Disclaimer: the story you’re about to read is not suitable for home bakers of sensitive dispositions. It’s a gruesome journey to the dark heart of the oven, where chaos reigns and evil triumphs.
How hard can it be to make flapjack? I ask this rhetorically, because I’ve made flapjack before, about a decade ago (not for fun, I should add. I don’t find any part of baking fun. It was some sort of bake-sale scenario at the office). And my flapjack was bloody lovely, despite my having no culinary skills AT ALL. Anyway, this Valentine’s Day, I decided that I would break with my tradition of generally avoiding all personal interactions with the oven, and try to bake a gift for my husband. So, feeling like a born-again domestic goddess, I let him pick a recipe – and he went for peanut-butter flapjack. ‘A-ha,’ thought I. ‘I’ve made that before, albeit a different recipe. This will be a doddle.’
Oh, the hubris of mankind.
It all started going off the rails pretty much straight away, when I realised we didn’t have any sunflower oil. ‘Eh, olive oil will do. Same difference,’ I told myself, still feeling bold as brass and sneering and swaggering around the kitchen like Billy Idol.
Oh, but what’s this? I’ve bought the wrong kind of brown sugar? SO SUE ME. Sugar’s sugar, right?
Wait a minute… I haven’t even got half the porridge oats in the pan and it’s as dry as a bone? THROW IN MORE SYRUP! ALL THE SYRUP! TAKE THE SYRUP, YOU DIRTY ROTTEN OATS!
I finally wrestled the cursed mixture into the baking tin, shoved it in the oven, set an alarm on my phone and sat down at the breakfast bar with a cheeky coupe of restorative fizz, feeling confident that, due to my quick thinking and cool head, I’d snatched sweet, sweet victory from the oaty jaws of defeat.
25 minutes later, the alarm went off and I glided across to the oven feeling like Nigella’s hairy northern sister. I opened the oven door, eyes bright and full of hope… only to be met with the sudden smell of burnt oats, incinerated raisins and a lifetime of regret.
I covered up most of the crime with the recipe’s chocolate and peanut-butter topping, and garnished it all with a sprinkling of chopped roasted peanuts, as instructed. Such flair.
An hour or so later, after dinner, my husband took his first bite of this much-anticipated and rare treat. I apologised, faux-modestly, for it being a bit on the crispy side, but if truth be told, I still felt I’d pulled it off… until the moment he turned to me, mouth full, with a haunted and hurt look in his eyes, and asked: ‘Did the recipe say to use dry-roasted peanuts?’
Of course it didn’t. It just hadn’t occurred to me at any point that there was more than one type of roasted peanut. I’d got them from the corner shop and felt I’d played a blinder by not having to walk all the way to Sainsbury’s.
So. To recap: of a very simple recipe that five-year-olds probably make at school, I got three ingredients completely wrong. I set an alarm for the correct amount of time and still burned my creation into next week. I made a ‘romantic treat’ that tasted like a plate of diseased bum holes. It’s hard to know where to go from here. But I think the answer, next time I get ideas above my station, is ‘Greggs’.
Just before the moment of horrible, horrible truth
I remember sitting down to watch the first episode of The IT Crowd very clearly. It was February 2006 and I was utterly miserable. I’d recently come out of an on/off relationship that was, in hindsight, a clear case of ‘he’s just not that into you’, and I was heartbroken. I was living in a spectacularly nasty flat on Archway Road (I’d had to pick somewhere at the last minute after another place fell through), and I felt fragile and lonely. I didn’t know, then, that nine months later, after another unsuitable relationship, I would go to a party and meet the man I would marry. No – at that point, I was feeling broken and everything looked pretty bleak.
Some Friday nights I’d be out, but if I wasn’t, I’d watch TV. And that January and February, I can’t tell you how much comfort I got from Channel 4’s Friday-night offerings: The Friday Night Project (which introduced me to my beloved Alan Carr) and two brand-new comedies, My Name Is Earl and The IT Crowd. At a time when the last thing I felt like doing was laughing, this trio of shows made me do it all the same, and went some way to reminding me that things could, and would, be ok again.
I felt optimistic about The IT Crowd from the opening bars of its theme tune: it sounded like 1979 Gary Numan, which is never a bad thing in my book. And the rest of the show didn’t disappoint: it is, I think, an absolute classic. Just like my all-time favourite comedy, Frasier, there’s no weak link here: the concept, the writing and the acting are first rate.
I always loved all three of the main characters, Roy, Moss and Jen – and the way the actors portrayed them. Chris O’Dowd and Richard Ayoade are on top form as wannabe lad Roy and loveable geek Moss (with excellent support from Matt Berry and Noel Fielding). But on revisiting the series over the years, I’ve come to think that Katherine Parkinson, as Jen, is the star of the show. Her performance as the reluctant ‘relationship manager’ who oversees two IT guys in the basement of Reynholm Industries, despite having no knowledge of, or interest in, IT, is flawless. Just doing a quick Google-image search for her in character makes me laugh – nobody does a ‘frustrated, bewildered and dismayed’ face better. Jen really doesn’t want to be there, you see. She has no interest in ‘com-puters’, doesn’t even know what the letters ‘IT’ stand for and hates that she’s stuck in the basement with two ‘nerds’. And this leads her into all kinds of deliciously awkward situations as she tries to clamber out of said basement and into other roles (my favourite scene is when she lies that she can speak Italian and then has to wing it through a meeting, speaking gibberish and pretending she’s translating).
