I’m really sorry,” I said, “but I saw it all when nobody else was looking . . . “
“That’s fine, ma’am.”
They just weren’t getting it, were they?
“And he had a hearing aid in his right ear!” I whispered conspiratorially on my way out, just in case the man’s name, address and phone number in their hands was not enough to lead them directly to him.
“Hearing aid, right ear,” said my cop to his partner. Ha! Result.
To date, my only other brush with the law took place in the five star Beverly Wilshire Hotel, when I was witness to a local hooker throwing a dish of wasabi nuts (“That’s W-A-S-A-B-I”) at a man who had accused her of, er, being a hooker. Naturally, I had had a front row seat and saw everything. At this rate, I might soon have to ask for witness protection.
Or maybe not. Instinct tells me that next time, I should keep my gob shut and let the cops get on with their job. I just don’t envy the staff in Cardiff next time I visit my local Vodafone shop, as I’ve picked up a lot of tips to get myself to the front of the queue.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Victoria's Secret Is Out 7/6/09
I’ve always wondered exactly what Victoria’s Secret was. Now I know.
She has never worn any underwear.
Having just visited the LA store of the same name, it is the only conclusion I can reach. Had I been a hippo in the bra section, or a weasel in the knickers section, there is a chance the garments might have looked halfway decent on me; but as a relatively normal shaped woman, I could not have looked more ridiculous had I strapped myself upside down to a giraffe on roller skates.
I confess to not having worn a bra for over 20 years, and no knickers for 10. It’s not that I’ve been trying to make a statement; just that owing to my broad back, bras always felt uncomfortable and left me with scars; as for knickers: well, did they get smaller, or did I just get bigger?
I suspect that my aversion to bras is because my first one was so small, a couple of contact lenses would have done the job just as well. It was a 28AA white lace doily thing that Mum bought from Marks and Spencer, and I was utterly embarrassed.
My friend Pat had been the first girl in the school to need a bra, and we had all gathered round at break to admire the aircraft hangar it undoubtedly was, so I knew that I was painfully inadequate in that department. I felt rather sorry for Pat’s mother, who must have spent an entire week’s grocery bill on the monstrosity needed to house her daughter’s growing mammaries.
I stopped wearing them round about the age of 30, but as I have been contemplating having a boob job in California, thought I might try something a little less drastic first. Having lost over 2 stone, and now weighing just 7 stone 6 (104 lbs), I fantasised about slipping into the sexiest cups that would instantly transform my 50 year old chest into that of a buxom, desirable 23 year old, and set off for the Victoria’s Secret sale with high hopes.
The last bra I bought cost about £2.99, so a $19.99 reduced price tag didn’t seem much of a bargain to me. Heck, a boob job suddenly looked like the cheapest option. I didn’t even know what size I was. The last time I was measured I was a 36B, and thought that with my weight loss I must be down at least to a 34B.
I rummaged around in the 34B section and came up with a corset type thing, a camel type thing (the animal, not the colour), and a tiger print thing (ditto). I have to call them things because they bore no resemblance to any bra I have ever seen. When I went to try them on, I had to perform my own manual surgery just to cover myself; even then, I looked like two ladles left to melt in a pan of boiling fondue.
I called the assistant, who suggested I try 36B; that meant I would be back where I was 20 years ago, which really depressed me. Not as much as when I asked her to measure me, though, and she declared me to be a 34C: not, it transpired, because I had grown in cup size, but because half my cup had transmogrified and was now well on its way to my back, via my underarms. Only the promise of a dam in which to contain it again seemed likely to convince it to return, and so off the assistant went in search of 36C.
The not very nice bras on offer at 34B were a veritable Impressionist exhibition up against the Salvador Dalis available at 36C. God, they were gross. Gross colours, gross fabrics, gross shapes. Had they been breathing, you would have taken them to the vet to be put out of their misery.
I had been contemplating a D cup, if and when I decided to go under the knife; but as I gathered up my underarm flesh and scooped it into the C cup, I thought that if I could just push a bit up from my now rather loose stomach, I would have enough not only to compensate for a boob job, but top-ups that would sustain the illusion for about the next ten years.
I didn’t even bother looking at the knicker sale, which looked to me like a dental floss convention.
I’m rather depressed about it all. When I was fatter, I had a great, smooth bottom; now, it has so many folds and creases, I could re-market it as a book. My once quite decent breasts are now barely bigger than my ears, and not anywhere near as pert. The reason I stopped wearing underwear in the first place was because nothing fitted me; now I’m thin, and it still doesn’t.
If Victoria has a secret, I’d like to know about it. Because from where I’m sagging, there’s no mystery.
She has never worn any underwear.
Having just visited the LA store of the same name, it is the only conclusion I can reach. Had I been a hippo in the bra section, or a weasel in the knickers section, there is a chance the garments might have looked halfway decent on me; but as a relatively normal shaped woman, I could not have looked more ridiculous had I strapped myself upside down to a giraffe on roller skates.
I confess to not having worn a bra for over 20 years, and no knickers for 10. It’s not that I’ve been trying to make a statement; just that owing to my broad back, bras always felt uncomfortable and left me with scars; as for knickers: well, did they get smaller, or did I just get bigger?
I suspect that my aversion to bras is because my first one was so small, a couple of contact lenses would have done the job just as well. It was a 28AA white lace doily thing that Mum bought from Marks and Spencer, and I was utterly embarrassed.
My friend Pat had been the first girl in the school to need a bra, and we had all gathered round at break to admire the aircraft hangar it undoubtedly was, so I knew that I was painfully inadequate in that department. I felt rather sorry for Pat’s mother, who must have spent an entire week’s grocery bill on the monstrosity needed to house her daughter’s growing mammaries.
I stopped wearing them round about the age of 30, but as I have been contemplating having a boob job in California, thought I might try something a little less drastic first. Having lost over 2 stone, and now weighing just 7 stone 6 (104 lbs), I fantasised about slipping into the sexiest cups that would instantly transform my 50 year old chest into that of a buxom, desirable 23 year old, and set off for the Victoria’s Secret sale with high hopes.
The last bra I bought cost about £2.99, so a $19.99 reduced price tag didn’t seem much of a bargain to me. Heck, a boob job suddenly looked like the cheapest option. I didn’t even know what size I was. The last time I was measured I was a 36B, and thought that with my weight loss I must be down at least to a 34B.
I rummaged around in the 34B section and came up with a corset type thing, a camel type thing (the animal, not the colour), and a tiger print thing (ditto). I have to call them things because they bore no resemblance to any bra I have ever seen. When I went to try them on, I had to perform my own manual surgery just to cover myself; even then, I looked like two ladles left to melt in a pan of boiling fondue.
I called the assistant, who suggested I try 36B; that meant I would be back where I was 20 years ago, which really depressed me. Not as much as when I asked her to measure me, though, and she declared me to be a 34C: not, it transpired, because I had grown in cup size, but because half my cup had transmogrified and was now well on its way to my back, via my underarms. Only the promise of a dam in which to contain it again seemed likely to convince it to return, and so off the assistant went in search of 36C.
The not very nice bras on offer at 34B were a veritable Impressionist exhibition up against the Salvador Dalis available at 36C. God, they were gross. Gross colours, gross fabrics, gross shapes. Had they been breathing, you would have taken them to the vet to be put out of their misery.
I had been contemplating a D cup, if and when I decided to go under the knife; but as I gathered up my underarm flesh and scooped it into the C cup, I thought that if I could just push a bit up from my now rather loose stomach, I would have enough not only to compensate for a boob job, but top-ups that would sustain the illusion for about the next ten years.
I didn’t even bother looking at the knicker sale, which looked to me like a dental floss convention.
I’m rather depressed about it all. When I was fatter, I had a great, smooth bottom; now, it has so many folds and creases, I could re-market it as a book. My once quite decent breasts are now barely bigger than my ears, and not anywhere near as pert. The reason I stopped wearing underwear in the first place was because nothing fitted me; now I’m thin, and it still doesn’t.
If Victoria has a secret, I’d like to know about it. Because from where I’m sagging, there’s no mystery.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Not Quite Ready For My Close-Up 6/29/09
When did going to the cinema get so complicated? What happened to the moth-eaten curtains opening and closing before the film began? What happened to Kia Ora, Pearl and Dean commercials, and usherettes carrying melting choc-ices in their hanging baskets?
I admit to having gone to the cinema just three times in the past 20 years. Because I get everything sent to me on DVD and watch it, courtesy of Bafta, alone at home, I’ve become a bit of a recluse when it comes to leaving the house for my entertainment.
The last film I went out to see was nearly 10 years ago, and it was a press showing of The Matrix that I went to with my then boyfriend. I don’t know which was longer: the film or the seven-month relationship. But I know that I prayed with equal longing for both to end – with a bullet to my head, if needs be.
I went to see Sixth Sense round about the same time and didn’t enjoy that, either. People had told me there was a brilliant twist at the end, but as I had spent the whole film assuming that Dr Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) was dead (Oh, come on: anyone who had seen Ghost must have known that from then on, dead didn’t mean dead in movieland), I thought that the twist might be that he had been alive all along.
When a character spends two hours speaking to no-one but a child who sees dead people, even the dumbest person has to start asking why. My boyfriend didn’t, which is yet another reason why he’s an ex.
Before that, the last time I went to the cinema was in 1990, when I saw The Godfather III. That, too, turned out to be a rather chequered experience. I saw it in Cardiff’s Queen Street, in a venue that had just imposed a non-smoking policy. I took no time at all, therefore, in complaining about a man who lit up barely ten minutes into the film.
When he was asked to put out his cigarette out and refused, staff (clearly inspired by having spent the week seeing how the Mafia operated) called the cops, and, within the minute, three armed officers arrived to evict him. They didn’t mess around in Cardiff.
Living in the heart of movieland, and also now trying to write my own script, it seemed only logical to start hitting the cinema again.
Although I watched dozens of films before I did my writing course here, and have watched possibly more television over 20 years than anyone in the world, there is nothing quite like the experience of the lights going down in the cinema, knowing that your life is untouchable for the next couple of hours; and continuing to keep real life on hold when you emerge into daylight, carrying the fictional world with you and nursing it secretly, in the warmth of your heart, for hours afterwards.
Everywhere you look in LA is a reminder of the city’s great cinematic tradition. I can see the Hollywood sign on the hill from my apartment block; enormous billboards scream about the latest releases in all the shopping malls; everyone’s conversation on which you eavesdrop appears to be littered with the words “picture”, “deal”, “script”, or “contract”. “Tell Jerry/Sam/Steve to call me” is a familiar refrain that leaves you longing to know whether Jerry, Sam or Steve ever will, or whether they, too, are destined to enter the great ether of unknowns that is as vast as it is real.
I had wanted to see The Hangover for some weeks, but having walked to the Beverly Centre a couple of miles away and discovered that it was not showing, lost interest; but this week, after a long work-out and an even longer walk, I finally made it to Century City, where The Hangover was showing in not just one, but two cinemas. And, more to the point, two of 13 other cinemas, all housed under one roof.
“Next guest, please,” said a girl behind glass as I stood in line. Guest? I was a guest? Not just a punter whose money they were glad to take, before thankfully shutting up shop at the end of the night? Sure enough: a great big neon sign above her head indicated that this was the place for Guests to purchase their tickets. I already felt rather special. Heck, they know how to treat people in this country.
They know how to feed them, too. Outside the Guest ticketing area, there is an outdoor dining terrace that, during the summer, shows films. In the adjoining complex, there are loads of restaurants and cafes serving food from about 20 countries that you can – get this – TAKE INTO THE CINEMA WITH YOU.
In London, there are small cinemas that allow you to take in alcoholic drinks and that serve food while you sit around on sofas (the Electric in Notting Hill started this small revolution), but I don’t think that there are any larger complexes that have caught on to the idea of your being allowed in to eat your supper on your lap.
One of the reasons I have always hated the cinema is that I can’t abide the smell of popcorn, and am even more averse to people crunching it around me when I am trying to concentrate, so I wasn’t sure how I would feel about having to contend with the conflicting smells of burgers, pizza and noodles. But if there is one thing I have learned in life, it is that your irritation levels drop substantially if you do exactly the same as the very people who are setting off your irritation.
So, off I went to purchase my burger and fries takeaway. Having been on a vegetarian diet and drinking copious amounts of carrot juice for three months, I figured that after my strenuous day’s exercise and no other food, it wouldn’t hit the waistline too hard.
“Buffalo?” said the sales assistant.
“No, beefburger,” I said.
“Yeah, but you want buffalo?”
My Welsh accent makes it difficult for people to understand me in LA, and so I resort to doing what Brits do when they go to Europe and can’t speak the language: I speak very loudly and very slowly.
