All I want for Christmas…

Here is my latest column for SW magazine. Of course, with the benefit of hindsight I would also like the end of the Euro crisis and shelter/fresh water for all, but at the time of writing what I mostly wanted was a bike…

“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

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The long walk…

Here is my latest column for SW magazine, a demonstration of my charitable side – or should that be uncharitable…? You decide.

‘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

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Book news

My new novel (scarily, my eighth) is (pretty much) finished and I can now confirm that a) it won’t have as many parentheses in it per sentence as there are in this one, and b) it is published in the UK in June 2012. It’s called The Day You Saved My Life and here are some details:

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

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Liquor love

It’s summer (apparently) and since I usually have a new book out about now I thought I ought to say there isn’t one this time around. After my eye problem last year I missed my deadline and so the next novel will be out in June 2012. The title isn’t confirmed yet, but when it is be sure that I will spill. I’m working on rewrites at the moment and really enjoying it. My lovely editor Jo thought of improvements for it in a dream, and so it feels a bit ‘Kubla Khan’ and like we all deserve some opium. I hope it will be a good read.

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.

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(H)amsterdam

I thought I’d occasionally post the monthly column I write for the London magazine SW. This one is about a recent weekend in Amsterdam, or Hamsterdam as it is known here (truly, Mr Wilde himself would struggle to better the drollery in this house!). So here we go:

“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

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In the library

Books are really cheap now, only a few pounds apiece, the same as a magazine. When my daughter needs a new one I just order it from amazon or take her to the local kids’ bookshop to buy it, almost certainly slurping a cappuccino or eating a fruit string on the way, but my own childhood was not like this. For one thing, we ate actual fruit, not the strung kind, but also books were much more expensive. My parents couldn’t afford to buy my sister and me many new ones and so borrowing from our local library was the only way we could read as much as we wanted to.

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.

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Merry Christmas

A very merry Christmas to all who’ve stumbled upon this page – including the large Puffle community out there! It’s been quite a strange year for me, 2010, but it has been survived (provided I don’t fall under the number 37 bus in the next two weeks) and what’s more there have been small achievements along the way. For instance: I have at last distilled my reality TV viewing to the core two: The Apprentice and America’s Next Top Model – I’m very proud of that. My eye(s) continue to fascinate the specialists at Moorfields, but for now I am still seeing, if not in any way visionary. And despite having been driven to tears by the new member of the family I have now properly fallen in love with her and there are even small signs of doodle in her Labra tail, which is nice.

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

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Can’t read my puffle face

Apologies for the hiatus: as previous posts foretold, I have been run ragged by four-legged-related activities, mainly in the form of letting pets in and out of the house on demand, feeding pets (one on demand, one not, or she would never not be eating), stopping pets with muddy paws jumping up at people in white jeans, picking puppy teeth out of the rug, that kind of thing.

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.

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A new distraction

Hello again. Thank you, thank you, thank you for all your best wishes about The Eye: the situation is that the surgeon has declared himself very pleased with me (well, with himself, really, as I didn’t do anything except submit to the sinister pleasures of anaesthesia) and he hopes to discharge me next month. So I am writing and cooking and driving and watching Britain’s Next Top Model again – business as usual, pretty much.