Another Me 

This is a picture of me, open pores, wrinkles, sun spots and all. Sometimes I wish I were a different person. I don’t mean I want to be Scarlett Johansson, or Margaret Beckett or Florence Bloody Nightingale, or even Ryan Gosling. I do still want to be me, but different and better. 

I wish I was reckless and devil-may-care and a risk taker instead of someone who frets that a stranger is about to trip over their laces. I wish I had a better work ethic and more drive and tenacity and that I wasn’t so bloody lazy. 

I wish I had more passions and enthusiasms, so that whoever delivered my eulogy would speak in glowing terms of my commitment to the cause or the project or my art, and how I would never settle for second best, instead of seeing second best as something that happened to me once when the stars aligned and all the really good people were at home in bed with the norovirus. 

I wish I had more self-discipline so that what talents I do have might be given a chance to shine, rather than consigned to playing second spear carrier to my love affair with procrastination. 

I wish I took better care of myself and exercised more and ate healthily and well and had a cupboard full of exotic pastes in colourful tins, instead of Schwartz jars of dust that used to be spices. I wish I stuck at things, especially things I liked, instead of giving up because it is raining or I am tired or because for some unknown reason I cannot resist fanning the smouldering embers of self-destruction into a roaring flame and crapping out of Zumba as a result. EVEN THOUGH I LIKE IT.

I wish I could reinvent myself and change my name to Vicky Romanoff and move to LA where I would tell people that I had been a ringmaster in the circus and the warden of Edinburgh Castle. But I couldn’t because that would be reckless and would involve self-discipline and many other qualities that I don’t posses and also because I couldn’t quieten the small Scottish voice in my brain telling me I was a pretentious arsehole. 

Part of me wishes I were more like Madonna, breaking balls and eating popcorn from my cleavage. But then, I once read an interview with Madonna where she was asked if she ever thought “How did this happen? Why me?” and she said, “No. I can’t let myself think like that.” Which is pretty revealing. It makes me feel a bit better to know that a lot of driven, succesful people are probably on the run from themselves. Which isn’t very nice of me, is it? 

And that’s another thing. I wish I were nicer and more thoughtful, and took better care of my friendships. I wish I were the kind of person who volunteered for stuff and took in waifs and strays and organised street parties and didn’t think awful things about other people’s children. 

I don’t like the fact that I think these things about myself. I know I’m not so bad, I know I’m not chopped liver. I also know it’s horribly self indulgent and self obsessed. Get over yourself as they say in the US of A. “Who do you think will be looking at you anyway?” as my mother and grandmother would cry. I don’t think it every day. Some days when the sun is shining and my hair is behaving and I’ve had a glass of wine at lunchtime, I feel like Jemima Bloody Khan. 

But some days I want to be a different person. I know it’s pointless and wrong, but I do. 

9 October 12

Headrush

(Tap. Tap. Is this thing on?)

Something I have always liked about myself is that I don’t give a shit about labels. Not even when I was a teenager particularly.  Maybe it was to do with growing up in the 80’s when you bought your coats in Oxfam and second hand Levi’s in Flip. 

If someone admires something I’m wearing and I tell them I bought it in a charity shop, they might pat my arm and, in a stage whisper, say, “Oh well, you can just tell people it came from an exclusive little boutique.” Why? Why would I say that? Well, I mean I  know why, but frankly, life’s too bloody short. 

I couldn’t care less about labels in music either. If I like it, I like it. I feel a bit sorry for music snobs, it’s like they need permission to experience something.  Idiots. People used to make fun of me for loving Petula Clark, and were surprised when I told them she was John Lennon’s favourite singer. Her voice has that cracked emotion that taps into your heart. 

Anyway, today I heard this song “Domino” on the radio. Jessie J sings it. I think it’s bloody sexy and it makes me want to dance. I turned it up really loud in the car with the cold autumn air blasting in the window:

“You’re like a shot of pure gold. I think I’m about to explode. 

I can taste the tension like a cloud of smoke in the air. 

Now I’m breathing like I’m running 

Cos you’re taking me there.”