Everything about Parkinson’s performance in this role is brilliant, but I think she’s at her best when Jen has had just about enough of her colleagues, her boss, or life itself, and is straining every nerve to keep her cool. The almost Miss Piggy-esque way she shouts ‘TAXI!’ as she extricates herself from bad dates and awkward situations never fails to make me laugh; ditto the desperate, had-it-up-to-here plea to the waiter (‘I’ll have another one, please’) as she sits in a wine bar listening to an old school friend brag about her perfect life, and the horrified exasperation as she corrects confusion over her boyfriend’s name at a dinner party: ‘HIS NAME IS PETER FILE!’. And let’s not forget the brilliant physical comedy of her suffering with a ‘bad bra’ and ill-fitting shoes; they’re seemingly simple ideas but she pulls them off with real comedic flair.
I think if you’d asked me back in 2006, I’d have said my favourite character in the show was Roy. And fair enough – Chris O’Dowd is excellent and Roy gets some brilliant lines and physical comedy to work with. Ayoade’s Moss brings a quieter and more understated comedy, but he’s flawless in the show too: it’s hard to imagine anyone else in either of these roles. However, Jen has crept up on the inside for me, and emerged as the one I most look forward to seeing on screen whenever I sit down to watch an episode. There’s something very real and relatable about the way Parkinson plays her, even in the most outlandish, OTT scenarios. But, more importantly, I think Parkinson is a comedy genius. And just like Roy and Moss toiling away in the basement for little praise or acknowledgement from the staff on the floors above them, I reckon her performance in The IT Crowd should have garnered more recognition and praise. She’s ace. And she was also exceptional when we went to see her in the theatre in Home I’m Darling. I just love her.
With all that said, there can only be one way to finish this piece: TAXI!
For no reason at all, I have just remembered a funny incident that happened to me a few years back. So I thought I’d write about it, and about some related incidents. Because we’ve all been there, I’m sure. I’m talking about the back-handed compliment: the type of exchange that makes your heart flutter, makes you feel as if you’re bathed in magic and sunlight and glitter… then shoves your self-esteem into a skip full of filthy carpets and half-eaten burgers.
So, here’s the incident that always makes me laugh, whilst also making me wonder WHAT WAS HE THINKING? Because in this case, I really don’t think the guy wanted to insult me. He was too drunk, for one thing, and he had very kind and soulful eyes while he was talking to me. I think he thought he was being nice but couldn’t quite find the words. But anyway, judge for yourself.
It was a Friday night, and I had been working late in the office. So I got on the tube at drunk o’clock whilst stone-cold sober, absolutely shattered and slightly irritated by everyone and everything on the Throwing-Out-Time Express. There was a man stood near me, swaying all over the place and clearly half cut. I didn’t feel he was a threat to me, and he didn’t scare me in any way when he started to speak to me. I thought, as you might fairly reasonably assume, that he was drunkenly and harmlessly trying to flirt with me. He was cute, and a bit younger than me, so I was flattered, even though he probably didn’t know whether he was looking at a woman or a lorry at that point and it was all a bit excruciating and I didn’t really want to engage because talking to strangers is my worst nightmare. Anyway, here is the dialogue. It’s short, but it’s pure gold.
Him: Hello. You have very beautiful eyes.
Me, slightly awkward but aware I was getting off the tube soon, so humouring him: Er, thank you.
Him: You remind me of a famous film star, with your beautiful blue eyes.
Me: Oh, Ok.
Him: You look like… you really look like [struggling to remember].
Me: [waiting]
Him: Mickey Rourke!
Well, the Ambassador was really spoiling me here, and I went merrily on my way with the knowledge that I reminded a complete stranger of a man in his sixties who’d had more terrible plastic surgery than the Bride of Wildenstein. It’s a miracle I got my head through the door to exit the tube. I can’t be upset by it, though, because it’s just too funny. Not to mention random – I’m not saying I’m a supermodel, but I really can’t see any resemblance to Mickey Rourke. I was once told I looked like a female Rowan Atkinson and at least I can see the accuracy in that.
And there are other similar instances that make me smile (even if they didn’t at the time).
The Ginger burn
The Spice Girls broke out when I was at university, and even though I was about six years too old to legitimately care, I did become quite the casual fan, in a tongue-in-cheek way. And I especially loved Geri. I loved her clothes, her make-up, her hair (I’ve never been one for the natural look). I even went to the extent of bleaching the front ‘tendrils’ of my hair with Sun-In for her signature blonde-striped look. So, you can imagine my delight one night at the uni disco, when some random guy said to me, “You look like Geri Spice.” Be still, my flattered heart! But then he followed it up with: “Don’t blame me, he [points at mate] said it.” OUCH. There were similar scenes the following year when I went to study in France. I was telling a new acquaintance how I loved Geri and she said, “Yeah, you look a bit like her.” Followed swiftly by: “Sorry!”