“I – DO – NOT – WANT – A – BUFFALO – BURGER - I – WOULD – LIKE – A – NORMAL – BEEFBURGER.”
“Yeah, I get yer. But yer want buffalo?”
What was it with this damned buffalo? Had they had a job lot delivered by mistake? “BEEF! I – WANT – BEEF. YOU – GOT – ANY – BEEF?”
“Sure we got beef. We got beefburgers. But we only got buffalo size.”
“Oh, I see!” I finally twigged and therefore resumed normal speech patterns. “It’s beef, but buffalo size. Er, how big is buffalo?”
“It’s about this size,” she said, making a gesture that seemed as if she would have to acquire arm extensions to give the buffalo full credit for its enormity.”
“Okay! I’ll have the burger, buffalo size.” Finally, we were getting somewhere. “And I’ll have fries with that.”
“You want the combo meal, with a drink, too?”
Oh, why the hell not. By now I was losing the will to live, let alone eat, and praying that the film would not be (a) this long, or (b) this complicated.
“Yes, please. Why not.”
“How you want your meat cooked?” Eh? I get the choice of how I want my meat cooked? At a burger bar? I figured the buffalo might take some cooking, so said: “Well done.”
I was there another 20 minutes and had finished my Diet Coke by the time the buffalo arrived. They re-filled my cup to say sorry (they are also incredibly efficient at putting things right when they go wrong here). I don’t normally drink fizzy, sugary drinks, even low calorie ones – especially low calorie ones, as I am ever mindful of the observation that only fat people drink Diet Coke, but as it was free I gratefully took it.
Once I had added all the freebies from the salad bar to the buffalo (onions, two kinds of chilli peppers, salsa, jalapeno cheese, ketchup, tomatoes), I looked as if I was going on vacation when I finally made it into the cinema.
There was a big warning beforehand, on a soundtrack that included mobile phones and babies crying: it instructed people not to bring their own soundtrack with them, and I opened my case of beef as quietly as I could, only saying “Shit!” out loud once, as the juice from a chilli spurted all over my clothes when I bit into it.
My first job as a teenager was as a cinema usherette. I was paid £4 an hour in Bridgend’s Embassy Cinema, and was instructed to add a couple of pence onto each sale and keep quiet about it, because the manager was creaming the profit off the management.
The enormous basket hurt my neck, and although I thought this would be a small price to pay in return for being able to watch films for free, I discovered that there was no pleasure in seeing anything in instalments over one or two weeks. I saw The Towering Inferno 22 times, and by the end of it would happily have set fire to the Embassy cinema, had I the means.
The Hangover was considerably more pleasurable, and I would willingly see it 22 times; in fact, I think I might. Hilarious, beautifully and tightly written, I thought that sitting there, stuffing my face with buffalo and chilli, I was the happiest I had been in years.
Unlike British audiences, who talk throughout whole movies, the Americans were totally gripped throughout. Maybe it was because their mouths were too crammed with their supper to be able to talk, but they made great company. They went “Ahh” when a character was being treated badly; they laughed at every single funny line; they had their hands clasped to their mouths during a hair-raising car-chase. They had clearly gone to the movie to watch the movie, and that’s what they did.
I left the movie theater having acquired, amongst much else, the ability to say (and spell) “movie” and “movie theater” – essential tools, given that people had looked at me blankly when I asked where the films or cinema were on my way there. I also felt totally exhilarated and high on the whole experience and wondered why on Earth it had taken me so many years to get back to watching movies on the big screen.
Now, I think I really am ready for my close-up.
I admit to having gone to the cinema just three times in the past 20 years. Because I get everything sent to me on DVD and watch it, courtesy of Bafta, alone at home, I’ve become a bit of a recluse when it comes to leaving the house for my entertainment.
The last film I went out to see was nearly 10 years ago, and it was a press showing of The Matrix that I went to with my then boyfriend. I don’t know which was longer: the film or the seven-month relationship. But I know that I prayed with equal longing for both to end – with a bullet to my head, if needs be.
I went to see Sixth Sense round about the same time and didn’t enjoy that, either. People had told me there was a brilliant twist at the end, but as I had spent the whole film assuming that Dr Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) was dead (Oh, come on: anyone who had seen Ghost must have known that from then on, dead didn’t mean dead in movieland), I thought that the twist might be that he had been alive all along.
When a character spends two hours speaking to no-one but a child who sees dead people, even the dumbest person has to start asking why. My boyfriend didn’t, which is yet another reason why he’s an ex.
Before that, the last time I went to the cinema was in 1990, when I saw The Godfather III. That, too, turned out to be a rather chequered experience. I saw it in Cardiff’s Queen Street, in a venue that had just imposed a non-smoking policy. I took no time at all, therefore, in complaining about a man who lit up barely ten minutes into the film.
When he was asked to put out his cigarette out and refused, staff (clearly inspired by having spent the week seeing how the Mafia operated) called the cops, and, within the minute, three armed officers arrived to evict him. They didn’t mess around in Cardiff.
Living in the heart of movieland, and also now trying to write my own script, it seemed only logical to start hitting the cinema again.
Although I watched dozens of films before I did my writing course here, and have watched possibly more television over 20 years than anyone in the world, there is nothing quite like the experience of the lights going down in the cinema, knowing that your life is untouchable for the next couple of hours; and continuing to keep real life on hold when you emerge into daylight, carrying the fictional world with you and nursing it secretly, in the warmth of your heart, for hours afterwards.
Everywhere you look in LA is a reminder of the city’s great cinematic tradition. I can see the Hollywood sign on the hill from my apartment block; enormous billboards scream about the latest releases in all the shopping malls; everyone’s conversation on which you eavesdrop appears to be littered with the words “picture”, “deal”, “script”, or “contract”. “Tell Jerry/Sam/Steve to call me” is a familiar refrain that leaves you longing to know whether Jerry, Sam or Steve ever will, or whether they, too, are destined to enter the great ether of unknowns that is as vast as it is real.
I had wanted to see The Hangover for some weeks, but having walked to the Beverly Centre a couple of miles away and discovered that it was not showing, lost interest; but this week, after a long work-out and an even longer walk, I finally made it to Century City, where The Hangover was showing in not just one, but two cinemas. And, more to the point, two of 13 other cinemas, all housed under one roof.
“Next guest, please,” said a girl behind glass as I stood in line. Guest? I was a guest? Not just a punter whose money they were glad to take, before thankfully shutting up shop at the end of the night? Sure enough: a great big neon sign above her head indicated that this was the place for Guests to purchase their tickets. I already felt rather special. Heck, they know how to treat people in this country.
They know how to feed them, too. Outside the Guest ticketing area, there is an outdoor dining terrace that, during the summer, shows films. In the adjoining complex, there are loads of restaurants and cafes serving food from about 20 countries that you can – get this – TAKE INTO THE CINEMA WITH YOU.
In London, there are small cinemas that allow you to take in alcoholic drinks and that serve food while you sit around on sofas (the Electric in Notting Hill started this small revolution), but I don’t think that there are any larger complexes that have caught on to the idea of your being allowed in to eat your supper on your lap.
One of the reasons I have always hated the cinema is that I can’t abide the smell of popcorn, and am even more averse to people crunching it around me when I am trying to concentrate, so I wasn’t sure how I would feel about having to contend with the conflicting smells of burgers, pizza and noodles. But if there is one thing I have learned in life, it is that your irritation levels drop substantially if you do exactly the same as the very people who are setting off your irritation.
So, off I went to purchase my burger and fries takeaway. Having been on a vegetarian diet and drinking copious amounts of carrot juice for three months, I figured that after my strenuous day’s exercise and no other food, it wouldn’t hit the waistline too hard.
“Buffalo?” said the sales assistant.
“No, beefburger,” I said.
“Yeah, but you want buffalo?”
My Welsh accent makes it difficult for people to understand me in LA, and so I resort to doing what Brits do when they go to Europe and can’t speak the language: I speak very loudly and very slowly.
“I – DO – NOT – WANT – A – BUFFALO – BURGER - I – WOULD – LIKE – A – NORMAL – BEEFBURGER.”
“Yeah, I get yer. But yer want buffalo?”
What was it with this damned buffalo? Had they had a job lot delivered by mistake? “BEEF! I – WANT – BEEF. YOU – GOT – ANY – BEEF?”
“Sure we got beef. We got beefburgers. But we only got buffalo size.”
“Oh, I see!” I finally twigged and therefore resumed normal speech patterns. “It’s beef, but buffalo size. Er, how big is buffalo?”
“It’s about this size,” she said, making a gesture that seemed as if she would have to acquire arm extensions to give the buffalo full credit for its enormity.”
“Okay! I’ll have the burger, buffalo size.” Finally, we were getting somewhere. “And I’ll have fries with that.”
“You want the combo meal, with a drink, too?”
Oh, why the hell not. By now I was losing the will to live, let alone eat, and praying that the film would not be (a) this long, or (b) this complicated.
“Yes, please. Why not.”
“How you want your meat cooked?” Eh? I get the choice of how I want my meat cooked? At a burger bar? I figured the buffalo might take some cooking, so said: “Well done.”
I was there another 20 minutes and had finished my Diet Coke by the time the buffalo arrived. They re-filled my cup to say sorry (they are also incredibly efficient at putting things right when they go wrong here). I don’t normally drink fizzy, sugary drinks, even low calorie ones – especially low calorie ones, as I am ever mindful of the observation that only fat people drink Diet Coke, but as it was free I gratefully took it.
Once I had added all the freebies from the salad bar to the buffalo (onions, two kinds of chilli peppers, salsa, jalapeno cheese, ketchup, tomatoes), I looked as if I was going on vacation when I finally made it into the cinema.
There was a big warning beforehand, on a soundtrack that included mobile phones and babies crying: it instructed people not to bring their own soundtrack with them, and I opened my case of beef as quietly as I could, only saying “Shit!” out loud once, as the juice from a chilli spurted all over my clothes when I bit into it.
My first job as a teenager was as a cinema usherette. I was paid £4 an hour in Bridgend’s Embassy Cinema, and was instructed to add a couple of pence onto each sale and keep quiet about it, because the manager was creaming the profit off the management.
The enormous basket hurt my neck, and although I thought this would be a small price to pay in return for being able to watch films for free, I discovered that there was no pleasure in seeing anything in instalments over one or two weeks. I saw The Towering Inferno 22 times, and by the end of it would happily have set fire to the Embassy cinema, had I the means.
The Hangover was considerably more pleasurable, and I would willingly see it 22 times; in fact, I think I might. Hilarious, beautifully and tightly written, I thought that sitting there, stuffing my face with buffalo and chilli, I was the happiest I had been in years.
Unlike British audiences, who talk throughout whole movies, the Americans were totally gripped throughout. Maybe it was because their mouths were too crammed with their supper to be able to talk, but they made great company. They went “Ahh” when a character was being treated badly; they laughed at every single funny line; they had their hands clasped to their mouths during a hair-raising car-chase. They had clearly gone to the movie to watch the movie, and that’s what they did.
I left the movie theater having acquired, amongst much else, the ability to say (and spell) “movie” and “movie theater” – essential tools, given that people had looked at me blankly when I asked where the films or cinema were on my way there. I also felt totally exhilarated and high on the whole experience and wondered why on Earth it had taken me so many years to get back to watching movies on the big screen.
Now, I think I really am ready for my close-up.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Jeff Goldblum - My Part In His Resurrection
Giant black poodles do not make the best guide dogs for the blind. That was what I learned this week as the world came to terms with the death of Michael Jackson. A strange combination of events, you have to admit, but life does get increasingly more strange here.
The Jackson news came when I was on the treadmill at the gym, where I had been watching it on NBC, Fox and CNN. When I managed to find a channel that wasn’t showing the event, I managed to tune in to a commercial that just so happened to have Jackson singing I’ll Be There on it. Well, not anymore he wasn’t.
That was my own private thought, shortly before jokes started clogging up my Blackberry. But this "humour" felt like something unreal taking place in a dreadful hole of incredible shock. Other jokes quickly followed. “And he looked so well” said one. “He’s re-releasing the Thriller video in six weeks’ time” said another. All inappropriate, but a reflex reaction.
I felt desperately sad. I grew up with Jackson at the centre of my pop world, and although Donny Osmond was my great love, no one can take away the huge impact Jackson's music, not to mention his influence regarding the recognition of black artists (or blacks in general, come to that), has had upon the world. Too young. Too soon.
I had moved to the stepper by the time the next bit of news arrived, again on a friend’s text: “And now Jeff Goldblum. Found him on his back with his legs in the air.”
I’m not a big fan of jokes about people who have only just touched down the wrong side of rigor mortis, but had let it pass with Jacko because when I was 14, my mother decided to give me an afro perm so that I would look like him.
