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 September 2008 Apologies! Riddled with family events! Harvey's Point Prescriptives! Birthday passes 'peacefully.' Becripes mes amies, I hardly know where to begin. In a way it's better when very little has happened because then I can get into the minutiae (that may not be spelt correctly - apologies) and detail and all the funny stuff but when so many big things have happened, it's overwhelming and to write about Caitriona's wedding for example, including all the gas things that happened, would fill an entire book. Let me start with apologising for there being no letter last month. I was in flitters, mes amies, in absolute flitters. There had been millions of people in the house for what felt like months and months, first the Praguers arrived and because we've got a Wii yoke, they took up permanent residence, meanwhile we'd had the lovely lovely Dylan staying with us and none of this is to say that it was unpleasant because it was delightful but chaotic, you know. Ema being 8 and Luka being 7 and Dylan being 3 months, it was all go. House permanently filthy and you couldn't go 2 steps without stepping on a baby alarm or kicking over a glass of milk abandoned by Luka or breaking your neck skidding on all my shoes which Ema had taken out of my wardrobe and strewn through the hall. Then people started arriving for the wedding which was on August 30th - AnneMarie and Jack (19 months) and Caitriona's friend Denise. Meanwhile many other people from New York were billeted nearby, Matt and Dave McMullen (living legend) and Yasmine and obviously Caitriona and Sean and our house became pitta bread and hummous central (it was all I was able to concentrate on in the supermarket. I was so anxious that my eyes couldn't stop scudding long enough to look at the things on the shelf. Pitta bread and hummus is always safe. And quiche. And fecking ben and Jerrys, more of which anon.) Then we had the hen night in the Ritz-Carlton in Powerscourt, the most lovely, lovely place, with such delicious food and kindly people and restful views of trees and mountains and all that nature business and we went to the spa the next day and so many Irish spas are crap (it's a feminist issue! Because they're mostly used by women there's an attitude of, 'Ah sure, give them any oul shite, any crappy oul rub with a bit of lavender oil and they'll be delighted. Call it 60 minutes, but only give them 43, fling around the words 'pamper' and 'deserve' and make sure you charge them a fortune) but this one is magnificent and serious and the real thing. And dear, yes, undeniably dear, I'm not saying it isn't and I don't want to seem like I'm showing off, going to a fancy-dan spa in these credit-crunchy time, but you get what you pay for, is all I'm saying. More than get. Then we had a week of rehearsals and hair and make-up trials and fake tan and pedicures and a rehearsal dinner with 45 of us, then the day itself, which was truly miraculous and it didn't rain and Caitriona looked STUNNING, like Grace Kelly and Gwyneth Paltrow, only far more beautiful and it was all really great. And I sort of thought that then it would all be quiet, but it wasn't because although the wedding was on the Saturday, we were still overrun with people (I'm not saying it wasn't lovely because it was) until the Wednesday and I was so knackered from toasting pitta breads and I'd slipped way way off the sugar-free horse and was eating rings around myself, shoving icecream into my clob at all hours of the day and night, you see the thing is normally I wouldn't have ice-cream in the house because it would drive me insane and I'd have to get up in the middle of the night and eat it simply to stop it badgering me, but because of the visitors the place was full of all kinds of lovely grub and between the high emotion and the tiredness, I couldn't resist. I'm fecking HUGE, mes amies, struggling to get back on the straight and narrow, but it's hard, sad work. THEN I had to go to Austria and Germany on a book tour, so I hope this all explains why there was no letter last month. And even though I was destroyed before I even started, it was a lovely lovely tour. I LOVE Germans, I find them so warm and polite and - yes!- punctual. Nothing wrong with being punctual, the world would be a far nicer place if people were ON TIME and didn't make fun of poor Virgos such as myself for wanting to puke if I'm ten minutes late for something. Which brings me neatly to my birthday which was on Sept 10th and I started the day in stunningly beautiful Hamburg, then went to Mannheim, which was great, and at that night's reading, everyone sang Happy Birthday to me, which made me very very happy. It was a very uplifting and rewarding tour - can I say a huge thank you to all you beautiful Austrians and Germans who came along to the readings, I enjoyed myself SO MUCH. There were 5 of us travelling together - me, Himself, the delightful publicist Julia Winkel, the clever, funny host Guenter Keil and Katharina Spiering, an amazing actress, great fun who did the readings in German. Even though we were working and travelling a lot from city to city, we had a (well, I did