The age gap
Short but sweet: a guy I once worked with told me: “You remind me of xxxxx [co-worker], because you’re both similar in that I can’t guess your age. You could be really young, or you could be quite old.” Readers, I was 26 at the time of this conversation.
The double whammy
I can’t lie – this isn’t a back-handed compliment in the strictest sense of the phrase, but it was delivered by someone who was pretending to be polite and friendly to me, so I’m counting it. I can’t divulge exact details of who the culprit was, but it was a bloody shocker.
Me, at a group outing in a pub garden, meeting this woman for the first time.
Her: Where are you from?
Me: Sheffield.
Her: Oh, I was once offered a job in Yorkshire, but I didn’t want my children growing up with that accent.
CAN YOU IMAGINE MY FACE?
And then, as if that wasn’t charming enough, we got this little piece of career advice.
Her: What do you do for a living? [She already knew that Eddy was a writer for a kids’ paper]
Me: I’m the deputy chief sub editor of Glamour.
Her: Oh. Maybe one day if you work hard you can do something more creative, like Eddy.
I mean, COME ON. She clearly wanted to rip me to pieces, and I was absolutely mystified by it. But years later, I think this is hilarious. Imagine going to such lengths to troll someone you’ve just met. And she was my mum’s age. Very odd indeed.
The work one
This is great, and I’m sure we can all relate to it. Again, I can’t name names, and it’s not really a personal insult, but it’s pretty back-handed in its message.
Me, in the office, raising a reasonable point: “Are you happy for me to change this?”
This person, looking at me with raised eyebrow: “Sure. I’ve got bigger fish to fry.”
Isn’t that one genius? I’m genuinely impressed by it. It’s an alpha move. Full praise to that one. *Notes it down for future use!* I’m positive that I’ve got more of these tales, so I’ll update this when I remember them!
I’ve always been a bookworm. From those very first nursery rhymes and tales of Rapunzel and Rumpelstiltskin, I was hooked, Hoovering up books like there was no tomorrow. It’s always been my absolute favourite way to spend time, and to this day I can spend literally hours lying on my bed engrossed in a good read, possibly to the point of risking thrombosis and definitely to the point of ‘wasting’ entire weekends. Books (especially in conjunction with snacks) are my happy place.
But the one thing that has changed over time is what I read. In recent years, my voracious consumption of novels has been surpassed by an even greedier appetite for non-fiction. It happened gradually, but now there’s nothing I love more than getting my teeth into a new factual read. This Christmas, my husband bought me a big pile of them and now, 10 days later, I’m on the last one (I’d like to say this is something to do with Tier 4, and that in other circumstances I’d have mixed it up a bit with some intrepid outdoor activities, but who am I kidding? I’d have been sitting in the house clutching my precious books like Bromley’s answer to Gollum – and happy as a clam – regardless).
I do still read novels, of course, but there’s something about going down a real-life rabbit hole that I find irresistible. True crime was my first non-fiction love, and you can’t walk two steps in our house without falling over a serial killer, as it were (my husband once asked me, ‘Which one is your murder shelf?’ – in truth, it’s shelves, plural). Years before Serial and Making A Murderer turned everyone into armchair detectives, I was skulking about in Foyles, buying books about the Manson Family and Ted Bundy and trying not to look weird. I should add, I have very little desire to read about the gory and gruesome details of these cases. I don’t want to see crime-scene photographs or read about autopsies. I’m not a voyeuristic ghoul. It’s the psychology that I find fascinating. What turns American hippie kids into cold-blooded killers? How could a serial killer seem so normal?
But I’m not solely on a crime spree. Over the years, my scope has widened and I’ve done deep dives into all kinds of fascinating subjects and people, from the Baader-Meinhof gang to Marilyn Monroe. I’ve shivered vicariously through high-altitude rescues on Mount Everest and the icy horror of the Titanic. I’ve learned about perilous space missions and audacious scams. I’ve rummaged around in charity shops and gone home clutching hitherto-unheard-of gems about the Indian ‘Bandit Queen’ Phoolan Devi, the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the shifty gambling chums of Lord Lucan. As an aside, charity shops are brilliant for this. You stumble across random, dog-eared books you didn’t know you wanted to read, because you didn’t know they even existed. Two of my favourite junk-shop finds from years back are The Assassination of Marilyn Monroe (yes, it posits a salacious conspiracy theory at the end, but it’s first and foremost a biography, and it’s the book that started my obsession with Marilyn); and The Survival of Jan Little, a bizarre and nightmarish tale of endurance in the Amazon that’s seemingly been forgotten since its 1986 release (it would make a great film).
