Day 102: I Receive A Magical Gift

God, my legs. On their birthdays, most people drink gin and smoke cigars. For some reason I thought I would go and see Anuja-The-Personal-Trainer (after a bun with a friend in Croydon, and before telly and strangely revolting curry with old friend who is addicted to Strepsils). As a speshul birthday treat, she made me stand on a half-ball thing and do squats whilst she threw things at me.

As a result, I was in Agony this morning. Had to go to the Post Office though because, via a long-distance phone call conducted in the garden last night in whispers (and some French), I had Ascertained that the "While You Were Perhaps Out I Made No Real Attempt To Ring The Doorbell Or Leave This Package With Your Neighbour Who Was Sitting On His Front Doorstep As He Always Is" card left by the postman was the passport to a magical Gift.

And it was indeed magical. It was a Kimono sent from Canada via Gloucestershire. And it goes with the bottle of single malt sent from Canada via Scotland on Monday. I am to sit in my armchair in my Kimono (a fragment of which I show here), drink my whisky, and smoke a small clay pipe. Better go to Canada and say 'thank you', I suppose.

Day 101: I Have Visitors From The Open University

Welcome, Open University Students!

May I say, first of all, that I salute your endeavours. But what strange referral brings you here? (103 doctors came here in a day once. It was dead exciting. Never heard from them again, mind you, but what did I expect?)

If you want to know if you can do a PhD in me, then the answer's yes. (What's your thesis?) But only if you leave a comment telling me how you got here. (You can do it anonymously, you know.)

Yours curiously (and mildly stalkery-y, let's face it; I mean News International were on for HOURS today).

NWM

Day 101: I Am 37

How on earth did that happen? (It's OK, I know where babies come from: apparently you play a game of Scrabble with your clothes off and then stand on your head.)

Things I Know

Quite a lot: some useful; some not. If you left me alone in a jungle on a desert island I would probably be OK, as long as I had loo roll and a tube of Elizabeth Arden Eight Hour Cream.

Things I Don't Know

Everything else.

Things I May Learn

Who can tell?

Things I Would Like To Do Before I Die

A handstand
A cartwheel
Go up in an air balloon
Be a passenger in a 2-person aeroplane made before 1940 (closer than it sounds: someone offered me this very thing on Sunday)
Touch a monkey, but not a big one
Shack up with a Gentleman Caller
Learn how to fillet a fish
Go to Rome again
Wear Vivienne Westwood
Run for a long time without passing out
Not live in London
Go to Iceland. (Not the shop. I've been. It's rubbish.)
Write a book (barf)

Things I Have No Interest In Doing, Ever

Swim with dolphins
Touch a baboon
Be famous
Live in Germany
Shell a prawn or other shellfish, esp langoustines which are like enormous prawns and have staring eyes on stalks
Deep sea diving
Conquer my fear of cockroaches.

Day 100: I Offer Hope To Discouraged Novelists

I have a fondness for romances. You know, the ones that look like real literature and that, even if you're just gagging for the bit when Captain Wentworth writes the note to Anne Eliot, or a man turns up on a horse sweating a bit, or David Copperfield gets it on with Dora. (Not French ones though. They only ever end badly.)

But I like the other ones too. The pink English ones written after 1995. I refuse to use the term chick-lit, as I am not a "chick" (the word implies thigh-high boots, ironed streaked blonde hair, a rather plain face and nights out on the town with the girls in nightclubs in Cheltenham); and I'm not sure that they're "literature" either, whatever that is. But if I'm feeling weak in the head, or a bit ill, or just generally a bit drippy, one of the most effective cures is a quick trip to a charity shop with a fiver in your pocket which will, on average, buy you three novels with squirly writing on the front and the promise of a happy ending. And that to me is an afternoon's escapism, from which I emerge revived and ready to fight with bears in the street, using only my bare hands and a small jar of Bovril.

That Daisy Goodwin has had a programme on the telly recently that has proven with Scientific Fact that reading romances is good for you. Apparently they lower your heart rate to an almost standstill on the sofa, which I have known for years. She gets bang on my tits, what with her little poetry collections and her Executive Producing and her own televisual entertainment programmes, and she's got an annoying voice and that, but I have to thank her - even vaguely - for making me feel slightly better about my Dark Habit. I mean her programme was on BBC4 and everything, which means it must be OK.