anyway) gorgeous time and on my birthday, on the train to Mannheim, a man carrying an icebox full of Magnums arrived into our carriage. Isn't that the most amazing thing you ever heard? Like, they weren't free, you had to pay for them, 2.50 Euro a go, but we all had one and afterwards they said that they'd never before heard of such a phenomenon, a man laden with Magnums on the Hamburg to Mannheim train which made me wonder if I'd dreamt it, but if so, we'd all had the same dream. Birthday presents included a donation to SmileTrain - do you know it? It's a charity that operates on children in the developing world with cleft palates - (from Rita-Anne), fragrant items to put in your socks and knicker drawer (from my parents-in-law), a gorgeous pink and black notebook and memopad (From Chris, Caron, Jude and Gabe) and a magnificent and really cute necklace from Tiffany, you should see it, it's a silver starfish and 3 shells. (from Caitriona) Then on Friday we went to London, because Himself was going to Tadhg's stag do in Brighton and had to drink 40 pints and lie on the couch all the next day, roaring for a bucket, then on the Saturday was Suzanne's 40th birthday, also Sean and Caitriona were back from their honeymoon in Italy, so we all met up. So do you see what I mean? Like, all go. THEN, when we got back, both myself and Himself had massive dental work done, THEN my dad took a tumble and cut his face and broke his glasses and got a terrible fright, THEN myself, Himself, my mother and my dad all had to to to Newbridge to look for Mam's mother-of-the-groom rig-out for Tadhg's wedding (she would go nowhere else but Newbridge, even though there are hundreds of shops in Dublin, but sure feck it, what harm is there in indulging her) and Dad was going round with his cut face and crooked glasses offering his styling services to other customers and I'm sure the people in the shop thought I was guilty of elder abuse and that I must have pushed him and broken his glasses because I kept shouting at him to sit down and stop helping the other shoppers, THEN on the Friday night it was Susan's hen night, THEN on the Sunday it was Dylan's christening. And as I write, it's going to be Himself's birthday on Saturday, also his father's 80th, so we're going to UK for that, then back for Tadhg and Susan's wedding. But do you also see what I mean about there being no funny stories in that? It's all too BIG. Too many BIG events. One BIG event is grand, because I could go into detail but there's simply too fecking many! Okay, this isn't a funny story, but it's a happy one. I got colour-customised by Prescriptives. I've spent the past ages neurotically hunting down a foundation that took away my customary cadaverous pallour and imbued with me a warm but - vitally important this - NON-ORANGE glow. And nothing worked! So in the end I thought feck this and went to Prescriptives and took my place upon a high stool in the middle of a crowded department store and let a lovely girl called Karen remove my make-up! Then by a process of trial and error she mixed the perfect colour for me, then added all these fabulous extra yokes, a radiance thing and a few drops of firming and lifting stuff and some extra moisturiser because of my skin being drier than the Sahara and frankly mes amies I'm delighted! Also, the new Autumn make-up colours are in the shops and Clinique have a whole range called Blackberry Bloom, which is so plummy and Autumnal and red-fruit crumble and delicious. I'm after getting myself a new lipstick called Cranberry Cream (it's a colour surge one, if that makes sense) and it's the most magnificent colour AND texture, a dark berry red and a waxy texture, like a crayon, so it glides on and keeps my aged lips lush for hours. Apparently this is what happens during a recession - women buy lipstick! It being a luxury with a relatively low ticket, I suppose. Anyway, I love it, I feel vampy and nice (if immensely fat). Now, I've just thought of a funny story. Will this do? Tadhg and Susan's boxer Katie ate a wasp and got stung. You see, on normal months, I could get a good long anecdote out of that, but this month it will have to be dismissed with a cursory sentence, I can't even go into detail about how her mouth all swelled up and how funny it was. Here's another one. Himself is after doing something to his back and he's not able to sit in his chair, he has to type his emails while kneeling on the floor and last night in bed he couldn't lie on his right side because his back hurt, then he couldn't sleep on his left side because his back hurt, then when he lay on his back, his back DIDN'T hurt but it triggered his persistent cough so in the end he had to get up and go downstairs and sleep sitting up on the couch. For the love of God! I'm making him go to the doctor today because I'm sick of it and I expect much resistance. It's hard work making him go to the doctor. Even if his head has fallen off his shoulders and is rolling around on the floor bumping into the legs of chairs, he still resists me and always says, "I'm fine, I'm GRAND, what could a doctor do for me?' Meanwhile I'm just about to run out the door to see an eye specialist to