In my Christmas stash I had books about the lure and dangers of chemsex culture in the UK; the ill-fated Donner Party, snow-bound and starving in the Sierra Nevada mountains in 1846; the 1981 hunger strike by IRA prisoners in The Maze prison; and the mysterious deaths and disappearances of a group of Germans in the Galapagos Islands in the 1930s. (Oh, and as the outlier of the bunch, there was also Belinda Carlisle’s autobiography, which is brilliantly honest and practically dripping with ’80s debauchery. It’s a corker.)
I freely admit that my personal taste in non-fiction (like my taste in fiction, it has to be said) is at the darker end; that even goes for my Marilyn biographies, in which the star’s goddess-like glamour is overshadowed by her very human pain, loneliness and mental illness. But I think darkness is OK. I think it’s natural to be drawn to places where crime, culture, survival, psychology and history intersect, to be curious about how people survive bad things – and why they do them. But dark or otherwise, non-fiction offers limitless opportunities to glimpse worlds we’d never otherwise know (want to hear about the route up Everest? I’m your woman – even though the most I’ve achieved above sea level is a minor panic attack on Ben Nevis); to understand experiences and lives not our own; and to gain insight into what makes people tick… all while offering us ‘plots’ as gripping as any airport ‘page turner’. And that’s why my bookshelves (murder ones and all) will always have room for more.
Before I start writing this, I want to acknowledge that I know my experience isn’t universal, and that there isn’t any right or wrong, or any one-size-fits-all advice, when it comes to relationships. But I have wanted to write this for a while because I think it’s worth saying – and it’s something that actually came as a surprise to me, so it might well do so to anyone else reading this.
So much received wisdom about finding a romantic partner is wrapped up in the idea of shared interests. It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about the kind of advice I was reading in teen mags in the ’90s or the fact that dating apps in 2021 encourage you to list your interests; the bottom line seems to be that if you’re looking for your soul mate, you should seek out someone who likes the same things you do. And it all makes sense, doesn’t it? Why wouldn’t you want to be with someone who shares your loves, hates and interests? I certainly believed it for the first 30 years of my life. I tried to find boyfriends who, somehow, reflected myself back at me. Whether that was in hobbies (Lord, I hate that word) or temperament or experiences, I thought the aim of the game was to find someone who was as much like me as possible. Doesn’t that sound arrogant? Yet this is the narcissistic approach we’re encouraged to take.
Of course it’s lovely when you meet someone who likes the same comedy shows you do; who knows the songs you love; who went to uni in your home town. Those things are easy talking points and a great way to bond. But they’re not the be all and end all. I had a few relationships in my twenties that were full of these common denominators. They were all perfectly nice while they lasted, but they didn’t last. And yes, I would probably have carried on looking using the same criteria if I hadn’t met my now husband.
When we met, it was in that classic scenario of a loud party with lots of alcohol. At that point, our shared interests, favourite books and hopes for the future didn’t really come up, funnily enough. Introduced (match-made, in fact) by a mutual friend, we flirted, we kissed, we shared a taxi home because we lived near each other. Then I woke up the next morning to a text asking me out for a drink.
From our first date onwards, I think we established quite firmly that we had very little in common, in most ways. I remember him looking at my CDs when he came to my little room in my horrible house share; he didn’t have a single nice word to say about any of them (no “Hey, I’ve got this one!” or “Isn’t this album great?” Just a quiet, dismayed silence). No wonder, since he’s a former music journo with eclectic but respectable tastes that take in The Beatles, Dylan, all kinds of rap and lots of jingly-jangly indie music, whereas my collection is 90% robotic synth and 10% ’80s pop.
Ten years later, when we got married, I still struggled to think of much we had in common, as I said in my wedding speech. I pointed out that while he’s sociable, I’m shy; he’s tidy, my nickname is The Pig.
For every activity we enjoy together (horror films, certain comedy shows, playing Scrabble, holidaying in cold countries), there are more that we don’t agree on. Plus, our temperaments could not be more different. Again, I spent my twenties looking for someone like me, thinking that would make for a smooth and harmonious relationship. Um, no. Turns out it’s not always the best idea to pick someone who shares your neuroses, your insecurities, your weak points. My husband and I couldn’t be more different in that respect, either. And it works.
After 15 years with my husband, I’ve an understanding of the phrase ‘soul mate’ that is totally different to the one I had at 29. I had thought it was someone who mirrors you. I now know it’s someone who complements you. There are essential things that relationships are built on – magic, chemistry, attraction, understanding… and none of these things care about whether you both like to do extreme sports or read the same authors. And that’s what I wish I’d read when I was 19.
