I’m not sure why I share some of these SW columns as I don’t seem to paint myself in a very intelligent light, but since you already know how dense I am, here is my discovery of eBay…

“As with most other highly addictive pursuits, I have for a long time now been successful in just saying no to eBay. In the decade and a half that it has hooked the rest of the world, I have contented myself with more innocent online pleasures. A tweet about Jon Hamm, for instance, or a quick look on mailonline to see whose weight has ‘ballooned’ to nine stone.

But, one day, alone in the house with a glass of wine, I reached for the mouse and keyed in that habit-forming sequence: www.ebay.co.uk.

Oh, but the rush was so good! Almost as good as the day I first turned on my Sat Nav.

Steadying myself, I remembered advice given by friends who have fallen foul of the little ‘e’ and, in one case, ended up having to sell her home: only use it if you know exactly what you want.

One thing I exactly wanted was a vintage map of London and yet I did not want to pay the hundreds of pounds a real-world dealer was asking. How easy eBay made it! In the space of twenty minutes it was agreed that someone called hairybiker would send me a 19th-century original for a tenth of the usual price.

But when the item arrived, I remembered some other advice I’d been given: check that the dimensions are in centimetres, not millimetres. The map was a tenth of the price because it was a tenth of the size. Given my retinal challenges of late, I was unable to read the annotations.

No matter, we all make the occasional rookie error. Next, I began bidding on a proper-sized kilim-covered footstool. But even though I was the highest bidder for days, I was outbid at the last thirty seconds by 50p.

‘Oh, you can get that software, can’t you,’ my friend Sarah said, when I complained to her. ‘It waits till the last ten seconds and then puts in a winning bid.’

‘That’s just not cricket!’ I exclaimed. ‘I can’t believe all these sharp practices!’

‘Well, that’s eBay for you,’ she said. ‘That’s why some of us don’t use it anymore.’ And she gave me the look she’s been giving me ever since I stopped working in an office and began spending eight hours a day with only a Labradoodle for company.”

First published in SW magazine, April 2012 issue.

Well, as von Arnim’s enchanted cast discover, better late than never. And there is also the benefit of being much more forgetful now than I was at thirteen and therefore certain to be ready for a re-read far, far sooner.

Louise Candlish on…research methods
There are built-in perils of working from your kitchen table, just as there are built-in perils of being an idiot generally, and this week I find myself struck from both quarters.

Starting a new novel, I decide it is time for an overhaul of my research methods. There’ll be no more looking things up at the last minute on Wikipedia or postponing office scenes because I haven’t settled on the character’s profession yet. I will do as proper authors do and do my research first.

Striking while the iron is hot, I send a letter to a coroner in the West Country asking for details of an inquest I’m interested in. I have visions of us sitting together in some strip-lit antechamber, combing through the bagged evidence and spying the key discrepancy, not unlike Cagney and Lacey. But two days later, I receive a reply: ‘The coroner cannot assist you in this matter and returns the £30 in cash sent with your request.’

Well! Not only am I not to be assisted, but I also seem to be being accused of bribing a public official!

In usual hot-headed fashion, I get on the phone. ‘I have no idea why you’ve sent me £30 or why you’re suggesting I sent it to you in the first place, because I didn’t. So I’m posting it back to you right now!’

‘But I’m sure it came with your letter,’ the nice lady says (not the coroner herself: she is too busy combing through evidence with Lynda La Plante.)

‘No, it didn’t,’ I insist. ‘You must have had money on your desk and got it mixed up with my letter.’

‘Yes, that’s possible. If you send it back to me I’ll see if anyone else claims it.’

Good. So I stuff the offending notes in an envelope and stomp to the post box, the while huffing and puffing that Patricia Cornwell wouldn’t have to deal with absurdities like these in her working day.

That afternoon, when about to pay the cleaner, I text Andrew: ‘Have we got any cash in the house?’ And that’s when I get a sinking feeling, because I think I might already know his answer.

‘£30 in envelope on kitchen table,’ he texts.

Oh.

So, I’ve decided I’m not going to do any proper research this time – I’m just going to make it up.

From SW magazine, March 2012 issue

I begin by buying the Michel Thomas Method box-set, he being the whisperer who taught the likes of Woody Allen, Priscilla Presley and Sophia Loren and who sounds exactly like David Suchet doing Poirot. His, he declares with terrific scorn, is a method with no homework, no memorising, no working things out before you speak. ‘You’re trying to remember again,’ he admonishes the student on the tape, who may or may not be a fake. ‘Don’t do that!’

By the end of the first session, you will be speaking full sentences in French, he promises. Yeah right, I think, while lying in the bath and exfoliating. But, lo and behold, I am! And not any old sentence either, but ones like, ‘What is your impression of the political and economic situation in France at the present time?’ (Of course, it’s not nearly so grand when you twig that almost all of those words are the same in French as in English.)