His hairdo was, at the time (well, according to my mother), the height of fashion. I sat through double history in school (How could you, Mum? A schoolday, too?), with my duffle coat hood up, sobbing my heart out. At lunchtime I went home and made her take it out with the same level of peroxide that she had put the dastardly thing in with.
But Goldblum? What? Had he died? How? Had he been ill? And what was there to laugh about if he had? (I hadn’t ever seen him in The Fly, so didn’t get the joke anyway).
I met him a few months ago, when we both appeared on Richard and Judy, although not together, alas. He was on with Kevin Spacey to talk about Speed the Plow, in which they were starring at the Old Vic. I was on to talk about a highly destructive relationship I had once had with one of my school-teachers.
“So, you shagged a teacher!” the ever- sensitive Richard Madeley said, as I walked into the studio (Actually, I hadn't, and it was a lot more complicated than that, but heck, they who appear on daytime telly must die by its sword).
Jeff Goldblum putting his arm around me more than made up for it, and it was my knowing that he practised Transcendental Meditation that subsequently sent me back to it. I learned the technique years ago, but had let it lapse; the stress of trying to find 20 minutes to meditate at the end of each day nearly gave me a coronary; but now, in tandem with my new healthy lifestyle, I make sure I fit it in, and it has once more lowered my blood pressure to normal levels.
Of course, it rocketed to high heaven when I heard of Mr Goldblum’s “death”, so swings and roundabouts and all that.
On top of his being my inspiration to seek meditative calm, Mr Goldblum is the new face on Law and Order: Criminal Intent, and his comic timing and charisma have sent this series soaring to even greater heights.
In fact, I was in the process of writing him a fan letter, saying as such, last week. So news of his demise literally threw me off the stepper in tearful shock.
And yet no one could substantiate it. Google said that the New Zealand police had (at that point) confirmed the news (which they hadn’t); and every single US channel was still covering Jackson’s death.
In Britain, our broadcasters would have been among the crowd, just so happening to find the tallest, slimmest, blonde female mourner, to say what the star meant to her. They would instantly have started speculating about the amounts of medication that might have led to the death. In the US, they stuck to the facts – and it was boring as hell. Acres and acres of footage from concerts, and that Thriller video, over and over and over again.
When Britain woke up, my friends, who clearly have no conception of the size of Los Angeles, assumed I must be among the throng, if not already choosing my hat for the funeral. “It must be amazing there,” they texted. Er, pretty much like every day, actually, apart from not being able to find anything decent on the telly.
Others suggested it was a bit strange that since my arrival in LA, the showbiz world had lost Michael Jackson, Farah Fawcett and Jeff Goldblum.
They had not yet heard the confirmation that Mr Goldblum was very much alive and that the whole thing had been an internet hoax. Pretty damned sick, I call it. Also, Kevin Spacey had Twittered to put everyone straight and asked people to stop spreading rumours – the ultimate irony, on a site by its very nature designed to spread information as quickly as possible.
With my new best friend Jeff resurrected from the dead, I woke with a light heart on Friday, but that damned Thriller video was still on every channel. I tried to get away from it and went to the gym again, but it was still hogging the news channels on the equipment TVs, and it was also on the changing room telly, too. Yet it was still so hard to take it in.
At least you can always get a bit of peace in the pool, because they play classical music in there. But no sooner had I landed in the water than a blind lady arrived with her guide dog (a black poodle the size of a horse), plonked him by the side of the pool and left him there while she went in for some exercises.
Now, I have the utmost sympathy for anyone with any sort of disability getting some exercise; and I love dogs. But this damned poodle barked. And barked. And barked. And barked. I swam 50 lengths that took me 45 minutes, and still the creature was at it every time the water moved, which, with all eight lanes filled, you can imagine was pretty often.
I thought that after 24 hours of non-stop Thriller (and I really used to like it), the dying throes of a hyena would have been music to my ears, but a poodle is no golden labrador when it comes to guarding its blind.
Finally, I could stand it no more and ventured off to the steam room. After ten minutes, I thought I would rest for a bit in the Jacuzzi. No chance. The damned dog had moved to the Jacuzzi area and stood guarding it with Alcatraz-like enthusiasm. A naked woman started to go down the stops, but our curly friend was having none of it, barked wildly, and the breasts never even made it to the first bubble.
“They’ll be bringing in their tigers next,” moaned a woman in the dressing room, which just made me wonder what sort of company she kept of an evening.
Still, at least Jeff Goldblum was alive and well and living in Los Angeles, and, being awake while Britain slept, I was one of the first to be able to start telling everyone. I texted. I phoned. I e-mailed. It was the very opposite of that bizarre, secret pleasure one has, when breaking news of a death to people who are not yet in the know.
Jeff Goldblum is alive!
I could shout it from the rooftops. Best of all, nobody was singing about it.
The Jackson news came when I was on the treadmill at the gym, where I had been watching it on NBC, Fox and CNN. When I managed to find a channel that wasn’t showing the event, I managed to tune in to a commercial that just so happened to have Jackson singing I’ll Be There on it. Well, not anymore he wasn’t.
That was my own private thought, shortly before jokes started clogging up my Blackberry. But this "humour" felt like something unreal taking place in a dreadful hole of incredible shock. Other jokes quickly followed. “And he looked so well” said one. “He’s re-releasing the Thriller video in six weeks’ time” said another. All inappropriate, but a reflex reaction.
I felt desperately sad. I grew up with Jackson at the centre of my pop world, and although Donny Osmond was my great love, no one can take away the huge impact Jackson's music, not to mention his influence regarding the recognition of black artists (or blacks in general, come to that), has had upon the world. Too young. Too soon.
I had moved to the stepper by the time the next bit of news arrived, again on a friend’s text: “And now Jeff Goldblum. Found him on his back with his legs in the air.”
I’m not a big fan of jokes about people who have only just touched down the wrong side of rigor mortis, but had let it pass with Jacko because when I was 14, my mother decided to give me an afro perm so that I would look like him.
His hairdo was, at the time (well, according to my mother), the height of fashion. I sat through double history in school (How could you, Mum? A schoolday, too?), with my duffle coat hood up, sobbing my heart out. At lunchtime I went home and made her take it out with the same level of peroxide that she had put the dastardly thing in with.
But Goldblum? What? Had he died? How? Had he been ill? And what was there to laugh about if he had? (I hadn’t ever seen him in The Fly, so didn’t get the joke anyway).
I met him a few months ago, when we both appeared on Richard and Judy, although not together, alas. He was on with Kevin Spacey to talk about Speed the Plow, in which they were starring at the Old Vic. I was on to talk about a highly destructive relationship I had once had with one of my school-teachers.
“So, you shagged a teacher!” the ever- sensitive Richard Madeley said, as I walked into the studio (Actually, I hadn't, and it was a lot more complicated than that, but heck, they who appear on daytime telly must die by its sword).
Jeff Goldblum putting his arm around me more than made up for it, and it was my knowing that he practised Transcendental Meditation that subsequently sent me back to it. I learned the technique years ago, but had let it lapse; the stress of trying to find 20 minutes to meditate at the end of each day nearly gave me a coronary; but now, in tandem with my new healthy lifestyle, I make sure I fit it in, and it has once more lowered my blood pressure to normal levels.
Of course, it rocketed to high heaven when I heard of Mr Goldblum’s “death”, so swings and roundabouts and all that.
On top of his being my inspiration to seek meditative calm, Mr Goldblum is the new face on Law and Order: Criminal Intent, and his comic timing and charisma have sent this series soaring to even greater heights.
In fact, I was in the process of writing him a fan letter, saying as such, last week. So news of his demise literally threw me off the stepper in tearful shock.
And yet no one could substantiate it. Google said that the New Zealand police had (at that point) confirmed the news (which they hadn’t); and every single US channel was still covering Jackson’s death.
In Britain, our broadcasters would have been among the crowd, just so happening to find the tallest, slimmest, blonde female mourner, to say what the star meant to her. They would instantly have started speculating about the amounts of medication that might have led to the death. In the US, they stuck to the facts – and it was boring as hell. Acres and acres of footage from concerts, and that Thriller video, over and over and over again.
When Britain woke up, my friends, who clearly have no conception of the size of Los Angeles, assumed I must be among the throng, if not already choosing my hat for the funeral. “It must be amazing there,” they texted. Er, pretty much like every day, actually, apart from not being able to find anything decent on the telly.
Others suggested it was a bit strange that since my arrival in LA, the showbiz world had lost Michael Jackson, Farah Fawcett and Jeff Goldblum.
They had not yet heard the confirmation that Mr Goldblum was very much alive and that the whole thing had been an internet hoax. Pretty damned sick, I call it. Also, Kevin Spacey had Twittered to put everyone straight and asked people to stop spreading rumours – the ultimate irony, on a site by its very nature designed to spread information as quickly as possible.
With my new best friend Jeff resurrected from the dead, I woke with a light heart on Friday, but that damned Thriller video was still on every channel. I tried to get away from it and went to the gym again, but it was still hogging the news channels on the equipment TVs, and it was also on the changing room telly, too. Yet it was still so hard to take it in.
At least you can always get a bit of peace in the pool, because they play classical music in there. But no sooner had I landed in the water than a blind lady arrived with her guide dog (a black poodle the size of a horse), plonked him by the side of the pool and left him there while she went in for some exercises.
Now, I have the utmost sympathy for anyone with any sort of disability getting some exercise; and I love dogs. But this damned poodle barked. And barked. And barked. And barked. I swam 50 lengths that took me 45 minutes, and still the creature was at it every time the water moved, which, with all eight lanes filled, you can imagine was pretty often.
I thought that after 24 hours of non-stop Thriller (and I really used to like it), the dying throes of a hyena would have been music to my ears, but a poodle is no golden labrador when it comes to guarding its blind.
Finally, I could stand it no more and ventured off to the steam room. After ten minutes, I thought I would rest for a bit in the Jacuzzi. No chance. The damned dog had moved to the Jacuzzi area and stood guarding it with Alcatraz-like enthusiasm. A naked woman started to go down the stops, but our curly friend was having none of it, barked wildly, and the breasts never even made it to the first bubble.
“They’ll be bringing in their tigers next,” moaned a woman in the dressing room, which just made me wonder what sort of company she kept of an evening.
Still, at least Jeff Goldblum was alive and well and living in Los Angeles, and, being awake while Britain slept, I was one of the first to be able to start telling everyone. I texted. I phoned. I e-mailed. It was the very opposite of that bizarre, secret pleasure one has, when breaking news of a death to people who are not yet in the know.
Jeff Goldblum is alive!
I could shout it from the rooftops. Best of all, nobody was singing about it.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
The Future's Not Bright Or Orange 6/23/09
What a lot of psychics there are in LA. You would think that they would have had the foresight to know that opening up three doors away from a rival isn’t going to be good business; but if you walk to West Hollywood or, as I did today, back from Melrose Avenue to Beverly Hills (think of the longest walk you have ever done and treble it), there are, literally, dozens.
No, I still don’t have a car, because I am trying to save money; hence my decision not to take a taxi, either. The one I took to Melrose cost me over $20, and I had to suffer yet another driver trying to get to grips with the fact that Wales is a country in its own right and not a city in England.
For some reason, this fascinates them; and today’s man also wanted to know which were the “friendly” people in the UK. That bit of the conversation was easy: everyone except the English.
The prospect of running out of money and having to return to the depressing British winter is already depressing me, so I thought I would drop in on a psychic to find out when my bumper pay cheque for the book I am writing was likely to arrive.
The Psychic Centre, on La Brea, promised much from the posters that lined the road on my way there; when I found it, a massive sign outside was promising a special $10 dollar reading which, at half the price of the taxi fare, seemed a good deal.
I went up the steps to find four women tucking into their Subway takeaway lunch around a crystal ball and a pile of Tarot cards with crumbs on them. Through a full mouth, the fattest one asked whether I was looking for a reading, and pretty much splattered me with the contents of said mouth when I said Yes.
They then could not decide who was going to do me, but called a scruffy girl of about 18 from the back, who looked pretty cheesed off at having her lunch break interrupted.
“What d’you want?”
“Well, what is there?”
“Tarot, palm, crystal ball, eye.”
I had had my eyeball read once before, when I was doing a health programme for Channel 4, and I hadn’t been very impressed. Did the eyeball of a junk food fanatic show spinning burgers in their depths?
Would my LA eyes now reveal the gallons of carrot juice I am drinking: and, just like the advert, would I be filled with optimism that my future was both bright and orange?
I wasn't really sure that my eyes were going to be the best predictors, as I was wearing some new mineral make-up that I bought at the weekend, and appeared to be suffering an allergic reaction to it; hence my eyes were very red with all the rubbing I had been doing to wipe away the constant torrent of water pouring from them.
“Have you had any of them before?”
“All of them,” I said.