Yes, I know. Acclaimed actor, producer and director Angela Bassett isn’t exactly under the radar, having won a Golden Globe and received nominations for a gazillion other awards, including a Best Actress Oscar, during her illustrious career. And nor would you associate her with horror… unless, like me, you love American Horror Story. Because for her roles in this anthology series alone, she deserves a place in horror’s Hall of Fame. She first appeared in 2013’s Coven season, as Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau. And what a joy it was to watch her spar with fellow Hollywood royalty Jessica Lange, as supernatural rivals vying for the upper hand in New Orleans; two actors at the top of their game, trading deliciously witchy-bitchy insults in cat fights that crackled with animosity (what a delight, too, to see a major TV show with two female leads in their fifties and sixties. How often does that happen?). Bassett returned in the next season as Desiree Dupree, a performer in the titular ‘Freak Show’. With her red lipstick, bold jewellery and fur coat, she was a glamorous starlet with a secret – and she gave the role a perfect balance of vulnerability, strength and dignity. Fast forward to the Hotel season, and she was electric as former film star turned vampire Ramona Royale. And no matter that Lady Gaga’s first major acting role inevitably garnered all the attention here – Bassett only had to stalk into the frame to blow her off the screen. It all got a bit meta in 2016’s Roanoake season, when she played an actor starring in a dramatic reconstruction of terrifying ‘real-life’ events… and if you’re thinking that all these roles sound a tad far-fetched and even silly, rest assured that in Bassett’s hands they’re totally believable. Amongst the excellent AHS cast, she shines the brightest, with authority, presence and poise. Any future horror productions will be lucky to have her.
‘Hilariously’, I wrote a version of this before Saturday, when Covid cancelled Christmas and condemned me and my husband to Tier 4, but I hadn’t uploaded it. So I’m going to start again in the light of Boris Johnson’s Grinch impersonation this weekend (for the record, I’m not really criticising the government on this particular issue. I don’t understand the science enough to pretend to know better. I’m furious and disappointed and sad, but I do think Johnson is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t, even though I do personally love a conspiracy theory and I’d love to think he’s up to something nefarious, LOL. Even the scientists and medics seem divided, so I’m not trying to make any party-political broadcast here. It is just a horrible, sad development for all of us looking forward to a family Christmas. Oh, apart from those who decided the rules applied to everyone else but them and jumped on heaving trains out of St Pancras and Euston on Saturday night to catch the fancy new strain of Rona and spread it far and wide).
Ironically, I originally wanted to write this because I was looking forward to a nice Christmas this year where, as much as possible, all my ducks were in a row. That fact made me reflect on Christmases past, and how I’d wasted or not enjoyed them as much as I should because I was always somehow deferring the ‘perfect’ Christmas, thinking that next year would be the Holy Grail – the year when the stars aligned to make Christmas exciting, happy and stress-free. Hahahahahahahaha.
I always had incredibly happy Christmases as a kid. I was an only child, so I probably was materially spoiled. I remember the special Christmas Eve buffets that my mum would put together, and piles of presents on Christmas morning (all the better when my dad was working the early shift and we could get up and open them at 4 in the morning).
Once I became an adult, the search for the perfect ‘grown-up’ Christmas began. And that’s the trap I think is so easy to fall into. So in my late teens and early twenties, I’d be convinced that Christmas would be perfect if only I had a boyfriend to do all that schmaltzy smoochy mulled-wine-in-front-of-the-fire stuff with (I hate mulled wine).
Stick your mulled wine up your cat flap
Throughout the relationships I had in my twenties, I guess Christmases were pretty good, because I had all that festive romance gubbins and I was young enough not to care about anything more domesticated than that.
And then, aged 29, I met the love of my life. Our first Christmas was lovely because we’d only met in November, so it was all early days and exciting and a time of heart-fluttering dates in pubs with cosy fires. We both bought each other our favourite book for Christmas, and it seemed a good omen (even though I’m a bookworm and yet it took me until September to finish the one he’d bought me because I hated it, and I felt awful about it. Hahahahah!).
But a couple of years later, once our relationship was serious and we were living together, Christmas Mission Creep began to set in – and in all honesty, it never really went away. It started with: oh, wouldn’t Christmas be better if we were living in our own home, rather than this rented flat?
We bought a flat, and then we bought the lovely little house we live in now. And of course, being able to decorate and host in our own home still didn’t mean a ‘perfect Christmas’. Because at the time, I had a job that entailed a huge workload that invariably became ludicrous at Christmas, so that every year I’d be eating my turkey or watching a film but secretly thinking about how I had to get 75 pages of a glossy magazine to press in the first two days back in January. It was a little devil on my shoulder that never quite let me relax and enjoy the ‘perfect Christmas’ I’d otherwise created.
And then, overlapping those years, and stretching into the years of a new job where I never once felt that my Christmas workload was remotely stressful, there were three or four Christmases when my dad was ill. He would be at home and terribly unwell, or in hospital, or shuttling between the two. These were desperate times of trying to be festive and keep our spirits up, both for him and for my mum (and us, too), whilst feeling grief-stricken about the changes in him. Obviously, at that point the ‘perfect Christmas’ looked like one where my dad was happy and healthy. It never happened again, and we lost him in June 2018.
The first Christmas after that was, of course, incredibly hard. My mum came to us and we tried our best to be festive and to carry on. I asked my husband to make sure that when I returned from the station with my mum there would be carols playing on the stereo and all our Christmas lights would be on. She absolutely loved it, and I’m glad.
