I am on holiday, Day 2

So far, so good. Yesterday was passed jetlagged and starey, eating Space Dust in Kensington Gardens and a dinner of the Gods at Bocca di Lupo.  (Do not talk to me about what happens when you put radishes with parmesan and truffle oil. It is good. Very good. But also a bit dirty.)

This morning, after a night of excellent non-drug induced sleep in the bed photographed yesterday, my "husband" and I went to have our hairs cut in D'Arblay Street. After that, to M&S, where I purchaysed a navy blue dressing gown in a generous size, and to Muji, where I purchaysed a nylon bag for my overspill. 

"What did you have for breakfast?", I hear you cry, remembering my promise from yesterday and a bit before that. I had this at The Breakfast Club, also in D'Arblay Street:  

Not bad, but the egg was a bit watery.

After that, we got in the hire car (which is not a Vauxhall, and is therefore excellent), and drove off through London: over Vauxhall Bridge, through Camberwell and Peckham and Poo Cross Gate and onto the A2 and M2, where it rained and rained and vicars drove at 2 miles an hour.

"I have never seen the White Cliffs of Dover", said the French-Canadian veterinary research pathologist to whom I am married. "I shall take you there forthwith",  I said, and off we went.

It was quite good. I had a prawn sandwich, and the pathologist, a packet of parsnip crisps. The weather wasn't all that, but the cliffs looked cliffy and English people were sitting in their cars having a little rest:

We went for a walk, me in my unsuitable shoes and the pathologist in his sensible shoes. It was quite good, then it started raining quite hard so we came back, and I went and had a wee.   The White Cliffs of Dover are National Trust, of course, which meant that the words "stop telling us the fucking tap is broken - we know it is" became this:

Then we came to our B&B.  It is so good I am not telling you where it is unless you really want to know, and if you do, you can ask me by sending me an electronic letter. It is 10 minutes outside Canterbury and toppermost.

I shall end this post by showing you the bed I am lying on at this very moment: the bed under the ancient skis; the bed that I will soon get in to for a massive kip.  In the bed,  I will dream about the dinner I have just had with my "husband" in the restaurant (in Canterbury) we had dinner in the first night we met EXACTLY four years ago TODAY. It will be quite a cheesy dream, but a good one - a bit like those dreams in which you are given an old pony who ends up being a top showjumper.

Yours in burp,

NWM

I am on holiday, Day 1

Yes. I am in London. It is the first day of our holiday and so far it is great.

The flight with Air Canada last night was, as usual, awful, and included a $100 charge for 2kgs of excess baggage. But no matter. We are here and so, as promised, is a photograph of the first bed we are sleeping in at the house of our dear friends 'n' Top Hosts, C 'n' J. (J is a surgeon; my own "husband" is a pathologist, so clearly we had a gay old time tonight trying to work out who was going to carve the pork).

The bed looks mighty tasty, what with no (0) sleep on the flight last night, the 5 hour time difference, the fact of its comfort and its jolly nice Designers' Guild cushions. Here it is:

I am reading The Woman in White and loving it rather, in the full knowledge that at the earliest opportunity I will be buying the new Jilly Cooper novel and devouring it as I would a giant bag of M&S Cheese Balls, inevitable after-effects and all.  

Anyway. Back to today.   I have no other photograph of something that happpened today, as I promised in my previous post, but I can tell you what I had for breakfast: a 5am muffin made out of the human dust of previous Air Canada passengers, and a 9am Mystery Panini from Costa Coffee in Paddington Station that repeats upon me still. 

Tomorrow, to Kent. Is it going to get more interesting? I do not know, but I am sure a good night's sleep will help. 

Pip - and also Pip

NWM

I am going on holiday

It has been quite the summer, full of trips backwards and forwards on aeroplanes doing things I cannot talk about. Next week, however, the "holiday" starts; a holiday that lasts for three weeks and takes in various places, including Marrakech, Hastings, the Isle of Skye, York and Bedford.

