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 January 2009 Happy New Year! Naming Ceremony! Book sales of 22 million! Sinus Infection! Creative writing in Donegal! Legs lasered without pain! Happy New Year and all that, mes amies and I hope it wasn't all too terrible for you, the Christmas. I'll tell you about mine in a minute, but come here, I have to tell you about the great success I've had with my legs. Last month I told you of the terrible pain I endured on my first go of getting my legs lasered and many of you kindly alerted me to the local anaesthetic cream Emla, but the thing was, I already knew about Emla and had strong-armed my doctor into prescribing it for me, but he only gave me this tiny, barely visible little tube, with hardly enough to numb my big toe, so I went on the interweb, oh yes I did and found a dodgy site, willing to sell me Emla without a prescription, so I put in my details and gave them my credit card number and wondered if I'd just been royally swizzed. But no! Because maybe 10 days later, this massive box, a veritable CRATE, amigos, arrived, laden with jumbo-sized tubes of Emla and joy abounded. Except for Himself. Joy didn't abound for him because he is naturally cautious. "Tubes I grant you," he said. "Big ones, yes, I admit they're big ones, and lots of them and they DO say Emla on the outside, but it mightn't be Emla on the inside, it might be some useless stuff that does nothing." But I had faith. Also a little bit of trepidation. Because there's a reason Emla's only given on prescription. My sister who is a nurse told me that people have died, yes DIED, from overdosing on Emla because it shuts down blood circulation. But anyway! I was willing to take the risk, to walk on the wild side a little and when the day of my lasering dawned, I closeted myself in my bedroom, with a new tube of cling-film and started glooping the Emla onto my legs and it went fecking everywhere, onto the carpet and then - disaster! - I was squeezing out the last bit out of a tube and a big lump shot straight into my right eye and started stinging like bejaysis, which is very wrong when you think about it, because it's meant to ANAESTHESISE me, not sting me. So I rushed to the bathroom, trying not to spill any more of the cream off my leg and started splashing cold water like mad into my eye and I was in despair because later than day I was going to London, for a big photoshoot the following day, with hair and make-up and stylists and art directors and what if my right eye was like a tomato? I'd have to incorporate a wink into my look. And mes amies, I am NOT a winker. Even if I had been, Sarah Palin has sullied the wink forever. No winking. So I splashed cold water into my eye and splashed cold water into my eye and wondered what Saint was the one you prayed to to banish bloodshot eyes, my mother would probably know, but I couldn't get hold of her, so I went back to glooping the gear on my legs, then - and this was tremendously satisfying - wound loads and loads of cling film around my legs, thus sealing the cream and letting it take full effect. So for about 2 hours, I crinkled around the house, then I had to try and get my jeans on over the clingfilm without dislodging it, which was harder than it sounds, then splashing one last handful of water, I went to the place. Well, it was FECKING FANTASTIC. I felt NOTHING. Compared to the last time, which had been utter torture, it was lovely. Then I went straight to the airport and Himself accused me of behaving oddly and he was right, I WAS feeling somewhat spacey and then we realised that the Emla must have entered my bloodstream because addict that I am, I'm extremely sensitive to any kind of drug and things that wouldn't bother the normal person at all, have a profound effect on me. Like, I get high from the local anaesthetic injections you get at the dentist, that's how bad I am. So there I was, wandering around Dublin airport, with a bloodshot eye, banging into things and knocking over displays of Butler's chocolates and making people stare hard at me and poor Himself trying to reconstruct pyramids of boxes and chocolates and generally keep a lid on things. And when we got on the plane, I sort of went to sleep but it was better than sleep, mes amies, I was utterly EUPHORIC. I felt warm and whole and at peace but a wonderful euphoric kind of peace, not a boring kind of at peace. It was probably the happiest I've ever been in my whole life and when the pilot said "20 minutes to landing," I felt a great sense of loss because I knew I had only 20 more minutes of this lovely bliss and then it would be all over and I wondered if I'd become addicted to Emla cream and Himself would know I'd had a lapse if he found me trying to smuggle a carton of cling-film (Saran-wrap for my North American readers) into the house and it made me think about how much cooking paraphernalia is implicated in illicit drug use. Tin foil for heroin. And now cling film. Anyway, the plane landed and the euphoria abated and my eye cleared up and the photoshoot went grand and I haven't been tempted to smear myself with Emla cream since so I think I'm in the clear. Also. Baldy legs! I mean, they'll grow back, the hairs, lots of them will, Rome wasn't built in a day and when you've legs as hairy as mine, you're in it for the long haul, but for the moment I'm slippery and smooth and yes! Baldy! The only drawback is that I no longer get ingrowing hairs, which I've always thought was Mother Nature's consolation prize for the hairy-legged woman. It's not nice being hairy-legged, well I don't enjoy it anyway, but the hours, yes HOURS of fun I've had, equipped with just a simple tweezers. All gone now. But what harm.  