Last year, I told my husband that he should go to be with his parents. He had been an absolute star, coming with me to see my parents in Lincolnshire all through my dad’s illness, and I thought he should spend that Christmas with his own family. So my mum came here again, and we forged a new kind of Christmas, just the two of us. Instead of cooking dinner and thinking about the empty seats at the table, I decided we’d go out for lunch. It was the first time for both of us, I think. We went to a local Italian restaurant in Bromley, and I really wasn’t sure what to expect, or how well they’d pull it off. And you know what? It was fantastic. Then we came home and I introduced my mum to Die Hard. All in all, it was quite lovely. But because my husband was elsewhere, it still wasn’t the perfect one.
This year, my husband and I were due to go to my mum’s in Lincolnshire. After last year, I was really looking forward to us all being together. We’d bought food and games to take, we’d planned films to watch… and then Saturday happened and I just sat and wept. It wasn’t going to be the ‘perfect’ Christmas without my dad. But it was going to be a Christmas where I wasn’t stressed about anything, and I was celebrating with my mum and my husband, together. It was a shining little beacon of happiness after this awful year.
And now that’s not happening. So my original reason for writing this is now looming larger than ever. There isn’t such a thing as the perfect Christmas, or certainly not one that you can plan or set in stone in advance. After I’d had my little cry on Saturday, my husband said that we have to make the best of it, and he’s absolutely right. This Christmas, while awful on so many levels for so many people, isn’t really any different to any other Christmas. There will always be problems, illnesses, stressful situations, family disputes, bereavement, money worries etc. It’s not a magical day when those things disappear into the ether. You can’t ever know that one year you’ll have all the ingredients for the perfect Christmas. All you can do is look at what you have, be grateful for the good bits and work around the bad bits.
This year, I’m grateful that although we won’t be together, my mum is safe and healthy. And she has friends where she lives and won’t be alone. I’m grateful that I have a husband I adore, and we live in a house that we love (yes, our plans to sell it and move to be closer to my mum may have stalled due to the pandemic, but we’re still in our lovely home). We have our fluffy, hilarious cat, and we have food and drink and films and games to make Christmas festive. I put up our tree today, and we will do our best to make this Christmas as good as it can be. Sure, it’s not the Christmas we hoped for or expected this year, but the point I’m trying to make here (and the lesson I’ve learned) is how can we know it ever will be? Having the perfect Christmas is kind of nonsense; having the best Christmas you can, and making sure those around you do the same, is the best we can do.
Merry Christmas to anyone reading this, and here’s wishing you a happy and healthy new year.
I’m writing this because I want to express my own feelings, but also because I suspect I’m not alone in experiencing them. This is not easy to write.
My beloved dad died two and a half years ago. I have been vocal and prolific on Facebook, and on this blog, about how much I loved him and how much I miss him. All of that is true. However, there is another element of this that is possibly even harder to bear, and to put into words: the not grieving.
I was a ‘Daddy’s girl’. An only child. I loved my parents equally but I always felt I was more similar to my dad in personality; my mum was the softer part of us both, who held us all together by the very fact of her having a different temperament, a different make-up.
I watched my dad fade, gradually and cruelly, over a period of a few years. I could hardly bear to watch; to be there; to see it and not be able to help, or to change it. It was a devastating few years for us all, and the fact that I couldn’t physically be there for him, or my mum, more often was a source of huge guilt for me. I had no idea how to ‘be there’ for parents who were a four-hour drive away from my job. We visited when we could. I always left feeling heartbroken and crushed to see my dad fading before my eyes.
This went on for a few years. We’d visit and my dad would be ill at home, or ill in hospital. I found it almost intolerable. All my life, I’d seen my dad as big and strong and invincible, and seeing him weak and vulnerable broke me. It changed everything for me. It was agonising.
The fact that my dad was ill for so long made his death particularly shocking to me; I simply thought we had more time. I wasn’t necessarily thinking that was a good thing; I thought it would be several more years of my dad going downhill, being in more physical and mental agony, with the doctors having no solutions. I thought it was going to be grim and cruel. But I also thought I’d have time for more conversations with him, and I’m devastated that I didn’t. Our last chat was fraught, because he wasn’t in his right mind, and it breaks my heart. The next day, he received a parcel I’d sent, and he said that I’d sent it because I loved him. I hope he carried that knowledge with him.
The other inexplicable thing is that I never, ever consciously feel that I’m grieving. If you’d asked me to predict how I’d react to my dad’s death, I would have told you that I’d collapse, cry for six months and have a total breakdown. None of that happened and, on a day-to-day basis, I never missed a step. How can that be? I have struggled with this, but I’ve come to understand that I don’t feel the loss of my dad on a regular, daily basis because my mind hasn’t processed the fact that he’s gone. I simply don’t get it. I cried when I heard he’d died, and I cried at his funeral. But it didn’t feel real then and it doesn’t feel real now. I know he’s gone, but I don’t feel it’s real; my mind won’t go there. So I really can’t react in an intellectual way. Yet on an emotional, physical level, I feel it. I cry, unexpectedly, when I talk about him, even if I’m not feeling sad. I cry when I play music I associate with him. I cry when I watch a film I think he’d like. I am lost without him. This is for you, Dad. I love you. xx
Travel back with me in time, to Sheffield in 1986 (I mean, how can you refuse an offer like that? Where else have you got to be on a Monday night in lockdown?). I was nine years old and about to discover my first-ever favourite pop band, courtesy of the cultural behemoth (ahem) that is Walk Like An Egyptian (I repeat, ahem). I remember watching the video and just being absolutely smitten by the tune. So, that was the first single I ever ‘bought’ (my parents bought it for me, for 99p, I believe, from Our Price), followed by the accompanying album, Different Light, and the band’s previous, debut album, All Over The Place, both on cassette. And that was that. My obsession with Susanna, Vicki, Michael and Debbi had begun.