We leave next Tuesday, and I will be showing you bits of it. My intention is simple: in each new location, I will supply to you, my legions of adoring readers and/or fans:

1. A photograph of the bed that we will be sleeping in, pre-sleep;
2. What we had for breakfast;
3. A photograph of something we have seen that day.

Amazing.

Pip pip!

NWM

I try to get an agent using pictures of cats

As we all know, the internet is made of cats.   I cannot say I am overly fond of cats, and yet I am aware that most people (especially ladies and literary agents) like them a lot.   Some have been known to spend up to three days a week inputting the words "cat photographs funny ha ha not funny peculiar" into Google and looking at the resulting images over and over again.

It is this piece of information that has led me to this most recent attempt to get a literary agent, even though everyone (apart from fucking Jonny B) knows that the whole publishing-deal-from-blog thing stopped in 2005, i.e. when I started blogging.  Still, I will not be deterred.  Writing books is the best job in the world because a) you have to do it by yourself, i.e. you don't have to talk to anyone; b) it is portable, i.e. you can do it anywhere; c) a lot of the things and people that have happened to me you couldn't invent if you tried, so I will just 're-hash' those (but with some name changes to avoid legal issues) to make my books, making it less difficult than it would appear at first sight.

Steve Jobs, Vanessa Feltz and Mark Zuckerberg all made their fortunes by putting photographs of cats on their websites.  Also, many international best-selling writers (not including fucking Jonny B) were discovered because they put pictures of cats on their websites, knowing (as do I) about the whole literary agent/cat-snap dynamic.

For example:

Dan Brown, before writing books about nuns etc, wrote a blog about seahorses. One day, he posted a picture of his cat, Doctor Truffles, looking at a seahorse.  Heide Lange from Sanford J Greenburger Associates found him that way.

Jilly Cooper had a blog about jam. One day, she put a picture of her cat, Feral, at a polo match eating a strawberry jam sandwich on her blog. That is how Desmond Elliott found her.

Cecelia Aherne had a blog about what it is like living with a brain made of feathers and crumbs. One day, she put a picture on her blog of her cat, Jizzbiscuit, looking inside her ear, wondering how come he could see out of the other side of her head.  In this way, she was discovered by Marianne Gunn O'Connor and now earns millions of pounds a year writing books that have been proven to decrease your IQ.

I have therefore not given up hope.  If I put a lot of pictures of cats up on this blog, there is a chance that a cat-loving literary agent may find me and offer me a) an idea; b) some hope. Until then, I can merely sit back, relax, and say to you: enjoy my Gallery of Cat. (You may enjoy, as an additional challenge, working out which of these cats I have shared a house with.)

Maurice of Kennington (pronounced with a French accent, i.e. Maur-eece, not Morris. You may pronounce Kennington as you wish).

A cat of Amsterdam, thwarted in his attempt to go to the local discoteca

Second Cat of Amsterdam, interrupted whilst playing online poker

Flirt of Kennington




































Jane of Seymour and her cat, Geoffroy

Monster of Brixton

Also Monster of Brixton

Le Chat du Lac, "qui aime se frotter contre les fruits" - particularly the soft downy peach.  NB: he was interrupted in mid-frotte with this plum, which he had pulled from the bowl himself.  "He has no name ... sometimes it is ... Chat."   I cannot comment on the cat's haircut; suffice to say Sometimes Chat was not happy to have his undercarriage mown, and that the original haircut revealed strips of pink catskin. 

Corndog of St-Joseph-du-Lac (and Montreal)  I have known some cats in my time (see above), but this one takes the biscuit.   Corndog was adopted at six months, just after she had had her first litter.  She was found protecting a Bush of Kittens, for Corndog had committed her one and only intelligent act: hiding her kittens in a bush to protect them from marauding coyotes. Since then, her main activities have included lying down, looking at imaginary moths with her mouth open and getting her head stuck inside  yoghurt pots.

If this Visual Cat Fiesta doesn't get me the attention I so richly deserve, I will give up right now!!!

Pip pip!