A Tarot reader had once told me that I would have twins. Never happened. A crystal ball reader told me that I would marry someone whose name began with W. Never happened. The only W in my life was a William I once dated, who told me in a Paris café that I was the most intelligent, funny, fantastic woman he had ever met – he just didn’t fancy me. Stuff Paris as the City of Love.
Last year, passing through Turkey on a cruise, I had my Turkish coffee cup read, in the same way that people read tea-leaves. I was told that I spend money on big things (tell me about it – I spent 12,000 euros on a Chloe dress after one too many white wines a couple of years ago), that I would be very rich within three years (one down, two to go), and that a man whose name began with S was going to help my career big-time.
I tell you, if Simon Cowell doesn’t shift his backside quickly, I’m going to be on Skid Row.
My LA psychic was clearly having an off day and seemed highly irritated that I had even deigned to enter the room, let alone demand anything once inside.
“Is it all right if I tape it?” I asked, producing my Blackberry. That was a definite no-no. “Can I take notes?” “No. We don’t like that. It’s supposed to be private. Why would you want to tape it?”
Honestly, this was like pulling teeth. I could have finished this life, gone to an after one, AND returned as a sub-species in the time it was taking her to predict the next . . . Well, how many years? Heck, I only wanted to know as far as September. At this rate, I would be lucky to know what I was going to have for dinner.
“So what d’you want?”
“Okay, I’ll have the eye.”
“You want me to read your eyeball?”
“Yes, let’s go for that.”
“That’s $45.”
“But your sign outside says that you’re doing a special deal for $10.”
“Yeah, that’s a palm reading.”
“Okay, I’ll have one of those.”
“To be honest, it’s not very accurate.”
Oh, for heaven’s sake. I read my friends’ palms all the time and am deadly accurate. I have told them about things in their pasts that they have not even shared with their closest family and friends. I have made grown men cry with the accuracy of my palm-reading.
I can even read my own. I’m going to be very successful, but there is going to be a clean break of some sorts before I achieve that ultimate success (could that 6000 miles across the Atlantic be it, I have wondered?).
I’m going to live a long life and I won’t have any kids (my 50 year old body fills in the gaps that my palm has left out on that one).
Clearly, there was going to be no such insight in LA, so I walked out of the centre without having spent a dollar and muttering something about it all being a bit of a con.
In fact, given my own skills in this area – certainly, compared to the La Brea ghoul - I think I could open up a psychic centre in LA and do very well out of it.
The way the money is going, together with Mr Cowell’s ongoing silence, it looks as if it might be my only option. Dollar for your thoughts, everyone. You know where I am.
No, I still don’t have a car, because I am trying to save money; hence my decision not to take a taxi, either. The one I took to Melrose cost me over $20, and I had to suffer yet another driver trying to get to grips with the fact that Wales is a country in its own right and not a city in England.
For some reason, this fascinates them; and today’s man also wanted to know which were the “friendly” people in the UK. That bit of the conversation was easy: everyone except the English.
The prospect of running out of money and having to return to the depressing British winter is already depressing me, so I thought I would drop in on a psychic to find out when my bumper pay cheque for the book I am writing was likely to arrive.
The Psychic Centre, on La Brea, promised much from the posters that lined the road on my way there; when I found it, a massive sign outside was promising a special $10 dollar reading which, at half the price of the taxi fare, seemed a good deal.
I went up the steps to find four women tucking into their Subway takeaway lunch around a crystal ball and a pile of Tarot cards with crumbs on them. Through a full mouth, the fattest one asked whether I was looking for a reading, and pretty much splattered me with the contents of said mouth when I said Yes.
They then could not decide who was going to do me, but called a scruffy girl of about 18 from the back, who looked pretty cheesed off at having her lunch break interrupted.
“What d’you want?”
“Well, what is there?”
“Tarot, palm, crystal ball, eye.”
I had had my eyeball read once before, when I was doing a health programme for Channel 4, and I hadn’t been very impressed. Did the eyeball of a junk food fanatic show spinning burgers in their depths?
Would my LA eyes now reveal the gallons of carrot juice I am drinking: and, just like the advert, would I be filled with optimism that my future was both bright and orange?
I wasn't really sure that my eyes were going to be the best predictors, as I was wearing some new mineral make-up that I bought at the weekend, and appeared to be suffering an allergic reaction to it; hence my eyes were very red with all the rubbing I had been doing to wipe away the constant torrent of water pouring from them.
“Have you had any of them before?”
“All of them,” I said.
A Tarot reader had once told me that I would have twins. Never happened. A crystal ball reader told me that I would marry someone whose name began with W. Never happened. The only W in my life was a William I once dated, who told me in a Paris café that I was the most intelligent, funny, fantastic woman he had ever met – he just didn’t fancy me. Stuff Paris as the City of Love.
Last year, passing through Turkey on a cruise, I had my Turkish coffee cup read, in the same way that people read tea-leaves. I was told that I spend money on big things (tell me about it – I spent 12,000 euros on a Chloe dress after one too many white wines a couple of years ago), that I would be very rich within three years (one down, two to go), and that a man whose name began with S was going to help my career big-time.
I tell you, if Simon Cowell doesn’t shift his backside quickly, I’m going to be on Skid Row.
My LA psychic was clearly having an off day and seemed highly irritated that I had even deigned to enter the room, let alone demand anything once inside.
“Is it all right if I tape it?” I asked, producing my Blackberry. That was a definite no-no. “Can I take notes?” “No. We don’t like that. It’s supposed to be private. Why would you want to tape it?”
Honestly, this was like pulling teeth. I could have finished this life, gone to an after one, AND returned as a sub-species in the time it was taking her to predict the next . . . Well, how many years? Heck, I only wanted to know as far as September. At this rate, I would be lucky to know what I was going to have for dinner.
“So what d’you want?”
“Okay, I’ll have the eye.”
“You want me to read your eyeball?”
“Yes, let’s go for that.”
“That’s $45.”
“But your sign outside says that you’re doing a special deal for $10.”
“Yeah, that’s a palm reading.”
“Okay, I’ll have one of those.”
“To be honest, it’s not very accurate.”
Oh, for heaven’s sake. I read my friends’ palms all the time and am deadly accurate. I have told them about things in their pasts that they have not even shared with their closest family and friends. I have made grown men cry with the accuracy of my palm-reading.
I can even read my own. I’m going to be very successful, but there is going to be a clean break of some sorts before I achieve that ultimate success (could that 6000 miles across the Atlantic be it, I have wondered?).
I’m going to live a long life and I won’t have any kids (my 50 year old body fills in the gaps that my palm has left out on that one).
Clearly, there was going to be no such insight in LA, so I walked out of the centre without having spent a dollar and muttering something about it all being a bit of a con.
In fact, given my own skills in this area – certainly, compared to the La Brea ghoul - I think I could open up a psychic centre in LA and do very well out of it.
The way the money is going, together with Mr Cowell’s ongoing silence, it looks as if it might be my only option. Dollar for your thoughts, everyone. You know where I am.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Casting Pearls After Swine 6/14/09
Apparently, there are some women on the planet who will do anything to get the men in their life out of it. Given the amount of trouble I have getting them in there in the first place, not to mention acquiring enough chloroform, rope and chains to keep them there, I can’t see that it’s a problem I’m ever going to encounter.
So, I am completely mystified by a website called outofyourlife.com. As most things do these days, this came to my attention while exercising in the gym and watching the machines’ TVs, and I couldn’t wait to get home to find out more.
The TV commercial features a blonde woman handling various pieces of jewellery. They’re shiny, they’re chunky and, for the most part, fairly hideous. At one point, she examines a pair of un-matching ear-rings, as if trying to decide which she prefers, and we learn that each one relates to a man who, in real life, she was unable to decide between.
As she places each piece in jewellery in a special, lined box, the voiceover explains once you’re no longer with some man, the moment comes when: “It’s time to get his jewellery out of your life too.”
And how can you do this? You just let outofyourlife.com buy it all from you – and, yes, they even provide that special little box in which to place it all before you Fedex it off.
My first thought was that I would have dumped any guy who bought me such rotten jewellery to begin with; but then I remembered that apart from one brooch, no man has ever, ever bought me so much as a diamante hair-grip.
When I was 30, the man I was with bought me a china duck: a hideous, lime green and yellow, china duck vase whose only function I could foresee would be as something to smash over his head when the relationship ended (where were those websites supplying bubble wrap for packing up china ducks when I needed them, eh?).
In Wales, we have a custom of giving carved, wooden love spoons to the people we care for, not jewellery; but even in that respect I didn’t fare well. One Valentine’s Day, I opened up a gift that arrived in a love spoon box to find a pig’s trotter inside. Quite how that was supposed to woo me is another of life’s mysteries I have yet to fathom.
My last serious boyfriend gave me the single – not even the album, goddammit – of Mambo Number Five. You know the one – the guy who likes a bit of this woman here, a bit of that one on the side etc. etc. And I had to lend him the money to buy that.
Where on Earth are all these men who give jewellery in such abundance that it can be sent back in return for cash? I don’t have a lavish collection, but what I do have, I bought myself. Last year, for my 50th, I treated myself to a diamond tennis bracelet. It was something I had always wanted and, after a few drinks in Turkey, while covering a cruise for the Daily Mail, I saw a psychic in a hotel.
“You always spend money on big things,” she said. On the way back to the ship, after a few more drinks, I stopped off at a jeweller’s and bought the bracelet. I suspect that the minute I left the hotel, the psychic was on the phone to the shop, telling him: “There’s another one on her way.”
I really love diamonds, but if they are a girl’s best friend, where are all the men who know this and, more to the point, act upon it?
I have my eye on a rather exquisite, long chain of diamonds to match my tennis bracelet at the moment. I saw it while window-shopping on Rodeo Drive and went in to ask the price. “That would be $175,000, ma’am,” said the rather charming salesman. “It’s platinum.”
I kept a straight face. “Do you have it in white gold?”
“That would be $75,000, ma’am.”
Ever since the movie Pretty Woman, in which the assistants on Rodeo Drive treated Julia Roberts’ character Vivien with such contempt, all the stores are careful to behave towards everyone as if they have loads of money – even though, given my current financial circumstances, contempt would have been entirely justifiable.
But I didn’t see any man leaping out from behind a pillar, waving his cheque book, declaring: “No, no. Let me, Miss Stephen.” “Thank you, Mr Gere.”
In Spain and LA, I see women draped in jewels all the time; so what have they got that I haven’t? A lot of space between their ears, I suspect is the answer, and men with money (and the equivalent acreage in nothingness between their ears usually) appear to like that.
So, for all my being unable to fill that little satin box and receive my cheque in the post from outofyourlife.com, I’m grateful that I pretty much live by the intomylife.com premise, and that I don’t dislike anyone enough to hand back anything I’ve ever had from anyone.
And that includes the green and yellow china duck. At least it was given in love. The only exception is the pig’s trotter. I hope the guy who sent it caught swine flu.
So, I am completely mystified by a website called outofyourlife.com. As most things do these days, this came to my attention while exercising in the gym and watching the machines’ TVs, and I couldn’t wait to get home to find out more.
The TV commercial features a blonde woman handling various pieces of jewellery. They’re shiny, they’re chunky and, for the most part, fairly hideous. At one point, she examines a pair of un-matching ear-rings, as if trying to decide which she prefers, and we learn that each one relates to a man who, in real life, she was unable to decide between.
As she places each piece in jewellery in a special, lined box, the voiceover explains once you’re no longer with some man, the moment comes when: “It’s time to get his jewellery out of your life too.”
And how can you do this? You just let outofyourlife.com buy it all from you – and, yes, they even provide that special little box in which to place it all before you Fedex it off.
My first thought was that I would have dumped any guy who bought me such rotten jewellery to begin with; but then I remembered that apart from one brooch, no man has ever, ever bought me so much as a diamante hair-grip.
When I was 30, the man I was with bought me a china duck: a hideous, lime green and yellow, china duck vase whose only function I could foresee would be as something to smash over his head when the relationship ended (where were those websites supplying bubble wrap for packing up china ducks when I needed them, eh?).
In Wales, we have a custom of giving carved, wooden love spoons to the people we care for, not jewellery; but even in that respect I didn’t fare well. One Valentine’s Day, I opened up a gift that arrived in a love spoon box to find a pig’s trotter inside. Quite how that was supposed to woo me is another of life’s mysteries I have yet to fathom.
My last serious boyfriend gave me the single – not even the album, goddammit – of Mambo Number Five. You know the one – the guy who likes a bit of this woman here, a bit of that one on the side etc. etc. And I had to lend him the money to buy that.
Where on Earth are all these men who give jewellery in such abundance that it can be sent back in return for cash? I don’t have a lavish collection, but what I do have, I bought myself. Last year, for my 50th, I treated myself to a diamond tennis bracelet. It was something I had always wanted and, after a few drinks in Turkey, while covering a cruise for the Daily Mail, I saw a psychic in a hotel.