The day after the photoshoot we went to Cambridge for the naming ceremony of Himself's brother's children, Jude and Gabe. It was the most beautiful event. Chris and Caron are the parents and they have done myself and Himself the honour of asking us to be 'Supporting adults' which is sort of like Godparents for non-believers. Like Godparents, we had to make a series of promises concerning the wellbeing of Jude and Gabe, but there was none of this renouncing Satan codology. Instead it was about loving the children and helping them to be happy and supporting them whether they succeeded or failed in their life's endeavours and it was very full of love and it really touched me and made me very happy. Now speaking of happy. In February, from 5 to 8, in Harvey's Point, a beautiful hotel in beautiful Donegal, there will be a creative writing course held, and I'll be there, doing a couple of 'sessions', one on motivation and the other a more general one. Also Christopher Brookmyre, very brilliant and funny Scottish writer will be doing a session and so will a 'top' London agent. I know in these credit crunchy times that cash for creative writing is in short supply, but on the Saturday night, I think it's the 7th, there's going to be a dinner (the food there is gorgeous) and I'll be doing readings and answering questions and telling anecdotes; and anything I've ever done like this in the past has been really good fun, so if you're not interested in the creative writing end of things, but would like to come to beautiful Donegal and partake of the scenery and the delicious grub and have a laugh, that would be lovely. (Just to make things clear for those few stinky journalists - and you know who you are - I am not trying to squeeze a couple of quid out of doing this. I'm not accepting payment from Harvey's Point (or anyone else.) I'm doing it because I love the hotel, it's extremely charming and the people are lovely and it's in a beautiful spot and I think it'll be lots of fun.) The website is www.harveyspoint.com for further details. So yes, Christmas. This year we were meant to going to Himself's family in England, we were due to stay with his parents in leafy Saffron Walden and spend the day itself in nearby Cambridge, with Caron, Chris and the lads. But! Didn't I get a sinus infection 2 days before Christmas and I was a) in agony and b) told on Christmas Eve, 2 hours before my flight that I wasn't allowed to fly. So we couldn't go and we had to stay at home and we had nothing in the house, nothing, so Himself had to do a last minute mercy dash to M&S and see if they'd let us have some leftover scraps and we didn't have turkey which suited me grand because I don't like it the other 364 days of the year so why would I try to force it down on Christmas Day. But we had roast potatoes and roast parsnips and although we didn't have turkey we had ALL OF THE TRIMMINGS. Marks and Spencer do a packet of stuffing and chipolatas and little bacon and cheese things, so we had the best of all worlds. It turned out to be quite a nice day, even if I did sleep for 22 of the 24 hours and was in such terrible pain that I wanted to saw my face off. Also, we had no chocolate, until we remembered the parcel that my parents had given us to give to Himself's parents. There was a small chance that it contained confectionery so we opened it and yes! It was a box of Lily O'Brien's chocolates so we ate them, promising ourselves that we would replace them they next time we're going to England. So what else? Oh yes! 2 nice things! They've done a round-up of worldwide sales of my books, one hasn't been done in a while and they currently stand at 22 million! So thank you, thank you, thank you, to each and every one of you who has gone out there and bought the books and told your friends about them. It humbles me always that anyone would fork over their hardearned cash for something I made, so for it to happen 22 million times is very very humbling indeed. Thank you, you've made me very happy. And the other nice thing is, well you know the book I'm currently writing? Well, the thing is, the experience has been different to most of my other books. Most times I write very slowly, making it as perfect as I can before moving on to the next bit. Well, this time, I've gone from start to finish, with it quite rough and un-rewritten for the most part. But I was feeling the need for feedback from my wonderful editor Louise Moore (the worlds most stylish woman, don't get me started on her, she wears a lot of Belgian designers, Marni and Anne Demulemeester and she wears them with great elan and conviction and aplomb and she's very very beautiful, like I said don't get me started.) So I sent it to Louise, warning her that it was very rough, but she loved it so much that she sent it to an editor she really respects in Penguin US, one Clare Ferraro, who also loved it a lot, even though it is dog-rough, mes amies, mortifyingly so. And guess what? She got on a plane from New York and came to Dublin and wooed me, yes, wooed me and she said she didn't mind it was dog-rough, she could see its potential, so I succumbed! The book is called The Brightest Star in the Sky (I might have told you this before) and at the moment I'm trying to rewrite it and make it perfect and lovely but I am greatly encouraged by all this trans-Atlantic endorsement. It'll be out in Ireland and UK in October 2009, in New Zealand, Australia and South Africa in December 2009 and in Canada and US in Feb 2010. With the translations, I'm never sure when publication will be because it depends on how long the translation takes and it also depends on how quickly I can deliver the final manuscript, but I'm working on it. So there we are, December. Go easy on the new year's resolutions for the love of God. Proceed with caution. We are so hard on ourselves, especially at this time of the year, when it's like coming round from a collective trance, in which we have frenziedly overconsumed all in our paths. (Or perhaps that's just me.) January is the sackcloth and ashes month, where we feel we need to punish ourselves, but I beg of you not to be too ambitious and build in failure to your supershiny vision of the new, improved you. Easy does it. Try to improve just one thing. Or indeed don't bother even doing that, if you don't feel like it. I think we all do the best we can on a daily basis and if we overeat or underexercise or drive too fast or shout at someone, it's because we had no choice. We are flawed and imperfect (not our fault, it's the human condition) and in various levels of pain and we're doing our best to get through life, one day at a time. Easy does it. Lots of love Marian xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx PS I THINK Marni is Belgian but Himself thinks it might be Italian. Also Himself continues to do his 'neckercises' and continues to be free of pain, thank you for all your good wishes. |
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Photo © Neil Cooper