I got that brilliant sun shining music headrush and I couldn’t give a toss if it’s not cool. 

6 August 2012

Stardust

My friend Claire (@Clairey11 on Twitter) is producing a movie called “Not Another Happy Ending” starring Karen Gillan which is currenty being filmed in Glasgow. One day last week my daughter and I spent a day on the set as extras. My daughter is a huge Dr Who fan and a particular fan of Karen Gillan’s character, the Dr’s former assistant Amy Pond.

Being a movie extra is a little like being an ant traversing a mobius strip. Repetition after repetition, looping round and round, you set out on each take channelling the enthusiasm of an explorer setting foot on virgin soil, only to end up back where you started but with the nagging sensation that your jacket was buttoned up differently last time.

The magic of the celluloid story lighting up the big screen is pretty hard to imagine when you’re in a graveyard, on the 15th take, mouthing silent gibberish to total strangers. It’s even harder when you’re a young child with a relatively low boredom threshold, pink-cheeked from the heat of the unseasonal duffel coat you’ve been asked to wear.

And yet it was magical for my daughter. I have rarely seen her so genuinely thrilled, nerves jangling and lit up inside.

Celebrity is a pretty devalued currency these days, when a stray sweat patch can get you star billing on the cover of a magazine. But being on set that day reminded me that celebrity can still play host to our much more authentic need for heroes.

At the end of the day, as the cameras, monitors and the rest of the paraphenalia were being packed away, Karen Gillan came over to have a quick word with my daughter. To me she was an almost supernaturally lovely young woman with silky green eyes and a ready laugh.

But to my daughter, she was Amy Pond. She was a woman who had crossed galaxies and wise-cracked with aliens. She was “The Girl Who Waited”, who shut the door on her one true love so that her younger self could live happily ever after. She was a hero and it was wonderful to see her stardust reflected in my daughter’s eyes.

23 July 

Mucky books 

This blog is not about “Fifty Shades of Grey”. I haven’t read it and I have no particular desire to. I know that practically everybody in the whole world has read it and it means that I get ignored in the hairdresser’s, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing in my book.

For some reason it occurred to me today that rather than read “Fifty Shades”, I would reread “Scruples”, by Judith Krantz, one of the first books I read as a teenager that had sexy bits in. 

I found it at my Gran’s when I was in my teens and it made quite an impression. Over to Wikipedia;  

The novel details the life story of protagonist Wilhelmina Hunnewell Winthrop (“Billy”), as she evolves from the overweight “poor relation” in an aristocratic Boston Brahmin family to become a thin, stylish woman who is left a vast fortune by the death of her much older first husband and who founds an upscale Beverly Hills boutique called “Scruples.

There you have it, the holy grail of bonkbuster fiction: money, sex, shopping and weight loss. It was the first book I ever read that talked about sex in a reasonably explicit way. More importantly though, it was the first book I read that depicted sexual pleasure. That’s why it’s stuck in my memory. 

Sex education can teach you the mechanics and the relationship theory, in the way that you can draw a picture and describe the taste of a very juicy, ripe fruit. But that’s hardly the whole shebang is it? Of course there’s no substitute for actually taking a bite and tasting it for yourself but, if you’re young, a well written mucky book can give you a flavour of it in a way that classroom lectures never will.

I wonder what it will be like for future teenagers who will read their mucky books on screens? It seems odd to think that they won’t have the experience of watching the book fall open at that well thumbed page. I’m glad the teenage me found some mucky books, because they gave me a glimpse not just of what sex was, but how it felt.  

1 July 

As Others See Us 

It’s holiday capsule wardrobe time! This means trying stuff on in shops. In the so-called “Fitting Rooms”, or perhaps the “Misfitting Rooms” or the “Chamber of Horrors” or maybe just “Hades”.

If I ruled the world, as well as being a wee bit paranoid that people were only being nice to me because I was the boss, I would transform fitting rooms. 