NWM

I am planning a trip and am not called "Faeces"

Yes, it is true. The cuminolimbus of silence has obscured the rays of joy that spurt from the sun of chitchat. Every day thousands of well-meaning people (some of them of acceptable levels of intelligence) check my web-blog. "Is today the day?", they whisper to themselves, hardly able to look. "Is it?".

The same is true of my adoring readers and/or fans, all of whom are slightly above average in many positive ways, e.g. ability to do starjumps, regularity of facial features and cleanliness of socks. "NWM?", they whisper into the silence, hands rustling in packets of honeyroast peanuts, mouths clamped around bendy straws plunged into 12oz glasses of Jenever: "Are you there?". Still there is silence. "NWM?", they murmur, sucking harder on their straws, "Are you going to write a web-blog post again?". Silence has been their only reward.

It is quite easy to explain my silence: I have just not felt like writing anything down. There are a great many things happening, but I am not overly keen on writing about "feelings" etc (although mine are fine), and the other things I would like to write about would probably threaten the long-term viability of a) some friendships; b) some possibilities of earning money in the future. I have, however, been exposed to:

1. A proper, sweaty, confused hangover that included primal screaming and cheese

2. A man telling a story that ended with the line "and I said ... is that you, Vanessa Feltz?"

3. The same man telling a story that ended with the line "As long as it's not called 'faeces' or 'Hitler', I don't care what you call it"

4. A good dinner here

5. A good breakfast here

6. And also here

7. A few conversations about how to make a machine that spurts out Pheromones

8. This bag (but red)

9. Flashdance-style dancing to "Back in Black"

10. A great many babies being born to people I know and like (and, oddly, four fast labours in a row producing gigantic babies - very odd)

11. A very real obsession with "The Real Housewives of New York City" - particularly the ghastly Alex and Simon (although obv I love Bethanny)

12. Reading many books at the same time, including this one about Harvard Business School (oddly compelling), my first ever Agatha Christie, Wolf Hall, Saturday and a cookbook by Sue Lawrence. Also FYI The Believers by Zoe Heller is ace.

13. Going "oh cock, it's really, really good, and how they're going to be really famous and I will have to pretend I don't like them" about Arcade Fire's latest long-player, The Suburbs (incidentally, Arcade Fire make more sense when you listen to them when you are driving around Canada. Do not ask me what I mean. I couldn't explain it.)

14. Watching this over and over again:

MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON from Dean Fleischer-Camp on Vimeo.

15. Planning a gigantic holiday trip.

Yes. The trip. It goes like this:

Montreal - London
London - Hastings (4 nights, inc trips to for e.g. Rye, Tunbridge Wells, Brighton etc)
Gatwick - Marrakech (7 nights for the wedding of my brother)
Marrakech - London
London - Inverness (on the sleeper!!! Swoon. Do they still bring you a cup of tea and a biscuit in second class?)
Inverness - Skye (3 nights)
Skye - Glasgow (1 night)
Glasgow - Lake District (1 night)
Lake District - Yorkshire (2 nights)
Yorkshire - Bedford (1 night)
London - Montreal

Now do not write and say things like "Oh but 2 days in Yorkshire is not long enough!" or "1 day in the Lake District is not long enough!" or "come to Leeds it is grate!" or "I cannot believe you are not stopping in Lincoln!!". We have people to visit and all of that. I would however be most interested in any tips and "insights" (as we in the advertising industry call "information") about:

1. What to see in Marrakech bearing in mind we are not likely to be able to travel around much;
2. If there is still a cup of tea on the Second Class sleeper when you wake up (see above)
3. What is really super duper on Skye and closely surrounding areas to see with our eyes, i.e. what would you do if you only had a morning.

Yorkshire I know. Bedford is where some people I love live, even though they would rather live in Lewes. Hastings is split into the Old Town and New Town and I of course will be staying (with my "husband") in the charming cottage of some dear friends in the Old Town, complete with view of the sea and (I am pretty certain!) organic sausages with easy reach.

Pip pip!

NWM