Summer's Lease

I have managed to create a ridiculous and expensive dilemma for myself!! What to do this Summer?? First off, I have, as all single gals do, to make the rounds of the John Lewis gift list and celebrate my good friends tieing their proverbial knots. In fact, already my Summer is looking a tad busy:
1) 7 April - M's engagement do - pub in Clapham
2) Mid-May - R's hen night (good one this - stretch limo, tea at Claridges, cocktails)
3) Early June - R's wedding (want to go, as love R dearly, and we were v close buddies in Bordeaux. Also think will be fun. But can only get double rooms at hotel at £100 a head and I will not know anyone there but self. Brave face time).
4) Late July - Gaby's wedding. (V V excited about this, as will be cool NY wedding at a Hudson River winery - how fab is that. Incredibly happy for Gaby, who is an even closer Bordeaux buddy than R. Also, maybe I can play up the accent thing and appear aloof and mysterious, rather than sad and desperate as a lone female).
5) P, the evil non-blogger, is also tieing the knot into a veritable Gordion affair with a girls' night and two weddings. The hen do clashes with Gaby's wedding, but I will attend one of P's celebrations (P is doing a Liz Hurley).

On top of this, J and J and I obviously had a marvellous holiday last year in Venice and Bologna and would like to repeat the girls' trip thing. I suggested a Bordeaux/ Toulouse/ our friend H's mum's gite in the Lot et Garonne jaunt lasting a week or so. Belfast J was well disposed to this idea, and I got v enthused about idea of going back to Bordeaux, which has changed a lot since my lectrice days, with a new tram, and a new pedestrianised area, and a v cool cinematheque. I hope my favourite bars, La CComtesse (with two Cs!) and Paris-Pekin are still there. Oh and that cool Latin American one in rue des Piliers de tutelle with the cheap Mohitos. I expect we might sup a pint at the Connemara too. I would get to talk French and drink Monacos and buy Biba magazine for a mere 2 Euros. We would then go and eat gaufres avec sucre on the beach at Arcachon, and have huitres and moules on Cap Ferret while watching the sunset over the dune de Pyla. Bliss. However, Bristol J has a bee in her bonnet about how she has never travelled far afield, and this has been exacerbated by her new relationship with a 23 year old boy who had a gap year (basically his entire account of the trip consists of how cheap beer is in Thailand and how hot girls are in various cities). J, having never travelled much out of Europe other than to visit an ex-boyfriend who was working in the States now wants to TRAVEL and France is deemed too dull. Actually after her wilder ideas, she has lighted upon a fly drive round California, taking in LA, San Fran, the Grand Canyon, Vegas, and the Northern coasts. Sounds good no? Also I have the wardrobe for it post my Oz trip. Giving away part of her motive though is her comment "why should we fly to LA? It's a shit hole", a rather vehement view from someone who has never been there, and the opinion belongs of course to her boyfriend, who did tell me you can get beers for five dollars there if you know where to go. I think Bristol J wants to prove to her boyfriend she can be young and adventerous, and also does want to make the most of being single at the moment -fair enough. Belfast J is shit scared of flying (I think she should just get Valium personally), refuses to consider long haul, and also is a bit skint. She refuses to coutenance America. Both of them have suggested I just do both separately. Frankly I would have to win the lottery, (spesh with US wedding to attend), and I think we would have a better time if we went away as a threesome anyway - twosomes can get hard work after a while (though C and I had a great time travelling round Spain). Last night in the pub Belfast J was saying well maybe in 2008 when I have more money and have taken a fear of flying course I'll consider it. I was thinking yes, let's say to Bristol J to do it the year after next, and all go to France. Received upset text from Bristol J this morning saying the staffroom was horrendous, with colleagues showing off engagement rings and talking about ski-ing at Easter, and begging to go to the States. Bristol J points out I have known her much longer than I have known Belfast J. God, what to do?

Virtual Dating

Those readers familiar with this blog will know what a sucker I am for displacement activities (I came up with most of the links you see on the right hand side of the screen). The more banal, fantastical and time-wasting, the better, as far as I'm concerned. I have whiled away many an afternoon when I'm meant to be compiling a Very Important Business Report happily conducting internet searches for such things as the best value sushi knife in London, or perhaps taking the Which Scent is Best Suited to my Personality? Test on the Guerlain perfume website.

So I guess it had to happen sooner or later that I would - despite my recent vows to just give up and remove myself from the "market" - chance upon a dating website. OK, so I haven't joined - yet - but I am seriously considering it (just to see), and to this end, I have spent the last hour searching for vaguely presentable photos of myself, editing out incriminating evidence of drunken friends and sneakily airbrushing out the less flattering elements of my image.