I would fit them with low lighting, snacks and a wind machine to make your hair go all Bonnie Tyler in the “Total Eclipse of the Heart” video. There would be a button to press to summon help in the shape of hard liquor or a sturdy Germanic lady who slapped you out of any hysterical fits of crying. I would have special mirrors which only work when you are fully dressed, so that you don’t have to disrobe with your eyes shut to avoid coming face to face with your own nethers at close quarters.

You may have guessed that I’m not a great fan of changing rooms. My dislike of them is made all the worse by my weird inverse body dysmorphic disorder, which is very rare among women and which means that I think I am thinner than I really am. 

“Blimey, that 12 looks HUGE!” thinks I, skipping off to the misfitting room like a lamb to the slaughter. Cut to, “NNNghgnghf MMMnnnnf!”; me caught in the vice like grip of a blouse with upper arm holes the circumference of spaghetti.

Every time I am Charlie Brown to the fitting room’s Lucy; the sucker once again persuaded to kick that sartorial football only to have it snatched away and lie winded on the empty playing fields of of disappointment and self loathing. There I go! Throwing off the shackles of the past!  I clutch my skinny hipster breeks and, propelled by a lethal mix of delusion and wish fulfillment, run headlong into the brick wall of reality. Well, it’s a bit annoying when the damn thing doesn’t fit, anyway. (And it looked GINORMOUS.) 

Most of my adult life I’ve been a bit plumper than I would like to be. Then, about two years ago, I was ill for a few months. It turned out to be nothing at all serious but by the time I felt better I had lost two stone. I was the size I had wanted to be for many a long year. I was also bloody miserable. 

It was a strange experience. A real life cautionary tale of “be careful what you wish for.” I don’t know how others saw the thinner me, mostly as a bit thinner I guess. But it taught me that how I see myself makes all the difference. 

21 June 

Social Networking 

Twice in the last week I’ve been to events that were social, but were also, to some extent, about networking. I’m not that keen on traditional business networking. It makes me think of breakfast meetings in a Premier Inn, where people with dandruff meet up to steal pastries and talk about their phones. Or maybe that’s just me. 

I don’t do that well at those kind of networking events. I tend to hover on the edge of groups like a bad smell looking for an atmosphere to pollute. Then when someone does speak to me I say things like, “Oh I’m trying to do some things here and there, now and again, but it’s a bit up and down. I’m not sure how long I can last to be honest. I’m down to my last tin of frankfurters.” Then I throw my head back and laugh hysterically and for too long and then there is tumbleweed. 

I met someone a while back who is a fearsome networker. He said, “I never start a sentence with “I used to be.” I never look back. It’s all about the here and the now and the business and moving forward. Never stand still.” All this while he fixed me with one of those stares that says “Are you listening to me? Are you?  You better be listening to me. Do not move your eyes from my face for even one instant or so help me God I will hunt you down. Dance loser! Dance!” You know those stares. No? Maybe that’s another thing that’s just me. 

Sometimes I think gosh, I should be a bit more like that and have more chutzpah and front and all that and then I think no, I’d rather sell pegs door to door in my underwear, thanks. Actually, I’m not *that* bad at networking but who wants to read a blog about how you’re actually quite a competent networker? Christ, I’d rather eat hair.

But, I am a big fan of so-called social networks. Mainly because they are more about the social than the networks. Good old Twitter has been great for me both socially and er, networkingly. It’s odd that the virtual nature of it often encourages people to just be themselves and before you know it you’re chatting and having a laugh and then you discover you have stuff in common and sometimes it leads to people sending you emails and offering you work and sometimes you even email them asking for work and you don’t feel like a sad loser because you’ve had a laugh with them over some arse in “The Apprentice” who thinks a pasty is a canape. 

And if you’re very lucky you also meet people who turn out to be proper friends and you get invited to great nights out that you’d never normally get invited to. This photo was taken last night at the Edinburgh Film Festival opening night party. Actually I was invited by my friend Claire who I’ve known for many, many, many, really A LOT of years. She’s not in this picture unfortunately. This one is of my friends the two Andreas, who I met through Twitter. I love this picture. Not just because my teeth look nice, though they look BLOODY GREAT, but because as dark haired Andrea said, “We look really like *us*.” We do, too.