“You always spend money on big things,” she said. On the way back to the ship, after a few more drinks, I stopped off at a jeweller’s and bought the bracelet. I suspect that the minute I left the hotel, the psychic was on the phone to the shop, telling him: “There’s another one on her way.”
I really love diamonds, but if they are a girl’s best friend, where are all the men who know this and, more to the point, act upon it?
I have my eye on a rather exquisite, long chain of diamonds to match my tennis bracelet at the moment. I saw it while window-shopping on Rodeo Drive and went in to ask the price. “That would be $175,000, ma’am,” said the rather charming salesman. “It’s platinum.”
I kept a straight face. “Do you have it in white gold?”
“That would be $75,000, ma’am.”
Ever since the movie Pretty Woman, in which the assistants on Rodeo Drive treated Julia Roberts’ character Vivien with such contempt, all the stores are careful to behave towards everyone as if they have loads of money – even though, given my current financial circumstances, contempt would have been entirely justifiable.
But I didn’t see any man leaping out from behind a pillar, waving his cheque book, declaring: “No, no. Let me, Miss Stephen.” “Thank you, Mr Gere.”
In Spain and LA, I see women draped in jewels all the time; so what have they got that I haven’t? A lot of space between their ears, I suspect is the answer, and men with money (and the equivalent acreage in nothingness between their ears usually) appear to like that.
So, for all my being unable to fill that little satin box and receive my cheque in the post from outofyourlife.com, I’m grateful that I pretty much live by the intomylife.com premise, and that I don’t dislike anyone enough to hand back anything I’ve ever had from anyone.
And that includes the green and yellow china duck. At least it was given in love. The only exception is the pig’s trotter. I hope the guy who sent it caught swine flu.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Tarmac Orphan 6/10/09
Twelve inches is a long way in travel. The world may be getting smaller, but when you’re standing at A, desperate to get to B, and only twelve inches separates you from your destination, B might as well be on the moon.
The weird thing is: you wait all your life for a man in uniform with a powerful weapon to turn up, and then three come along together.
The details of my European trip have been eclipsed somewhat by the problems I had getting out of France and the subsequent problems I had getting back into the US. I feel as if I have lived most of the last 48 hours as a sort of Tarmac orphan, passport at the ready but unable to go anywhere.
My crime? A heavy suitcase packed with books and a couple of bags of loose change.
Nothing about me, I am sure, indicated that I was going to be Semtex catch of the week, as I arrived at the Eurostar Customs on Monday morning. I was loaded up because each time I return to the US, I ludicrously feel that I have to bring another section of my enormous library back home; I suppose it’s my comfort blanket.
I’ve been told by Eurostar in the past that women travelling alone are targeted because they tend to be the biggest drug traffickers, but apart from smuggling in a box of Oxo vegetarian stock cubes last time I returned to the US, my activities in this area are rather limited.
Personally, I blame the Alsation. I am quite at ease with small dogs, but when a very large one starts leaping around when your stuff is coming through on the conveyor belt, it can be a bit unnerving.
My terror was that it was going to eat my MacBook Air laptop, without my having had chance to back up the book and screenplay I am writing, so I was not really paying attention to the Customs man when he asked: “What’s in your case?”
As I had, in total, five bags, I couldn’t remember what was in the specific case to which he referred, so I said: “Things”. Wrong answer! “What things?” “Er, books, clothes . . . “ (and can’t you get that damned dog’s nose away from my computer).
Now, in my Linguaphone French language learning course, the Customs man – le douanier – is rather a nice chap. There is a family travelling together and he takes a shine to the daughter, Valerie. “Le douanier,” it says, “Il admire Valerie” (translation: he wouldn’t mind giving her one, there and then, over the conveyor belt).
I’ve always thought it was a bit sexist, but whatever it was that old Valerie had, I wished I now had it; but “Le douanier . . . Il deteste Jaci” was clearer much nearer the mark.
He told me to lift my case and put it on a table that seemed like double my body height. Not only was it too heavy to lift, I have a longstanding shoulder injury that would have made it impossible to do so anyway, and I told him so.
“You don’t lift it, you don’t travel.” I asked for help. “I’m not going to do it,” he said, and would not budge on the matter. I started to cry. “There is no point in crying, you are not going anywhere.” So, we were stuck: me, case, man with gun.
Eventually, a tiny female member of staff, even smaller than me, came over to lift the case, and I was almost on my way. The officer opened it, took out Dr Raj Persaud’s book, The Motivated Mind, threw it back, and told me I could go.
Maybe he thought that I was so motivated, it was not beyond the realms of possibility that I could grab his gun, shoot the lot of them, and still have time to eat the entire supply of croissants in the Frequent Traveller lounge.
I thought that would be an end to my day of Customs hell, but there was more to come when I reached the US some hours later. Although I have an I Visa that allows me to come and go freely, man number two with gun was having none of it.
They always ask you why you are entering the US, and they do so with such an air of “You so much as sniff our air without asking permission” that I am trembling so much, the paramedics almost have to be called in.
I was sent to another line, where man number three with gun awaited me. He wanted to see everything – and I mean everything – in both cases. Why were my cases so heavy? (There’s a dead Alsation in one of them; why do you think?). Why was I carrying so much loose change?
Was I carrying any food? Er, no. There were a couple of boxes of herbal tea for various digestive conditions that I thought best to keep to myself. Not that I would need them, as my bowels were now well and truly working without recourse to outside assistance.
But it was the books that really interested him. He too alighted upon The Motivated Mind, with Dr Raj Persaud’s picture on the cover. Now, Raj is a very handsome man, and someone I used to work with in TV, but suddenly he had the look of an accomplice about him. He is also of a non-white persuasion, which was something that had not even occurred to me before. Clearly, very dodgy indeed.
The official moved on to Save the Cat, Blake Snyder’s screenwriting book that is my Bible and that I carry everywhere while I am writing my movie. There is a very good picture of a cat clinging to a rope on the cover, the premise being that early in a movie, your hero should do something – such as saving a cat – that endears him or her to the audience.
But suddenly the cat didn’t look so clingy. In fact, it looked rather pained, as if someone had been trying to string it up two minutes before and it was in its last dying throes.
“If you want to write a movie it’s the best book,” I ventured. “It really is and most people do want to write one here don’t they and that’s why I came here and . . . “ Breathless, hopeless . . . If you’re in a hole, stop digging, but as if my spade were not doing an efficient enough job, I had brought in a JCB to help dig myself in still deeper.
Now, not only did I have a motivated mind, I tortured small animals. Quite clearly, it was going to be a small step from thereon in before I exercised my newly acquired killing skills on humans.
“Passport,” said my interrogator, and went off to a computer. All I could think of was the Little Britain sketch Computer Says No, as I awaited my fate. Had I done or said anything in the States that might warrant my not being allowed back in? I really didn’t think so. Apart from being born small and Welsh, of course, but it was only the English who ever had a problem with that.
Richard Curtis, the brilliant brain behind Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill, had been on my flight, and he sailed through Customs. We had spent a brief time chatting on the plane, when I recalled a course he tutored many years ago, when he told me that all his movies were about the same thing: How do you find the right person to love?
Luckily for him, we had to return to our seats at the point where I had started to tell him that life wasn’t like the movies, that men suck, life sucks, Customs officials suck.
The last words he said to me as he left the plane were: “I’m sure you’ll find love eventually” (though you have to be honest: Love, Eventually as a movie title, as opposed to the movie he made - Love, Actually - doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.
So, when I descended from the plane, I was dreaming of happy ever afters and Hugh Grant meeting me at the airport with a bunch of roses. Then the men with guns captured me. Like I said, Richard: life ain’t like the movies.
I am now safely back in the US, and at the moment can remember very little of my trip. I do, however, recall visiting a friend’s house in Paris and walking up the Champs Elysees, where I saw an old man holding a very small penis, urinating beside a tree. I confess to knowing the size because I stopped briefly, just to remind myself what a penis looked like (we’re talking a couple of years here, give or take a magazine or two).
It didn’t do much for me, I’m afraid. Twelve inches may be a long way in travel, but even a man with a gun couldn’t get me to hang around for two.
The weird thing is: you wait all your life for a man in uniform with a powerful weapon to turn up, and then three come along together.
The details of my European trip have been eclipsed somewhat by the problems I had getting out of France and the subsequent problems I had getting back into the US. I feel as if I have lived most of the last 48 hours as a sort of Tarmac orphan, passport at the ready but unable to go anywhere.
My crime? A heavy suitcase packed with books and a couple of bags of loose change.
Nothing about me, I am sure, indicated that I was going to be Semtex catch of the week, as I arrived at the Eurostar Customs on Monday morning. I was loaded up because each time I return to the US, I ludicrously feel that I have to bring another section of my enormous library back home; I suppose it’s my comfort blanket.
I’ve been told by Eurostar in the past that women travelling alone are targeted because they tend to be the biggest drug traffickers, but apart from smuggling in a box of Oxo vegetarian stock cubes last time I returned to the US, my activities in this area are rather limited.
Personally, I blame the Alsation. I am quite at ease with small dogs, but when a very large one starts leaping around when your stuff is coming through on the conveyor belt, it can be a bit unnerving.
My terror was that it was going to eat my MacBook Air laptop, without my having had chance to back up the book and screenplay I am writing, so I was not really paying attention to the Customs man when he asked: “What’s in your case?”
As I had, in total, five bags, I couldn’t remember what was in the specific case to which he referred, so I said: “Things”. Wrong answer! “What things?” “Er, books, clothes . . . “ (and can’t you get that damned dog’s nose away from my computer).
Now, in my Linguaphone French language learning course, the Customs man – le douanier – is rather a nice chap. There is a family travelling together and he takes a shine to the daughter, Valerie. “Le douanier,” it says, “Il admire Valerie” (translation: he wouldn’t mind giving her one, there and then, over the conveyor belt).
I’ve always thought it was a bit sexist, but whatever it was that old Valerie had, I wished I now had it; but “Le douanier . . . Il deteste Jaci” was clearer much nearer the mark.
He told me to lift my case and put it on a table that seemed like double my body height. Not only was it too heavy to lift, I have a longstanding shoulder injury that would have made it impossible to do so anyway, and I told him so.
“You don’t lift it, you don’t travel.” I asked for help. “I’m not going to do it,” he said, and would not budge on the matter. I started to cry. “There is no point in crying, you are not going anywhere.” So, we were stuck: me, case, man with gun.
Eventually, a tiny female member of staff, even smaller than me, came over to lift the case, and I was almost on my way. The officer opened it, took out Dr Raj Persaud’s book, The Motivated Mind, threw it back, and told me I could go.
Maybe he thought that I was so motivated, it was not beyond the realms of possibility that I could grab his gun, shoot the lot of them, and still have time to eat the entire supply of croissants in the Frequent Traveller lounge.
I thought that would be an end to my day of Customs hell, but there was more to come when I reached the US some hours later. Although I have an I Visa that allows me to come and go freely, man number two with gun was having none of it.
They always ask you why you are entering the US, and they do so with such an air of “You so much as sniff our air without asking permission” that I am trembling so much, the paramedics almost have to be called in.
I was sent to another line, where man number three with gun awaited me. He wanted to see everything – and I mean everything – in both cases. Why were my cases so heavy? (There’s a dead Alsation in one of them; why do you think?). Why was I carrying so much loose change?
Was I carrying any food? Er, no. There were a couple of boxes of herbal tea for various digestive conditions that I thought best to keep to myself. Not that I would need them, as my bowels were now well and truly working without recourse to outside assistance.
But it was the books that really interested him. He too alighted upon The Motivated Mind, with Dr Raj Persaud’s picture on the cover. Now, Raj is a very handsome man, and someone I used to work with in TV, but suddenly he had the look of an accomplice about him. He is also of a non-white persuasion, which was something that had not even occurred to me before. Clearly, very dodgy indeed.
The official moved on to Save the Cat, Blake Snyder’s screenwriting book that is my Bible and that I carry everywhere while I am writing my movie. There is a very good picture of a cat clinging to a rope on the cover, the premise being that early in a movie, your hero should do something – such as saving a cat – that endears him or her to the audience.
But suddenly the cat didn’t look so clingy. In fact, it looked rather pained, as if someone had been trying to string it up two minutes before and it was in its last dying throes.
“If you want to write a movie it’s the best book,” I ventured. “It really is and most people do want to write one here don’t they and that’s why I came here and . . . “ Breathless, hopeless . . . If you’re in a hole, stop digging, but as if my spade were not doing an efficient enough job, I had brought in a JCB to help dig myself in still deeper.