At the time, I loved them for their catchy, brilliant tunes, but also for their image. As a little girl teased for her unruly curls, I adored their long, straight, 60s-style hair. I was fascinated by the little plaits they wore at the sides. I loved their outfits and their make-up. I had a complete crush on the bassist, Michael, and have nurtured a desire for poster-paint-red hair ever since. I listened to my cassettes over and over again, panicking when they got chewed up in my tape player and carefully looping them back in with a biro. I dreamed of being in the band. I drew pictures of them. I spent hours cutting photos out of Smash Hits and arranging them on my wardrobe doors with Blu Tack. It was a real love affair. I SO wanted to be a Bangle.
Inevitably, I drifted away from listening to the Bangles in my teenage years, but I came back to them about 14 years ago, when I met my now husband. It was immediately, painfully (hahahaha) apparent when we met that we had very few musical interests in common. By that time, I was mostly interested in synth pop. The Bangles had been elbowed out of my No1 spot in 1987 by my beloved Pet Shop Boys, and I’d followed up in the 90s with completely out-of-time obsessions with the Human League, Gary Numan and Heaven 17 (this was when my contemporaries were arguing over Blur and Oasis, by the way – can you imagine? LOLS). In 2006, my new boyfriend, by contrast, whilst having a pretty eclectic taste and an extremely varied CD collection, was mostly all about the jingly-jangly indie and classic 60s tunes. So, as a way to find common ground one night when he was in my studio flat, I dug out my Bangles CDs. Because, as much as they might be synonymous with the 80s, the Bangles took their inspiration and their sound very much from the 60s. They adored the Beatles, Fairport Convention and Love. They were steeped in that sound. And so, having fallen in love with their catchy melodies and beautiful harmonising, I’d found myself with a SLIVER of my music collection that I could reasonably hope my new man would like. And he did. (I can’t tell you how handy those CDs have been on our car journeys over the past decade and a half.) So, that’s how I came to revisit the Bangles, and listening to them as an adult has only made me love and respect them even more.
You see, I feel very strongly that the Bangles are a cruelly underrated band. Sure, by the time I discovered them, they’d already had one monster hit, Manic Monday (written by Prince), and a few years later they would have another one, Eternal Flame. So, yes, on one level, it’s hard to describe the Bangles as ‘under the radar’ or ‘ignored’. But what they are is criminally undervalued as musicians and songwriters. I suspect that most people who know Manic Monday or Eternal Flame don’t know that the Bangles started as a rough-and-ready garage band. That they all play their own instruments. That they are all songwriters. That Different Light, the exceedingly polished and glossy and sanitised album that made them superstars in 1986, isn’t actually representative of who and what they are as a band. It’s interesting to me that lead guitarist Vicki Peterson once said that their cover version of Simon & Garfunkel’s Hazy Shade of Winter was the song that came closest to showing what they are like as a live band. It’s a ballsy, take-no-prisoners recording and one of my favourites. I also love the fact that drummer Debbi Peterson was so horrified by Walk Like An Egyptian (which they didn’t have a hand in writing) that she refused to play or sing on it (hence her miming the whistling part in the video). Yet despite the fact that they are clearly Women Who Rock, I fear that the Bangles (in their 80s prime, at least) were often seen as ‘just’ a fluffy pop group. And that is deeply unfair (by the way, I don’t think it’s necessarily for sexist reasons; I have the same theory about A-ha, who are three men. Maybe that’s a subject for another blog entry?). They are a proper, banging, all-female rock band, which, along with the Wilson sisters of Heart, makes them pioneers, and anyone doubting their credentials should listen to their last album before their (thankfully not terminal) split in 1989, Everything.
Oh, Everything really is (everything). It’s a sublime tapestry of sumptuous, velvety rock and pop with effortlessly beautiful harmonies, heartbreakingly gorgeous melodies and some seriously hard-edged rock. It swerves from dark to light, sweet to aggressive, and every note, every bassline, every harmony is perfect. It’s my favourite of the three Bangles albums from the 80s (probably one of my favourite albums of all time, in fact), and every song deserves to be there; there is no weak link. Whilst Eternal Flame is ‘the famous one’, it’s not my favourite. That honour would go to In Your Room, Be With You or Something To Believe In. But all in all, it’s an absolute triumph. Which makes it all the more bittersweet that the production of this utterly perfect album led to the band splitting up. There is a track on their Greatest Hits album, called Everything I Wanted, which apparently didn’t make the cut for Everything. It’s one of my favourite songs in the world. It’s brilliant. Which tells you how great the rest of the album is, and maybe why it all fell apart.