Fathers’ Day 

This is my Dad and his younger brother John. They grew up in a “single end”, that is a room and kitchen, in Campbeltown in Argyll.

My Granda was a fisherman and my Nana did all sorts of jobs. Dad and John slept in a recess bed in the kitchen with their two aunts, my Nana’s younger sisters. My daughter finds this hard to believe, like it’s something from a Roald Dahl story. 

My Dad was the first person in his family to go to University, part of the generation that benefited from the brave new post-war world. He was at Uni at the same time as Donald Dewar and John Smith, who once told him; “Passing exams is 20 per cent knowledge and 80 per cent technique.” One of the many sage pieces of advice he has passed on to me over the years. 

He’s a remarkable man my Dad, a bit of a maverick, a one-off, single minded and blessed with remarkable self-confidence. He’s come a long way from his “single-end” beginnings.

When I was little we would visit him in his office and I would listen for his quick tapping footsteps on the stairs as he came to meet us in the lobby. He has an old fashioned chivalry that I used to find infuriating but that I now appreciate. If it’s bucketing down, for example, he still insists on dropping me at our destination while he parks further away and braves the rain. 

I wonder what my daughter will remember about her Dad as she grows up? I do know that she will always be secure in the knowledge that her Dad loves her, as I have always known that my Dad loves me.

Happy Fathers’ Day. 

16 June 

Concentration 

My previous job involved a lot of hard thinking. Complex concepts had to be understood, explained and discussed. Advice papers on those complex concepts had to be written in, hopefully, relatively succinct terms. (The subordinate legislation provisions in the Health Boards (Membership and Elections) (Scotland) Bill spring, horrifically, unbidden to mind.) I also had to spend quite a long time reading lengthy documents, some of which were very, very dull.

These days, I still read stuff and write stuff but it tends to be shorter, lighter and, while it requires some intellectual effort, it’s not really, really jolly hard. The kind of hard where you have to read it three times, narrow your eyes, read it again and then write it out word for word before you understand it, kind of hard. 

For a long time, I enjoyed the change. My mind felt a bit like poorly Colin in “The Secret Garden”, released from the fetid gloom of the sick room to marvel at the sunshine and flowers. 

Recently though, I’ve started to miss it. Just the other day I was trying to read something that required rather more effort than usual and I just couldn’t seem to concentrate. Half my brain was trying very hard and the other half was tugging at its sleeve shouting “LET’S GO AND PLAY!”. 

I didn’t really want to go and play. I really wanted to read the damn document, but my poor, enfeebled, neglected brain had taken fright and was refusing to take the jump. 

Sometimes it’s okay for your mind to scoot about like a toddler on a sugar rush, poking ideas with sticks and lifting the skirts of interesting subjects to see what’s going on underneath. But sometimes it needs to be a bit more stately; still and deep, not rushing and babbling. 

So yesterday I switched off. Particularly I switched off Twitter, which I love and is a very cheering presence in my life, but it also encourages the the “jump-cut” thinking that I wanted to avoid. 

I took the app off my phone and felt liberated. I felt like I had reclaimed my brain. I’ll be back in a couple of days, but right now, time to concentrate. 

13 June

Torch

The Olympic build up has pretty much passed me by.
We didn’t apply for tickets, we are deliberately avoiding London when it’s on, the commercialisation of the games offends me. I didn’t even know the torch was going to be in Edinburgh today.

But at the last minute, we decided to wander into town and have a peek at it, just so my daughter could say, she had seen it.

I anticipated crowds three deep and being positioned behind a giant wearing a top hat and seeing nothing, as is usually the way when I attend any special event.

But no, there was a fair crowd, but with plenty of space and we timed it perfectly.

And then the strangest thing, as the cheers started to build, and the small white dot on the horizon gradually turned into a running figure, torch held aloft, I found myself cheering too, and smiling and feeling rather moved.

It wasn’t the torch, really, it was the crowd, an invisible Mexican wave of goodwill washing over us, as unexpected as it was cheering.

It was over in two minutes flat, but everyone walked away smiling, thinking “Well, at least we can say we were there.”

11 June

Priorities

Nuff said.