Now, not only did I have a motivated mind, I tortured small animals. Quite clearly, it was going to be a small step from thereon in before I exercised my newly acquired killing skills on humans.
“Passport,” said my interrogator, and went off to a computer. All I could think of was the Little Britain sketch Computer Says No, as I awaited my fate. Had I done or said anything in the States that might warrant my not being allowed back in? I really didn’t think so. Apart from being born small and Welsh, of course, but it was only the English who ever had a problem with that.
Richard Curtis, the brilliant brain behind Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill, had been on my flight, and he sailed through Customs. We had spent a brief time chatting on the plane, when I recalled a course he tutored many years ago, when he told me that all his movies were about the same thing: How do you find the right person to love?
Luckily for him, we had to return to our seats at the point where I had started to tell him that life wasn’t like the movies, that men suck, life sucks, Customs officials suck.
The last words he said to me as he left the plane were: “I’m sure you’ll find love eventually” (though you have to be honest: Love, Eventually as a movie title, as opposed to the movie he made - Love, Actually - doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.
So, when I descended from the plane, I was dreaming of happy ever afters and Hugh Grant meeting me at the airport with a bunch of roses. Then the men with guns captured me. Like I said, Richard: life ain’t like the movies.
I am now safely back in the US, and at the moment can remember very little of my trip. I do, however, recall visiting a friend’s house in Paris and walking up the Champs Elysees, where I saw an old man holding a very small penis, urinating beside a tree. I confess to knowing the size because I stopped briefly, just to remind myself what a penis looked like (we’re talking a couple of years here, give or take a magazine or two).
It didn’t do much for me, I’m afraid. Twelve inches may be a long way in travel, but even a man with a gun couldn’t get me to hang around for two.
Friday, June 5, 2009
California Dreamin' 6/5/09
If I’m honest, there was always that little bit of Californian in me. When I was 14, I spent my pocket money on Here’s Health magazine and books about various kinds of spiritual awakening.
Religious, occult, astrological – I was always interested in the different means by which people found their way in the world and tried to make sense of it all. And I have always loathed smoking with a passion.
At university, I spent the money set aside for food buying all the different kinds of lentils from the only delicatessen in town (heck, I grew up in a village where nobody even knew what a delicatessen was, let alone know how to spell it, so finding a use for lentils was always going to be way left of field for most people).
Now that I am in LA, that little corner of a foreign field that was forever California has been unleashed in me with a vengeance.
Apart from my minimum two hour workout every day, I eat more healthily than I have done since my lentil and sandal university days, and my bookshelves are once more filled with titles beginning with the likes of How to, When to, and Give Up Now, You’re Doomed.
Returning back to the UK briefly, I felt more Californian than British. “When did everyone get so fat?” I screamed, as I squashed myself in between restaurant tables in Cardiff and looked down the menu, declaring that there was absolutely nothing on it that I could eat.
Just as well, really, because I wouldn’t have had the time. I spent the entire evening doing furniture removals around the enormous foursome at the next table, and had to re-arrange my own seating every time I wanted to move an elbow to grab a glass of water.
“Don’t lose any more,” people kept saying to me, noting how much weight I had lost. “Go on, have a real drink,” friends said in Spain.
When I was not being encouraged to eat and drink more, I found myself defending America as if I were the First Lady. It was easy, given the political mess that has been dominating the UK headlines over the past week.
If you had told me even a year ago that I would ever have had anything positive to say about America, let along feel a surge of pride every time I pass the stars and stripes flag (I kid you not: I think perhaps I have been abducted and that the real me is living on planet Zog somewhere), I would have said I was more likely to commit hara-kiri.
Like most Brits, my experience of the country and its citizens was of loud-mouthed travellers being rude to waiters in restaurants; I am sure that those Americans do still exist, but in my little bubble that is Beverly Hills, I am being treated to a different breed, and for the moment I am happy to enjoy it.
I even found myself getting a bit gobby when I didn’t get the service I have so quickly become used to. But really, listen to this.
Yesterday, I went into my local delicatessen (these days, you can’t move for them in Cardiff), where I tried to buy a pot of yoghurt for me and a pot of double cream for my mother (she thinks I should definitely not lose any more weight). When I took them to the counter to pay, I was greeted with: “I got naw change” (Welsh accent, for my new American friends).
Me: Why do you have no change?
Girl: Well, I just come on see an’ I dawn’t knaw why, but there’s no change in the till.
Me: So what are we going to do then?
Girl: Well, we’ll just 'ave to see 'ow much it is an’ you’ll 'ave to pay me the right money.
Me: Please could you ring them up then, and we’ll see.
Girl: (examining yoghurt pot). There’s naw price on this. (Calls to other girl, mesmerised at the cheese counter). Can you see 'ow much this is?
(Girl 2 takes yoghurt, goes to fridge, potters around for about a week, discovers that there is no other like it and disappears into back store-room for another week. Emerges, looking blank. Walks to till).
Girl 2: I dunno the price of it. I can’t find another one.
(Both girls stare: one, at the priceless yoghurt pot, the other at the changeless till).
Me: D’you know? I’ll leave it. Your loss.
(Storms out, amid much huffing and puffing and praising America’s gun licence laws).
Well, those are the words that came out inside the shop; outside, it was something more along the lines of: Bloody Welsh bloody Brits can’t get any service anymore and could you ever it wouldn’t happen in Beverly Hills what does a girl have to do to get a sodding pot of yoghurt around here . . . That kind of thing, with a few more expletives thrown in.
For once, I found myself bemoaning the fact that I was not paying $3.99 for a stock cube in my local Wholefoods in Beverly Hills and declaring that you do, in fact, get what you pay for in life (or are not able to pay for, in the case of the Cardiff delicatessen).
However, the weather has been great (for once, it wasn’t raining in Cardiff), it was good to see family and friends, and weird to watch all the episodes of my favourite TV series that I have already seen in the US.
But heck, I miss the gym and my plates of berries. I miss the gallons of fresh carrot juice I can buy as easily as getting water from the tap. I miss being able to buy anything at all, when faced with the problem of there being no change in the till.
I am returning to LA via Paris, which is my favourite city on Earth. It will be interesting to see whether it still is, on my first visit since decamping to LA.
I already hear myself moaning about the smoking: although it is banned indoors, it is allowed outside on café terraces, which have now been turned into giant ashtrays.
I hear myself whining about not being able to get any vegetarian food. And I specially hear myself giving the French a hard time about their inherent dislike of Americans, which has only intensified in the aftermath of the Iraq war.
On the other hand, I might just think, sod it: order a beef bourguignon, a pint of wine, pick up a Frenchman, have unprotected sex, smoke a Gitane afterwards and curse all Americans for being loud-mouthed, bigoted, war-mongerers.
It could go either way. Two continents await.
Religious, occult, astrological – I was always interested in the different means by which people found their way in the world and tried to make sense of it all. And I have always loathed smoking with a passion.
At university, I spent the money set aside for food buying all the different kinds of lentils from the only delicatessen in town (heck, I grew up in a village where nobody even knew what a delicatessen was, let alone know how to spell it, so finding a use for lentils was always going to be way left of field for most people).
Now that I am in LA, that little corner of a foreign field that was forever California has been unleashed in me with a vengeance.
Apart from my minimum two hour workout every day, I eat more healthily than I have done since my lentil and sandal university days, and my bookshelves are once more filled with titles beginning with the likes of How to, When to, and Give Up Now, You’re Doomed.
Returning back to the UK briefly, I felt more Californian than British. “When did everyone get so fat?” I screamed, as I squashed myself in between restaurant tables in Cardiff and looked down the menu, declaring that there was absolutely nothing on it that I could eat.
Just as well, really, because I wouldn’t have had the time. I spent the entire evening doing furniture removals around the enormous foursome at the next table, and had to re-arrange my own seating every time I wanted to move an elbow to grab a glass of water.
“Don’t lose any more,” people kept saying to me, noting how much weight I had lost. “Go on, have a real drink,” friends said in Spain.
When I was not being encouraged to eat and drink more, I found myself defending America as if I were the First Lady. It was easy, given the political mess that has been dominating the UK headlines over the past week.
If you had told me even a year ago that I would ever have had anything positive to say about America, let along feel a surge of pride every time I pass the stars and stripes flag (I kid you not: I think perhaps I have been abducted and that the real me is living on planet Zog somewhere), I would have said I was more likely to commit hara-kiri.
Like most Brits, my experience of the country and its citizens was of loud-mouthed travellers being rude to waiters in restaurants; I am sure that those Americans do still exist, but in my little bubble that is Beverly Hills, I am being treated to a different breed, and for the moment I am happy to enjoy it.
I even found myself getting a bit gobby when I didn’t get the service I have so quickly become used to. But really, listen to this.
Yesterday, I went into my local delicatessen (these days, you can’t move for them in Cardiff), where I tried to buy a pot of yoghurt for me and a pot of double cream for my mother (she thinks I should definitely not lose any more weight). When I took them to the counter to pay, I was greeted with: “I got naw change” (Welsh accent, for my new American friends).
Me: Why do you have no change?
Girl: Well, I just come on see an’ I dawn’t knaw why, but there’s no change in the till.
Me: So what are we going to do then?
Girl: Well, we’ll just 'ave to see 'ow much it is an’ you’ll 'ave to pay me the right money.
Me: Please could you ring them up then, and we’ll see.
Girl: (examining yoghurt pot). There’s naw price on this. (Calls to other girl, mesmerised at the cheese counter). Can you see 'ow much this is?
(Girl 2 takes yoghurt, goes to fridge, potters around for about a week, discovers that there is no other like it and disappears into back store-room for another week. Emerges, looking blank. Walks to till).
Girl 2: I dunno the price of it. I can’t find another one.
(Both girls stare: one, at the priceless yoghurt pot, the other at the changeless till).
Me: D’you know? I’ll leave it. Your loss.
(Storms out, amid much huffing and puffing and praising America’s gun licence laws).
Well, those are the words that came out inside the shop; outside, it was something more along the lines of: Bloody Welsh bloody Brits can’t get any service anymore and could you ever it wouldn’t happen in Beverly Hills what does a girl have to do to get a sodding pot of yoghurt around here . . . That kind of thing, with a few more expletives thrown in.
For once, I found myself bemoaning the fact that I was not paying $3.99 for a stock cube in my local Wholefoods in Beverly Hills and declaring that you do, in fact, get what you pay for in life (or are not able to pay for, in the case of the Cardiff delicatessen).
However, the weather has been great (for once, it wasn’t raining in Cardiff), it was good to see family and friends, and weird to watch all the episodes of my favourite TV series that I have already seen in the US.
But heck, I miss the gym and my plates of berries. I miss the gallons of fresh carrot juice I can buy as easily as getting water from the tap. I miss being able to buy anything at all, when faced with the problem of there being no change in the till.
I am returning to LA via Paris, which is my favourite city on Earth. It will be interesting to see whether it still is, on my first visit since decamping to LA.
I already hear myself moaning about the smoking: although it is banned indoors, it is allowed outside on café terraces, which have now been turned into giant ashtrays.
I hear myself whining about not being able to get any vegetarian food. And I specially hear myself giving the French a hard time about their inherent dislike of Americans, which has only intensified in the aftermath of the Iraq war.
On the other hand, I might just think, sod it: order a beef bourguignon, a pint of wine, pick up a Frenchman, have unprotected sex, smoke a Gitane afterwards and curse all Americans for being loud-mouthed, bigoted, war-mongerers.
It could go either way. Two continents await.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Buddhism on Trial 5/28/09
It’s a thin line between being a Buddhist and being a serial killer: that’s what I’ve learned this week, in my quest for that LA spiritual enlightenment that everyone is seeking here.
If in doubt, buy the book: that’s always been my motto. I’m not someone who buys the book, puts it on a shelf and forgets about the messages therein. I buy them, devour them, and put them into practice within the hour. Hence, I bought Alan Carr’s Easy Way to Stop Drinking, and stopped drinking. I bought Blake Snyder’s book Save the Cat! which is about screenwriting, and came to Hollywood to put the tools into practice.
Okay, so I don’t do things by halves, but please keep me away from that section of the bookstore titled Bonsai for Beginners, as I really don’t want to spend the next 10 years fiddling about with small trees in my kitchen sink.
A mini personal crisis led me to believe that I needed to live a calmer life, so off I went to my local Borders bookstore this week in search of things that might help me. I drank my “Calming” Yogi tea beforehand, which stressed me out a bit, because no sooner had I set out on my walk than I needed a bathroom.
I had also taken my calming herbal Kava Kava pills, which have replaced two bottles of wine as a means of soothing my nerves, and although I could feel them regurgitating in my chest, thought about the good they were doing me and just breathed deeply: calm, calm.