Thankfully, the Bangles reformed in the early 2000s, and released a comeback album, Doll Revolution (standout moment for me, Something That You Said). Then my favourite Bangle, Michael With The Flaming Hair, left the band again, and they carried on as a threesome. I bought their next album, and whilst it’s not entirely to my taste (I am, after all, only an accidental visitor to the 60s, and they can occasionally lean a bit too folky for me), I will always be in thrall to the way the Bangles write, sing and harmonise. It’s pure magic. And that’s why, 34 years after I first heard them, I still listen to these amazingly talented rock goddesses all the time, and I can’t imagine the soundtrack to my life (or our marital car journeys, to be honest) without them.
I’ve written here before about what it’s like to be quiet and/or shy. I still stand by what I wrote, my experiences of having those traits and the frustrations caused by people not understanding them. However, in hindsight, I realise that most of what I wrote was anchored in the experiences I had at school, at university and in the early days of my career (I’ll be revisiting those, mind you, to highlight the RIDICULOUSNESS of it all). Now that I’m in my 40s, I would, in all honesty, class myself as reserved, introverted and ‘quiet at times’, rather than ‘shy and quiet, full stop’. So whereas I wouldn’t want to talk to someone new when I was 17 because I felt painfully shy and awkward and inferior (I was cruelly bullied for my looks), today, at 43, I don’t feel overly shy, or at all inferior, and I couldn’t really care less what you think of my looks unless you’re my husband. Also, I know that I’m not, innately, quiet. What I feel now is reserved, mostly by choice, and mostly only until I know you; and introverted by character, because I was simply not born with that innate ability that extroverts have to talk myself up, chat to strangers, dominate a room or thrust myself into the limelight. I have many friends and colleagues who I’d class as extroverts; I’m not bashing extroverts here. I’m simply saying that it’s not the only, or the best, way to be (I also have some very introverted friends who have amazing jobs and manage all kinds of high-pressure things that I can’t even understand – yes, I’m talking about you, best friend Claire). And if you look for extroversion, exclusively and above all else, and believe that it’s a better quality than introversion, you’re missing a hell of a lot. It’s actually, I think, a lack of imagination. If you rely on someone shouting from the rooftops about themselves to get the measure of them, you’re in trouble. Just as us introverts have to own super weirdo Dennis Nilsen as one of our gang, many people who holler about themselves don’t actually have much worth shouting about, and history is full of terrible examples. Equating excessive confidence (and/or arrogance) with ability and character is a huge mistake. I’m very confident in who I am, in my integrity and my character, and I’m also very confident in my abilities in my professional life, but my personality might stop me telling you that until I’m comfortable with you. And whereas I’d say that’s a plus point, not a minus, I can also vouch for the fact that it isn’t always seen that way.
Apologies for repeating myself, but I’m about to, because this is important (for me, for other introverts, and for anyone with an introverted friend, partner or child). To recap, here’s a list of the nonsense I had to deal with because I was ‘quiet’. My first-ever teacher told my parents I’d never be educationally normal (I won the reading prize the next year, when I had a teacher who was an actual human and not a sadistic nasty gargoyle). My GCSE and A-Level teachers constantly pestered me about the fact that I never put my hand up to answer questions (because guess what, if you’re constantly bullied for how you look, you don’t actually want to attract attention to yourself. You’d think teachers would be sensitive to that, right?); they knew I always knew the answers, and I got straight As in my A-Levels, so who I was hurting with my reticence, I’ve no idea. My journalism college tutor told me he was worried about me because I was ‘one of his very best writers, but reminded him of the person from last year’s course who didn’t get a job due to being quiet’ (I went straight from the course to a market-leading glossy teen mag). A mag boss told me she thought I was ‘miserable’ because she never tried to get to know me beyond my quiet façade and obviously never heard me hooting with laughter with the team I managed for five years in the same office as her (LOLZ!).
This isn’t to say how great I am, by the way; it’s to say how AWFUL these people made me feel, and for literally no reason that I can see, apart from a weird worship of loudness. It taught me that being smart and talented and hard working didn’t mean much if you weren’t also able to clap like a seal. It could have put me off chasing my dreams, and it did actually lead, indirectly, to me quitting a job (in truth, though it broke my heart at the time, I’m absolutely glad and proud that I stood up for my integrity and did the right thing). It’s also undoubtedly still happening in schools, colleges, universities and workplaces up and down the UK, in this never-ending fetishising of extroversion.
So really, I’m writing this to say: don’t let these things happen to the introvert in your life (especially the kids). Don’t let the people you love feel bad for who they are, or feel that they’re less than the louder people. And also, don’t be deceived by us. We’re less likely to oversell our abilities and then under-deliver in the actual job/real-life scenario, and more likely to surprise you with our quiet creativity, grit, determination, work ethic and talent. Oh, and once you really know us, we can be pretty loud, and the person cracking all the filthy jokes (I know I am). Worth giving us a chance, no?
Laura Eddy writes 