Présentement, I find I must use my new tongue in conversation with an actual French person and not my own feet: I need to phone a lawyer in Paris and ask him a question. I dial the number and say, in French, ‘I would like to speak to Monsieur Lesbancs, please. My name is Louise Candlish and I am calling from London.’

Well, it sounds so cool. Properly French; no stumbling; no illicit trying to remember. Then the person on the other end speaks back. Naturally, I don’t catch a word of it. I repeat my opener, she repeats her gibberish. I giggle. And so we reach the flaw in every language-learning system: since you can’t understand a bloody word of what people say back to you, wouldn’t it be more honest to admit your incompetence up front than to hoodwink natives into believing you are fluent?

Sadly, Michel Thomas died in 2005 and is not able to answer this question. Perhaps I’ll see if Woody, Priscilla or Sophia ever got to the bottom of it.

First published in SW magazine, January 2012 issue

Now, perhaps I should have done this before writing the book, but I have recently decided to learn French. Coming next is the column I wrote about the experience, or I should say the beginning of the experience because the sorry fact is I have not learned very much so far. Oh dear. Tant pis. (I remember that one from school.)

“So, all I want for Christmas is a Pashley. Actually, I’ve wanted one forever, this being the quintessential bike and me liking quintessential things, but this year I’m not going to send letters to Santa or leave brochures in briefcases (do women do that anymore? Do men still have briefcases?). I am just going to go out and buy it.

‘How can you afford it?’ Andrew asks. ‘Pashleys are expensive and we’re still in a recession.’

‘I’ve had a tax rebate,’ I say. ‘I didn’t earn enough money this year.’

‘Hmm. Is that not a sign that you should be spending less money, not more?’

‘No, it’s a sign that buying anything but the best is a false economy.’

‘That old chestnut,’ Andrew sighs. ‘Well, at least try out some other sorts of bikes as well, eh?’

(The more longsuffering among you will remember this sort of nonsense from when I bought my car.)

And so I visit a friend in Surrey who owns three bikes, including a Pashley (outside London there are such things as ten-bike families). First she wheels out the other two, a road bike and a day bike, whatever that means. The road bike I don’t even mount since I’m not attempting the Tour de France and, frankly, the day bike feels ‘road’ enough, like my bottom is higher than my shoulders, even though it isn’t. I just know if I get a bike like that I’m going to ride into a canal or something.

Then the Pashley, a red Britannia, complete with lovely antique leather saddle and wicker basket. It just feels exactly as a bike should feel. More like sailing than cycling. Like you must gather children around you and glide through rural France singing your little heart out. Jules et Jim, The Sound of Music: all of it.

‘What’s the verdict,’ Andrew asks, when I get home. ‘Are we all getting Pashleys for Christmas then?’

‘God, no,’ I say. ‘They’re far too expensive. Only me.’”

First published in SW magazine, December 2011 issue

‘You may remember I wrote about the training I and some friends have been doing for a charity walking marathon. Well, yesterday we walked it. (Did I mention that we downgraded from the full marathon to half? Best decision I’ve made all year.) No exaggeration, it was horrendous. Truly, my worst few hours of this century so far – and I include in this the bit during childbirth before the anaesthetist arrived.

Two things we had failed to consider:

1. The route. We had imagined the river, the royal parks, monumental London, like a montage in a Hollywood movie when they always play The Clash. In reality, it began and ended at the O2 and was the bus route through Deptford and Rotherhithe towards Bermondsey. It was the underbelly.

2. The start time. We set off at five minutes past midnight. For the first few miles we were sustained by adrenaline and Tangfastics, but soon our bodies began protesting that, without wine, they should be asleep by now. At nine miles, one of us fell over and had to limp the rest of the way (there was no choice; it was either that or bed down in a doorway); another fainted and had to recover in a kebab shop.

At the finish line we raised a scowl for the well wishers and chucked our medals in the bin, grumbling at the lack of bacon sandwiches. We had completely forgotten why we were there or what each other’s names were.

‘Let’s just go home and forget the whole thing,’ we agreed.

But, oh no. The tube was shut, the buses few and far between and the organisers had not thought to alert the taxi companies, who were taking no bookings. The wait for a black cab was two hours. We arrived home at 7.30am, broken and shrunken-hearted.

And so to the moral: if you’re considering one of these nocturnal charitable endeavours, calculate how much you think you can raise in donations and write a cheque to the charity for half that amount. Spend the other half on dinner with someone who really makes you laugh.
That’s the way to do things by halves.’