Most of them are un-readable, mind you. About 70% of the books I buy from Oxfam when weak in the head are hurled across the room in disgust before I scrape them back up, slightly battered, and return them to Oxfam to sell again. The thing is, I want to hate Miriam Keane, but I don't. Maeve Binchy is very soothing. I read a Jenny Colgan book last Tuesday afternoon and it was really quite funny, although I can't actually remember what it was about. I think there was a dog in it. I once spent a week reading The Barchester Chronicles and Jilly Cooper. Not at the same time, obv - I sort of mixed them up a bit. (The Warden/Octavia. Barchester Towers/Polo. That sort of thing. Very interesting.)

Last night I was in an insomniac mangle. There are only ever three solutions to insomnia: 1) a list; 2) Tamazepam; 3) a rubbish novel. (The fourth is prodding awake a slumbering Gentleman Caller and asking for a quick game of Scrabble, but gentlemen I am interested in are not freely available for board games at the time of writing.) And what did I find? P.S. I love you by Cecelia Ahern, the 12 year old half-wit daughter of an Irish Prime Minister who did a 'Media and Communications Degree' (what is this thing?) and is, I think, the sister-in-law of a member of boyband favourites, Westlife. Apparently it was top of the best-seller charts in Germany for fifty-two weeks. Apparently Hilary Swank is going to be in the film they're making of it in the Hollywood. Apparently it is a "wonderfully life-affirming witty debut". No it is not. It is cock, and it is unreadable. Let me share with you some extracts of Miss Ahern's wonderfully life-affirming prose.

"Her heart leaped as he lowered his boxers, caught them on the tip of his toes and flung them at her where they landed on her head."

"Leo paused in what he was doing and watched her with amusement. 'I always thought you were for the madhouse. No one ever listens to me.'
She laughed even harder. 'Oh, I'm sorry Leo. I don't know what's wrong with me, I just can't stop.' Holly's stomach ached from laughing so hard and she was aware of all the curious glances she was attracting but she just couldn't help it. It was as if all the missed mirth from the past couple of months were tumbling out at once."

"She had settled on wearing an all-black outfit to suit her current mood. Black fitted trousers slimmed her legs and were tailored perfectly to sit over her black boots. A black corset that made her look like she had a bigger chest finished the outfit off perfectly. Leo had done a wonderful job on her hair, tying it up and allowing strands to fall in loose waves around her shoulders. Holly ran her fingers through her hair and smiled at the memory of her time at the hairdressers..."

If this 503 page cavalcade of wank (written in the style of Muffin the Mule with a packet of crayons) has made someone into a best-selling author, then take heart. Anything you have ever written is better than this. So if you're trying to write a book and you're crippled with self-doubt, I suggest getting down to Oxfam and buying this book. (You'll find at least ten copies nestled next to 1976's splendid Dairy Book of Home Cookery). One glance at Ahern and you'll have written next year's Nobel Prize winner by the end of the week.

SPECIAL DAY 100 CELEBRATION EDITION: I Reveal The Most Special Monkey Of Them All

When I was baby and a tiny child, we lived in a big house in Kensington. Not the whole house, mind; just the bottom floor of it, but that meant we had the garden. I seem to remember spending most of my time on the compost heap looking at worms, and one night the cover of the gas meter fell on my head; otherwise, I don't remember much about it. Anyway, because it was a road of big houses in Kensington, some interesting people lived in our street.

In the house across the road lived Cynthia Lennon and her son, Julian Lennon. You know. John Lennon's son. Monkeymother tells me that when I was very little, about 3 or 4, and he was about 8, he used to come and play with me. Apparently he was very kind to me, and a very sweet child. And one year, he gave me this monkey. The monkey that his father had given him. So, to celebrate this 100th day of not-working, I would like to share Monkey with you all; a Monkey that came to me from John Lennon via Julian Lennon. In this photograph, he is wearing his hat.


Here he is relaxing next to a bowl of Autumnal apples and pears. In this photograph, his hat is OFF, but still attached via a piece of red string. I am sure you will agree he has lovely legs. I think I used to chew his tail, but I was a Very Tiny Child so can be forgiven, I think.









Here he is from the back. You may be able to see his red bottom. More importantly, you will be able to see the word LOVE stitched clearly on his head.











He is a bit motheaten now and needs to go to the Toy Hospital for a bit, but I love him very much. I often think that I will write to Julian Lennon, who may miss his monkey; I sometimes think he should be returned to his rightful owner. But only once he's mended.