I will have a think about it tonight, and tomorrow, I will decide whether or not to unleash myself on the unsuspecting Jewish singles scene. I wonder which I'll find first: a new job or a new boyfriend?

A Threshold

So, on Thursday evening, I crossed a significant threshold in a 30 something girl's life, and slept with a man over the age of 40!!! Surprisingly it was pretty good. I'm still quite shocked. Then on Friday morning, I had to get up, fend off attempts for another go (never got this whole early morning sex thing - would far rather sleep for hours, and have sex when fully awake) do all my washing up which had been piling up into a massive tower awaiting the plumber (who actually came on Tuesday - oops), pack, stop off at chemists and buy morning after pill, go to work, email, send off some stuff, and I was still at the airport by midday! For it was my best friend J's 33 rd birthday this weekend, and so another threshold has been reached - a whole year of blogging. Cheers, girls!

Where Did We Go Wrong?

Brilliant interview with the author Marilyn French in today’s The Times. Virago is republishing The Women’s Room, to mark its 30th anniversary. French is a feminist of the type with which I most identify; a militant, old-school 70s activist. One of my earliest childhood memories is of sitting on the floor in front of my mother’s bookcase, thumbing through the dog-eared pages of the thick novel, its harsh black cover a symbol of the bitterness I would later come to understand as the expression of Woman’s doomed place in society.

Looking at the picture of the 77-year-old French this morning, I was encouraged to see a tough-looking woman; she is after all the author of what 30 years ago was considered a brave, daring, groundbreaking book, has since survived cancer, and unlike many other feminists of that generation, has become neither a complete sell-out, nor has she given up and resigned herself to her culturally-prescribed destiny. She is also pictured in full make-up and dressed in bright colours; a far-cry from the manly scariness of the late Andrea Dworkin. This is what we need to see; a feminist who is a Woman; as French herself points out, the likes of Margaret Thatcher could only be accepted as Prime Minister by becoming a pseudo-male: the Iron Lady. Here, we have an integral feminist, someone who has been instrumental in shaping our cultural inheritance, but who has done so unapologetically embracing her femaleness.

So where has she been? And where are all the other women like her? What has happened to their voice? What have we, the next generation, done for our “daughters”?

Two points she makes in the article (crudely paraphrased below), which really stand out for me are:

(1) That literary conventions are not merely technical devices, but actually mirror our societal attitudes. We need to look no further than art, literature and media to see that these conventions have regressed in the last decade. There are no real feminist ideas portrayed on screen that are not satirised.

(2) That although we live in a world that principally values money and power, yet what is considered to be “women’s work” – and what, due to the economic workings of society, remains largely performed by women – is unpaid. What kind of value are we placing on even contrived roles for women in society? That their work is either unpaid, or they are forced to take on the characteristics of Man?

I feel ashamed and sad. While I agree with French that we don’t have the choices we think we do (it is impossible to have everything, and rigid societal conventions, work practices and tax systems mean that it is largely women who stay home to take care of children), I think that we take for granted what our Sisters went through for us. The tireless campaigns, demonstrations, daring books that were written… what have we done to carry on their good work, and what sacrifices are we making for the next generation?

Celeb Sightings from La-La Land

Well, you can't get more A-List than LA, darling. And here are some of my celeb sightings from today:

1. Sanjaya Malakar from American Idol, tonight at The Grove, with his parents. N shamelessly tapped him on the shoulder and asked if he was on American Idol. He was v sweet and shy, and his parents looked v proud.
   


2. Stephen Spielberg, this morning, at the beach in Malibu. He walked past me with a small child, having a bizarre conversation about the rocks. (I was perched on one of said rocks, watching my friend D surfing, while trying not to be run over by one of the overly energetic, enormous dogs racing along the shore.)
   


3. Several familiar-looking Triple-Zero (or so it seemed) waifs, shopping at Fred Segal this afternoon (as you can see, I have had a v productive day)

Seeing as the friends at whose beach house we were hanging out count amongst their neighbours the likes of Mel Gibson, Danny DeVito and Jennifer Aniston, I do feel that my celebrity-sighting potential quota has been under-achieved, but I still have some time here left.

On the way back tonight, I realised that the last time I was on a beach was in 2003, and the last time I went on a holiday that did not involve (a) my family, (b) a manic city, or (c) a couple of frantic days tacked onto the tail end of a business trip, was in 2002. And the last time I went longer than 48 hours without mobile phone access was in 1993.

No wonder I'm so frazzled.