Then I arrived at the store and wanted to knock the head off the small child who was screaming for sweets. Why do parents take small kids shopping when it is clear to anyone with half a brain (not to mention no kids) that they absolutely hate it and are always going to kick up a fuss about something?
But calm, calm, I said, as I headed towards the spiritual/new age religion section and chose about 20 books that were to be the foundation of creating the new me. I stocked up on some more movie books, too, and a few novels and travel books. I was feeling very good in my new skin.
Two hours later, I took them to the cash register, deposited them and told the assistant I was headed for the restroom (you see how American I have become? I no longer “go to the loo”; I am now “headed for the restroom”). He assured me that my books would be fine and that I could pay for them upon my return.
So, ablutions completed, I went back downstairs, only to discover that my two hours’ worth of research had all been put back on the shelves. “Where are my books?” I squealed. No, if I’m honest, I screamed. Louder than the child. “Oh for goodness sake you turn your back for one minute and your life’s ruined and if I wanted this kind of shit I’d have stayed in Britain and whatever happened to customer service and look at the time . . . “ Calm, calm.
Two hours more again, I had pretty much recouped my selection and re-grouped emotionally. I returned to my apartment, sweaty, with, I am sure, high blood pressure, and set about reading Buddhism for Dummies.
The little I knew about Buddhism, I had always liked, although, with my new 7 stone 7 lb frame (yes, more loss – and please stop e-mailing checking on whether I have anorexia; no, I don’t), the weight thing might be an issue. You know: did I have to turn into an overweight, squat person in order to practise Buddhism? I have always suspected that the reason the obese Buddha sat down, cross-legged, to meditate, was because he was too fat to stand, and I’d been down that path enough in life to know that it wasn’t where I wanted to return.
Some years ago, I learned Transcendental Meditation and adhered quite strictly to Ayurvedic principles (an Indian philosophy that really does reap physical, emotional and spiritual benefits in day to day life). I read books by Deepak Chopra, a well known proponent of Ayurveda, and it was through re-reading him that I had become interested in Buddhism again. I also bought Chopra’s novel, Buddha, but thought that Buddhism for Dummies might be an easier way in.
It was. As I made my way through Chapter 1, I instantly took to my new philosophical path. I liked the non-dogmatism and the easily applicable principles: creating the right kind of mental attitude in order to bring about a better quality of life. I was on the floor and crossing my legs before you could sing Karma Karma Karma Karma Karma Chameleon (I wonder if Boy George got the idea for that song by reading Buddhism for Dummies?).
By lunchtime, I had Buddhism sorted. So much so, that I booked Judaism for Dummies to consume with the next day’s breakfast. Off I went to the bank on Wilshire Boulevard, singing along to Mika, the happiest I had been in some weeks.
Now, despite the efficient service I have found everywhere in LA, the one thing my bank has difficulty with is the transfer of money in and out of Europe. The idea that Europe would be in anyone’s minds in the LA climate is something of an anathema to them here, and this transmutes into the bank staff’s lack of enthusiasm for dealing with another ontinent.
Had I asked my guy to pilot the next space shuttle, he could not have looked more terrified, nor been slower at working out what went where. Already late for an appointment, I wasn’t so much tapping my fingers as putting them through my pockets in search of a handy weapon that might speed things along a bit.
One of the fundamentals of Buddhism is that pain and suffering are caused through our attachment to permanence, which is, in reality, only an illusion; and that when we let go of that pursuit of permanence, we will be happier. Try telling that to a would-be convert when a bank clerk is permanently stuck on the $ to £ conversion key on his computer.
No longer able to stand it, I did what any self-respecting citizen would do and took action. By now, I am sure the LAPD will have got there to untie everyone in time for the weekend. Me, I’ll be reading The Krays' biography.
If in doubt, buy the book: that’s always been my motto. I’m not someone who buys the book, puts it on a shelf and forgets about the messages therein. I buy them, devour them, and put them into practice within the hour. Hence, I bought Alan Carr’s Easy Way to Stop Drinking, and stopped drinking. I bought Blake Snyder’s book Save the Cat! which is about screenwriting, and came to Hollywood to put the tools into practice.
Okay, so I don’t do things by halves, but please keep me away from that section of the bookstore titled Bonsai for Beginners, as I really don’t want to spend the next 10 years fiddling about with small trees in my kitchen sink.
A mini personal crisis led me to believe that I needed to live a calmer life, so off I went to my local Borders bookstore this week in search of things that might help me. I drank my “Calming” Yogi tea beforehand, which stressed me out a bit, because no sooner had I set out on my walk than I needed a bathroom.
I had also taken my calming herbal Kava Kava pills, which have replaced two bottles of wine as a means of soothing my nerves, and although I could feel them regurgitating in my chest, thought about the good they were doing me and just breathed deeply: calm, calm.
Then I arrived at the store and wanted to knock the head off the small child who was screaming for sweets. Why do parents take small kids shopping when it is clear to anyone with half a brain (not to mention no kids) that they absolutely hate it and are always going to kick up a fuss about something?
But calm, calm, I said, as I headed towards the spiritual/new age religion section and chose about 20 books that were to be the foundation of creating the new me. I stocked up on some more movie books, too, and a few novels and travel books. I was feeling very good in my new skin.
Two hours later, I took them to the cash register, deposited them and told the assistant I was headed for the restroom (you see how American I have become? I no longer “go to the loo”; I am now “headed for the restroom”). He assured me that my books would be fine and that I could pay for them upon my return.
So, ablutions completed, I went back downstairs, only to discover that my two hours’ worth of research had all been put back on the shelves. “Where are my books?” I squealed. No, if I’m honest, I screamed. Louder than the child. “Oh for goodness sake you turn your back for one minute and your life’s ruined and if I wanted this kind of shit I’d have stayed in Britain and whatever happened to customer service and look at the time . . . “ Calm, calm.
Two hours more again, I had pretty much recouped my selection and re-grouped emotionally. I returned to my apartment, sweaty, with, I am sure, high blood pressure, and set about reading Buddhism for Dummies.
The little I knew about Buddhism, I had always liked, although, with my new 7 stone 7 lb frame (yes, more loss – and please stop e-mailing checking on whether I have anorexia; no, I don’t), the weight thing might be an issue. You know: did I have to turn into an overweight, squat person in order to practise Buddhism? I have always suspected that the reason the obese Buddha sat down, cross-legged, to meditate, was because he was too fat to stand, and I’d been down that path enough in life to know that it wasn’t where I wanted to return.
Some years ago, I learned Transcendental Meditation and adhered quite strictly to Ayurvedic principles (an Indian philosophy that really does reap physical, emotional and spiritual benefits in day to day life). I read books by Deepak Chopra, a well known proponent of Ayurveda, and it was through re-reading him that I had become interested in Buddhism again. I also bought Chopra’s novel, Buddha, but thought that Buddhism for Dummies might be an easier way in.
It was. As I made my way through Chapter 1, I instantly took to my new philosophical path. I liked the non-dogmatism and the easily applicable principles: creating the right kind of mental attitude in order to bring about a better quality of life. I was on the floor and crossing my legs before you could sing Karma Karma Karma Karma Karma Chameleon (I wonder if Boy George got the idea for that song by reading Buddhism for Dummies?).
By lunchtime, I had Buddhism sorted. So much so, that I booked Judaism for Dummies to consume with the next day’s breakfast. Off I went to the bank on Wilshire Boulevard, singing along to Mika, the happiest I had been in some weeks.
Now, despite the efficient service I have found everywhere in LA, the one thing my bank has difficulty with is the transfer of money in and out of Europe. The idea that Europe would be in anyone’s minds in the LA climate is something of an anathema to them here, and this transmutes into the bank staff’s lack of enthusiasm for dealing with another ontinent.
Had I asked my guy to pilot the next space shuttle, he could not have looked more terrified, nor been slower at working out what went where. Already late for an appointment, I wasn’t so much tapping my fingers as putting them through my pockets in search of a handy weapon that might speed things along a bit.
One of the fundamentals of Buddhism is that pain and suffering are caused through our attachment to permanence, which is, in reality, only an illusion; and that when we let go of that pursuit of permanence, we will be happier. Try telling that to a would-be convert when a bank clerk is permanently stuck on the $ to £ conversion key on his computer.
No longer able to stand it, I did what any self-respecting citizen would do and took action. By now, I am sure the LAPD will have got there to untie everyone in time for the weekend. Me, I’ll be reading The Krays' biography.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Eva Longoria Parker, My Body Double 5/21/09
Would Eva Longoria Parker eat it? That is the question I ask when confronted with every snack or meal in the size zero city that is LA’s Beverly Hills.
When I arrived here on April 1st, I was eight stone eight pounds (or 120 pounds, as they say here), which is not gross, but still too heavy for my five foot frame. Despite my having lost over a stone a year ago, largely by firstly cutting out and then drinking just a little alcohol, the pounds had started to pile back on, and I found my cheekbones once more starting to compete with my second chin.
So, coming to the supremely health-conscious LA seemed a good place to begin again, and, at an exquisite size four (UK size) and the same height as me, the American size zero (or double zero, I suspected) Desperate Housewives star was the woman I looked to for inspiration.
To date, I have lost another 14 pounds by following my plan (no food, no drinks, no leaving the treadmill) – a whole stone! – and now weigh 7 st 8 lbs (106 lbs! Sorry, but it really excites me).
A plate of crisps arrives at my table in the five star Beverly Wilshire Hotel (still my favourite place and where I stayed before I found an apartment) and I look at them longingly before asking: Would Eva Longoria eat them? Well, no. You don’t get to be and maintain a size zero, not to mention acquire a perfect mouth that looks as if it has just had a lipstick manicure, by ramming a plate of deep fried potatoes down your throat.
So, it’s farewell to the crisps. When they bring my English breakfast tea, it arrives with a long dish of Italian sweetmeats and biscuits. Would Eva Longoria eat them? Only if you chloroformed her first and force-fed them.
I apply the same rule to all bars and restaurants. This week, I went for lunch in Il Fornaio: a lovely, friendly Italian establishment on Canon Drive, and looked longingly down their list of pastas. Spaghetti Calamari and Broccoli, Fusilliani alla Trentina, Tarte Con Argosta – all unusual dishes that I had never seen on Italian menus in the UK. And, as I went down the list, I asked over and over: Would Eva Longoria eat it? No, no, no. Just a black espresso for me, please.
Asking the question is a guaranteed way to lose weight, and I believe that I have inadvertently stumbled upon the perfect diet: because the answer to the question “Would Eva Longoria eat it?” is always going to be No.
I suspect that Eva, like every other thin woman in LA, enjoys playing with the occasional leaf – without dressing (are you crazy?) – and, to this end, I am now perfecting the art of steering a leaf around my plate, without ever consuming it, while giving the impression that I am stuffing my face. Over the radish, under the yellow pepper, slalom over the red onion – I can make a leaf’s journey around my plate last longer than a Grand Prix. And, by the end of its course, it really does look half consumed.
Another technique sure to bring about this apparition of greed is to place the weight of a cherry tomato in the middle of, say, a mound of rocket: it flattens the centre of the display to such an extent, your dining companion might be tempted to tell you to slow down, for fear of your developing indigestion through over-eating.
Or, you can achieve the weighing down technique by moving all your rocket to the side of your plate, taking a piece of bread (obviously, without eating a crumb), ripping it in two and squashing it down at each end of your rocket pile, thereby giving the appearance of real over-indulgence – carbs, heaven forbid: the woman’s a pig – yet leaving the restaurant thinner, albeit starving.
Beverly Hills restaurants are very tolerant of the non-eating diner. My lunch in Il Fornaio lasted three hours, during which both my guest and I ate not a morsel and consumed just two bottles of water. One of my British friends, also new to LA but still keen on her food (how quaint – she’ll learn) bemoans this aspect of the culture. She says she gets invited to breakfast meetings where there is no breakfast, and spends the whole time wondering when the bacon and eggs are coming.
Of course, I knew before I came here that drinking in public was pretty much a no-no, but especially so during the day. If the answer to Would Eva Longoria eat it? is No, the answer to Would Eva Longoria drink it? is: You must be insane. Glass of champagne? 150 calories. Dry white wine? 120. You don’t shrink to the kind of shape that gets blown away in an LA earthquake by consuming empty calories.
So, with my new Eva Longoria eating and drinking plan, my weight is once more heading in the right direction, and this week I bought my first (of many, I hope) size zero jeans.
Eva Longoria, eat your heart out.
Oh, I forgot: you can’t. Too many calories.
When I arrived here on April 1st, I was eight stone eight pounds (or 120 pounds, as they say here), which is not gross, but still too heavy for my five foot frame. Despite my having lost over a stone a year ago, largely by firstly cutting out and then drinking just a little alcohol, the pounds had started to pile back on, and I found my cheekbones once more starting to compete with my second chin.