First published in SW Magazine, November 2011 issue

On a perfect summer’s day in Paris, tourists on a river trip watch in horror as drama unfolds. A small boy has fallen overboard and disappeared below the surface of the water. As his mother stands frozen to the spot, another passenger jumps…

This is the story of how a single act of courage transforms the lives of those involved: the hero James and his wife Alexa; Holly, the young mother of the victim; and Holly’s mother Joanna, whose whole adult life has been lived in the hope that her daughter will not make the same mistakes she did.
More information to follow. Meanwhile I am about to go on holiday to the gorgeous windswept Ile de Re and I have three books in my hot little hand: The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides, The Return of Captain John Emmett by Elizabeth Speller, and The Man of My Dreams by Curtis Sittenfeld. Leave me a message here if you’ve read them! x

Meanwhile, thank you to those who have pointed out the collection of strange errors in the UK edition of Other People’s Secrets . It’s one of those weird things that once your book is printed you don’t tend to read it yourself again cover to cover and so I’m very grateful to have learned of the mistakes from readers. They were not in the original manuscript but were put in by gremlins (I have my own word, but it’s not one that’s appropriate for a polite website like this), and have been corrected for future editions. It’s important to me, however, that you know I know that brandy is not a liqueur. The word was ‘liquor’. It was changed without my knowledge by the gremlin/own bad word. My characters never drink liqueurs (except, on special occasions and in books set in Italy, Limoncello). This is because their creator knows that that way lies the abyss.

“We’ve just come back from a few days in Amsterdam. What a wonderful city! Only in Amsterdam do taxi drivers engage you in conversation about innovative lighting solutions. For that matter, only in Amsterdam do you phone for a taxi and as you are hanging up receive a text to say it’s already outside whenever you’re ready. Wow.

Why can’t London be more like Amsterdam, Andrew and I kept asking each other, almost, but not quite, to the tune of Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man? from ‘My Fair Lady’.

Some other minor miracles you won’t experience in London but will there:

1. You walk into a restaurant without a reservation, get a table straight away, and no one says you have to give it back in two hours, they just let you sit down and ask you what you want to drink! Extraordinary!

2. Cyclists don’t dress like ninja or hex you for daring to step upon a pedestrian crossing. No, they smile in a comradely fashion and continue to transport flowers in their baskets to their chic live/work spaces!

3. When you require the aforementioned innovative lighting solution, you do not have to search online for three days before giving up and getting the bus to John Lewis, only to be told that the one light you even half-like is out of stock in every colour but fuchsia. No, you just walk into a local shop and choose one!

Of course Amsterdam has its cons too, and not all of the stag-related kind (which could be considered pros, after all). For instance: parking has the added complication of your having to be really good at it if you don’t want to drive into a canal; you have to pay and queue for museums; and after a while that easy, egalitarian service style starts to feel a bit guileless (service with guile: now that’s what keeps the relationship fresh, don’t you think?)

Maybe we don’t want London to be more like Amsterdam, actually. And, according to Andrew, we certainly don’t want a woman to be more like a man – at least not any more than she already is.”

From the April 2011 issue of SW magazine

I’ve written before about being a near juvenile delinquent and being grounded for the whole school holiday one summer, but what I remember most about that period was going to the library: it was the only place my sister and I were allowed to go unsupervised. We’d both borrow four books and then read each other’s as well, returning a few days later for another set of eight. That summer we got through the complete works of Agatha Christie and Barbara Cartland, among others – ‘Love Leaves At Midnight’ being one Cartland classic that sticks in the memory. (Years later I had a boyfriend who followed the same principle.)

Anyway, when I lecture my daughter on such things, telling her how going to the library was once my only source of pleasure, she’ll say, ‘Didn’t you have electricity in the olden days?’ or ‘Didn’t you ever get a mint Aero?’ Well, yes, we did, but the books were still the best bit. Books are cheap now, which is good, but I think free is much, much better.

One thing I’ve managed this year is much more reading of books than previous years, which has been a great joy, and if there is anyone out there who (like me) has not quite nailed his or her Christmas shopping, I urge you to buy books – at the risk of sounding like Dolly Parton/Kenny Rogers, they really are the Greatest Gift of All.

All happiness for 2011, Louise x

I’ve also, as some readers will know, been busy thinking of a title for my next book and, having temporarily failed, I’ve fallen back on the very last entry on any writer’s to-do list: Actually Doing Some Writing. Following some ‘thoughts’ from my editor, I decided to remove one of my (four) narrators, a cruel cutting job that has felt a bit like gutting your house and seeing its value halve in front of your eyes before you do it up again. Luckily, the doing it up again is going well. I think. And it’s been heaven to use words other than ‘Sit’, ‘Off’, and ‘Not again, Maggie!’

What else has been happening? Oh yes, my seven-year-old daughter has become obsessed with Puffles, which has led to the high-brow pursuit of replacing two-syllable ‘p’-words in song lyrics with ‘Puffle’ and then hooting with laughter. So…Poker Face by Lady Gaga becomes Puffle Face, and so on. Very basic. Yes, I know, I need to get out more. The thing is I already do go out quite a lot. Which leads me to believe that there are no easy answers in life, oh no.