Dumbledore's Wisdom

Last week I went down to Dublin to meet up with L, and hear her and top shot NY professor give papers at a Seminar at UCD. Having spent hours chatting with L in her hotel room, and not really sleeping very well due to the fact my room was a) above a nightclub b) incredibly hot and c) vibrated, I was utterly exhausted by the time it came to go back to Belfast. I fell asleep on the train, and even snored much to the amusement of the two kids sat opposite me (I could vaguely hear them giggling through my tired haze). I got back home, power napped for an hour, and then went out to Bop yestrum, v trendy evening full of gorgeous young things swanning about, which I normally wouldn't have bothered with, but it was a good friend of mine's leaving do: she is leaving Belfast to travel round India for a few months, and then is going to live in Brighton. She will be sadly missed. Anyway, it meant that on Sunday I was too shattered to do anything but indulge myself in re-reading my favourite Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I love it especially for Dumbledore's wisdom at the end, which I am going to quote to you now.

Harry has just defeated the evil Voldemort for the second time. Voldemort had haunted a diary and incarnated his 16 year old self in its pages. When he was 16, he was called Tom Riddle, and like Harry was a pupil at Hogwarts. Harry realises that he has a lot in common with Tom. Both are half-Muggle, half Wizard; both are orphans; both have dark hair and green eyes; both can speak Parseltongue, the language of Snakes. Harry fears that he is evil. Furthermore, the Sorting Hat wanted to place him in Slytherin, the House full of dark magic, and the one which Tom Riddle was in. Does the Sorting Hat know that Harry is really evil??

"So I should be in Slytherin," Harry said, looking desparately into Dumbledore's face. "The Sorting Hat could see Slytherin's power in me, and it..."
"Put you in Gryffindor," said Dumbledore calmly. "Listen to me, Harry. You happen to have many of the qualities Salazar Slytherin prized in his hand-picked students. His own very rare gift, Parseltongue...resourcefulness...determination...a certain disregard for the rules," he added, his moustache quivering again. "Yet the Sorting Hat placed you in Gryffindor. You know why that was. Think."
"It only put me in Gryffindor," said Harry in a defeated voice, "because I asked not to go into Slytherin...."
"Exactly," said Dumbledore, beaming once more. "Which makes you very different from Tom Riddle. It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."

Greetings From La-La Land!

Hello from LA! I am recuperating in the sunshine, having just run the LA Marathon. Oddly, LA seems to really agree with me; so much so, that I have just extended my stay by another week. Am having a blast, staying with my friend N, lounging by the pool, playing Superheroes with her 3-year-old and being drooled on by her 5-month-old (the latter, obviously, being less fun).

I have managed to surpass my own record, and was back in high heels the day after the marathon. Sadly, though, my excessively pale English skin failed to stand up to the 81 degree sunshine (funny, that!) on Sunday, and I got horribly sunburned running the marathon, and am sporting unsightly tan lines.

So here are all the things I am loving about LA:

1. Everyone here is as neurotic, high-maintenance and demanding as me. Would you believe I can go into a restaurant, pick any dish, and completely customise it, removing or adding items on a whim, and requesting that things be done to the food that the chef has never even thought of?! And they don't bat an eyelid - amazing. When I do this in London, everyone thinks I'm mad, but here, everyone does it.
   
   
2. Dressing down. Victoria Beckham has been blasted by La-La Landers for her excessively contrived style, and rightly so: everyone dresses down here. I packed a low-maintenance wardrobe of jeans, bikinis and juicy couture tracksuits, and I'm loving its simplicity.
   
   
3. Healthy food. Leaving aside the proliferation of fast food chains (raaaa! Ban them!), there are an abundance of Japanese food restaurants (yum) and a delightfully enormous branch of Whole Foods Market, all within walking distance.
   
   
4. Overly-obliging customer service. OK, so on a bad day, I call it cultural prostitution and think everyone is hankering after a tip, but everything here is happy and sunny, and I am loving how my requests for various items of Laura Mercier's collection and new Juicy Couture lines have been met with efficiency and enthusiasm.
   
   
5. 24 hour gyms. Oh. My. God. Simply genius. I have already signed up for temporary gym membership, and will be resuming my 5am workouts this very morning.
   
   
6. Being liberated from my mobile phone. My 13 year relationship with Orange ended in December, when I signed up with T-Mobile. I have regretted it since I arrived here and have had no network coverage. Several angry 'phone calls and e mails later (their customer service staff are trained to remain calm, bright and happy throughout angered exchanges, which only serves to infuriate me further), their helpful advice has been to turn off my 'phone, remove the battery and sim card repeatedly, until it picks up a signal. Unsurprisingly, this has not worked. However, for the first time ever, I have been completely uncontactable, and it has taken a week, but I have stopped checking for messages every 2 minutes, and it is strangely liberating.

So La-La Land is turning out to be a bit of a hit with me. Of course, I have had a few encounters with Orange County airheads at various parties and evenings out, but that's material for another blog post. Until then, dare I say it, I am actually quite relaxed...