So, coming to the supremely health-conscious LA seemed a good place to begin again, and, at an exquisite size four (UK size) and the same height as me, the American size zero (or double zero, I suspected) Desperate Housewives star was the woman I looked to for inspiration.
To date, I have lost another 14 pounds by following my plan (no food, no drinks, no leaving the treadmill) – a whole stone! – and now weigh 7 st 8 lbs (106 lbs! Sorry, but it really excites me).
A plate of crisps arrives at my table in the five star Beverly Wilshire Hotel (still my favourite place and where I stayed before I found an apartment) and I look at them longingly before asking: Would Eva Longoria eat them? Well, no. You don’t get to be and maintain a size zero, not to mention acquire a perfect mouth that looks as if it has just had a lipstick manicure, by ramming a plate of deep fried potatoes down your throat.
So, it’s farewell to the crisps. When they bring my English breakfast tea, it arrives with a long dish of Italian sweetmeats and biscuits. Would Eva Longoria eat them? Only if you chloroformed her first and force-fed them.
I apply the same rule to all bars and restaurants. This week, I went for lunch in Il Fornaio: a lovely, friendly Italian establishment on Canon Drive, and looked longingly down their list of pastas. Spaghetti Calamari and Broccoli, Fusilliani alla Trentina, Tarte Con Argosta – all unusual dishes that I had never seen on Italian menus in the UK. And, as I went down the list, I asked over and over: Would Eva Longoria eat it? No, no, no. Just a black espresso for me, please.
Asking the question is a guaranteed way to lose weight, and I believe that I have inadvertently stumbled upon the perfect diet: because the answer to the question “Would Eva Longoria eat it?” is always going to be No.
I suspect that Eva, like every other thin woman in LA, enjoys playing with the occasional leaf – without dressing (are you crazy?) – and, to this end, I am now perfecting the art of steering a leaf around my plate, without ever consuming it, while giving the impression that I am stuffing my face. Over the radish, under the yellow pepper, slalom over the red onion – I can make a leaf’s journey around my plate last longer than a Grand Prix. And, by the end of its course, it really does look half consumed.
Another technique sure to bring about this apparition of greed is to place the weight of a cherry tomato in the middle of, say, a mound of rocket: it flattens the centre of the display to such an extent, your dining companion might be tempted to tell you to slow down, for fear of your developing indigestion through over-eating.
Or, you can achieve the weighing down technique by moving all your rocket to the side of your plate, taking a piece of bread (obviously, without eating a crumb), ripping it in two and squashing it down at each end of your rocket pile, thereby giving the appearance of real over-indulgence – carbs, heaven forbid: the woman’s a pig – yet leaving the restaurant thinner, albeit starving.
Beverly Hills restaurants are very tolerant of the non-eating diner. My lunch in Il Fornaio lasted three hours, during which both my guest and I ate not a morsel and consumed just two bottles of water. One of my British friends, also new to LA but still keen on her food (how quaint – she’ll learn) bemoans this aspect of the culture. She says she gets invited to breakfast meetings where there is no breakfast, and spends the whole time wondering when the bacon and eggs are coming.
Of course, I knew before I came here that drinking in public was pretty much a no-no, but especially so during the day. If the answer to Would Eva Longoria eat it? is No, the answer to Would Eva Longoria drink it? is: You must be insane. Glass of champagne? 150 calories. Dry white wine? 120. You don’t shrink to the kind of shape that gets blown away in an LA earthquake by consuming empty calories.
So, with my new Eva Longoria eating and drinking plan, my weight is once more heading in the right direction, and this week I bought my first (of many, I hope) size zero jeans.
Eva Longoria, eat your heart out.
Oh, I forgot: you can’t. Too many calories.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
It's a Bloke Thing 5/17/09
Did I really need to travel 6000 miles across the Atlantic to learn that being a complete dickhead is not confined to men in the UK?
I’ve now had the opportunity to observe the male species operating in England, Wales, France and Spain, and now the US – all places where I have lived and, in the latter’s case, am living – and I now feel the same about men as I do about snow flakes: yes, every one is, as they say, different. But let’s be honest: an awful lot of them are pretty damned alike.
I really like men. I have great male friends, some of whom are exes, some of whom are future exes because I haven’t got my claws into them yet. Others are exes I never want to see again, and others are on hit lists (including mine).
But really: despite the number of men in my life, I am no closer to understanding a damned thing about them. In each of the countries listed above, I have, however, investigated the men who offer themselves up on internet dating sites and been able to draw some generalisations.
In Britain, for example, if you are a woman over the age of 30, it is pointless putting your real age on a site, as most men think that 28 is really pushing it – irrespective of whether they are 20 or 60. Large breasts are much in demand, as is blonde hair and no baggage. The men invariably have more baggage than a Louis Vuitton warehouse, but as a woman you won’t be considered unless you can fit yours into an overhead locker and still have room for a multi-storey car-park.
French men set more store by brains than breasts, and dating sites offer far more esoteric social activities than those on offer by their British counterparts. In Paris, I attended an evening where the subject was “So you think you know about love”, and for three hours everyone joined in the conversation without making a hit on anyone else. When the evening finished, it was not to the most obviously physically attractive women that the men flocked, but to the ones who had made the most intelligent contribution to the debate.
If there is a singles scene in LA, it has so far eluded me, hence my signing up to yet another internet dating site. I thought I would narrow my search to LA and, had I been able, would have narrowed it further to the distance between my apartment and the Jimmy Choo shop on Rodeo Drive, such is my reluctance to purchase the car everyone assures me I will need.
Television commercials informed me that 20,000 people a day join the site I signed up to (whose privacy I will protect, pending any lawsuit I might bring for the “guaranteed” matchmaking part of their pitch that I suspect will not happen); and, after filling in my details and adding some pictures, I waited for the computer to go into meltdown.
Now, what I’ve never understood about internet dating, is that when you specify you want a non-smoking, slim, health-conscious, funny, creative guy over 6 feet tall, every chain-smoking, overweight, alcoholic, humourless construction worker straight out of midget school, thinks that he is just the man for you. Oh, yes, and although you have narrowed your search to LA, they don’t think that their living in Texas will be a problem.
When they are keen, they are very, very keen. One man had recently moved to Washington but was all set to come to LA, if I just gave him the nod. Another contacted me from the UK, saying that he had decided to cast his net further afield (and then targeted the only single, British, LA-based woman on the site – weird, that. Big net. Fear of fish.).
Having also said, in my profile, that I did not want any heavy religion in the life of my soul-mate, I appear to have attracted the attention of every Catholic in America and, suddenly, “saved” men, who all but ask if it’s okay if the Lord comes along on our dates. I already feel a line about there being three people in our relationship.
This being health-conscious LA, there are dozens of men stressing their love of the outdoors. To be honest, I don’t like any place where I can’t see a Marriott sign just by standing on a small box, so I have pretty much ruled out what seems like 90% of the city.
Also on the health front, I foolishly ticked a box, indicating that I lifted the occasional weight. This has somehow become translated into something much more impressive than it actually is, and many men appear in my “Interested” box with the headline “Like you, he enjoys weight-lifting”, which isn’t quite the same thing as taking a couple of baked bean cans off the supermarket shelf a couple of times a week.
Compared to the UK, there is generally less emphasis on female physical attributes on the US site, and also the men seem more open to meeting women who fall within a much wider age bracket. But then some of them can’t be choosers, I imagine. Where, for example, is the man whose profile bangs on about “North Pole region warming” going to find a woman – well, apart from in the North Pole, obviously?
Only one man I contacted, and, afterI directed him to this blog, should he require more information about me, he declared it to be “WAYYYYYYYYY” too much; he also recommended that I “rethink” suggesting the link. I had “almost” had him, he wrote, adding: “Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.”
Hilarious! One, that he thought he was so great a catch that he stood a snowball’s chance of getting me that easily (no one else has managed in five decades; I’m no pushover). And two, that he was criticising me even before the first date! Even British men wait a couple of weeks before doing that.
The great thing about the internet, though, is that you can find such things out about people very quickly; now, I won’t even have to go through the bother of dressing up and leaving my apartment to establish that the guy’s a nobhead.
Instead, I can stay in, watch more wall-to-wall House, and keep singing that jolly song that won Saturday's Eurovision Song Contest: I’m in Love with a Fairy Tale.
Unfortunately, it’s true.
I’ve now had the opportunity to observe the male species operating in England, Wales, France and Spain, and now the US – all places where I have lived and, in the latter’s case, am living – and I now feel the same about men as I do about snow flakes: yes, every one is, as they say, different. But let’s be honest: an awful lot of them are pretty damned alike.
I really like men. I have great male friends, some of whom are exes, some of whom are future exes because I haven’t got my claws into them yet. Others are exes I never want to see again, and others are on hit lists (including mine).
But really: despite the number of men in my life, I am no closer to understanding a damned thing about them. In each of the countries listed above, I have, however, investigated the men who offer themselves up on internet dating sites and been able to draw some generalisations.
In Britain, for example, if you are a woman over the age of 30, it is pointless putting your real age on a site, as most men think that 28 is really pushing it – irrespective of whether they are 20 or 60. Large breasts are much in demand, as is blonde hair and no baggage. The men invariably have more baggage than a Louis Vuitton warehouse, but as a woman you won’t be considered unless you can fit yours into an overhead locker and still have room for a multi-storey car-park.
French men set more store by brains than breasts, and dating sites offer far more esoteric social activities than those on offer by their British counterparts. In Paris, I attended an evening where the subject was “So you think you know about love”, and for three hours everyone joined in the conversation without making a hit on anyone else. When the evening finished, it was not to the most obviously physically attractive women that the men flocked, but to the ones who had made the most intelligent contribution to the debate.
If there is a singles scene in LA, it has so far eluded me, hence my signing up to yet another internet dating site. I thought I would narrow my search to LA and, had I been able, would have narrowed it further to the distance between my apartment and the Jimmy Choo shop on Rodeo Drive, such is my reluctance to purchase the car everyone assures me I will need.
Television commercials informed me that 20,000 people a day join the site I signed up to (whose privacy I will protect, pending any lawsuit I might bring for the “guaranteed” matchmaking part of their pitch that I suspect will not happen); and, after filling in my details and adding some pictures, I waited for the computer to go into meltdown.
Now, what I’ve never understood about internet dating, is that when you specify you want a non-smoking, slim, health-conscious, funny, creative guy over 6 feet tall, every chain-smoking, overweight, alcoholic, humourless construction worker straight out of midget school, thinks that he is just the man for you. Oh, yes, and although you have narrowed your search to LA, they don’t think that their living in Texas will be a problem.
When they are keen, they are very, very keen. One man had recently moved to Washington but was all set to come to LA, if I just gave him the nod. Another contacted me from the UK, saying that he had decided to cast his net further afield (and then targeted the only single, British, LA-based woman on the site – weird, that. Big net. Fear of fish.).
Having also said, in my profile, that I did not want any heavy religion in the life of my soul-mate, I appear to have attracted the attention of every Catholic in America and, suddenly, “saved” men, who all but ask if it’s okay if the Lord comes along on our dates. I already feel a line about there being three people in our relationship.
This being health-conscious LA, there are dozens of men stressing their love of the outdoors. To be honest, I don’t like any place where I can’t see a Marriott sign just by standing on a small box, so I have pretty much ruled out what seems like 90% of the city.
Also on the health front, I foolishly ticked a box, indicating that I lifted the occasional weight. This has somehow become translated into something much more impressive than it actually is, and many men appear in my “Interested” box with the headline “Like you, he enjoys weight-lifting”, which isn’t quite the same thing as taking a couple of baked bean cans off the supermarket shelf a couple of times a week.
Compared to the UK, there is generally less emphasis on female physical attributes on the US site, and also the men seem more open to meeting women who fall within a much wider age bracket. But then some of them can’t be choosers, I imagine. Where, for example, is the man whose profile bangs on about “North Pole region warming” going to find a woman – well, apart from in the North Pole, obviously?
Only one man I contacted, and, afterI directed him to this blog, should he require more information about me, he declared it to be “WAYYYYYYYYY” too much; he also recommended that I “rethink” suggesting the link. I had “almost” had him, he wrote, adding: “Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.”
Hilarious! One, that he thought he was so great a catch that he stood a snowball’s chance of getting me that easily (no one else has managed in five decades; I’m no pushover). And two, that he was criticising me even before the first date! Even British men wait a couple of weeks before doing that.
The great thing about the internet, though, is that you can find such things out about people very quickly; now, I won’t even have to go through the bother of dressing up and leaving my apartment to establish that the guy’s a nobhead.
Instead, I can stay in, watch more wall-to-wall House, and keep singing that jolly song that won Saturday's Eurovision Song Contest: I’m in Love with a Fairy Tale.
Unfortunately, it’s true.
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