see if my eyes can be lasered so that I needn't be laughably short-sighted. News just in: Himself and I have just had a scrap about the meaning of 'persistent'. As in me saying, "While you're at it, talk to the doctor about your persistent cough." And he said, "What persistent cough?" And I said, "That cough of yours that has persisted for the past week," and he said, "It's a cough, I grant you, but it's not persistent," and I said, "But if it has persisted for a week, which it fecking well has, then it's PERSISTENT." Of course all of this was just delaying tactics to get out of going to the doctors. More news just in: He WENT to the doctor and got a prescription for Solpadol. Do you know it? A delightful codeine-based painkiller, I had it last November for a throat infection and mes amies, I was OUT OF MY HEAD on it. Extremely pleasant, so it was. Well worth the sore throat. Luckily Himself is a stoic and fears painkillers, thinking if he takes more than 4 anadins a year, he's in danger of being 'addicted.' Amateur. Therefore I have ferried away his lovely packet of tablets to my medicine press (as big as other people's walk-in-wardrobes) and I plan to fob him off with Neurofen, which is grand but nothing like as nice as Solpadol and he will never know. Meanwhile I will wish for something painful to befall me so I have a legitmate excuse to lie in bed OUT OF MY HEAD, mildly itchy (that's the codeine) but otherwise in great form. More news just in: I've been given the go ahead for the lasering but I can't wear eye make-up for 2 weeks after it. Not even mascara. I won't be able to leave the house! Maybe I could tie it in with my Something Painful and spend 2 delightful weeks in bed, reading the same paragraph 79 times and laughing quietly to myself and sighing dreamily and having the odd little scratch. More news just in: Bad news this time. Himself has approached me and ASKED, yes ASKED for some Solpadol. He claims to be in terrible pain. I turned down his request, I said that he wasn't meant to take lovely tablets on an empty stomach, so he has done something unprecedented, he has said he will eat something even though it isn't a mealtime (he is very very, oh yes VERY different to me). I will give you his exact words. He said, "I will have a Solpadol sangwidge." In the guise of concern, I snapped the 2 caplets out of their foil for him and gave them to him with a glass of water, in the hope of obscuring the fact that he has been fobbed off with Neurofen. He'll be grand. News that came some time ago: Some time last month there was a survey in Britain on their 50 favourite authors and I was number 26! Maeve Binchy was 18! It was such a lovely thing to hear, and thank you very very much. Now, you know To Russia With Love, the magnificent charity which has transformed the lives of hundreds of Russian orphans, well, they're having this clothes sale on October 30th, where people have given their designer cast offs to raise money for the charity. If you had any mortifying expensive mistakes knocking around the back of your wardrobe, would you consider sending it on to them? The details are all on their website (Torussiawithlove.ie) They do such amazing work, they have helped so many sad, damaged children, it's very uplifting, and they'd be so grateful if you had anything. I've given several pairs of shoes, if there's any size 36s out there and you'll be in Dublin on Oct 30th, work away!  News just in: I had to give Himself the Solpadol. He's in agony. He's going to see a specialist tomorrow. He must have slipped a disc or something, God love him. I've just had a conversation with my mother where she says, all accusatory, "Are you doing some workshop in Donegal?" Taken aback, I admitted that I was and asked her how she knew and she said that she was approached by a woman she knows from bridge in the queue for holy communion at mass and that the woman asked her about it and that she was mortified because she knew nothing and why do I never tell her anything and I had to say well, it's only barely decided and I don't know how the woman from bridge knows. So let me tell you about it. Next February, the weekend 5-8, Harvey's Point, a delightful hotel in Donegal is running a creative writing weekend and I'm going to be 'facilitating' a couple of sessions. The brilliant Scottish thriller writer Christopher Brookmyre will also be doing a session - if you haven't read any of his books, I urge you to start, they're excellent, very funny and thought-provoking as well as having great plots. There will also be a 'top literary agent' (mine, as it happens and I can attest to him indeed being 'top'.) This all came about in July when Himself and myself drove through the torrential rain to visit Donegal and stayed at Harvey's Point and I just fell in love with the place. It's on the shores of Lough Eske and although it had a massive refurbishment a couple of years ago and many of the rooms are now enormous, it is IMMENSELY charming. The food is beautiful, the hotel is also right beside the Bluestack mountains, it's a great place to go and hole up for a romantic weekend. Anyway, the details of the weekend are still being finalised but if you're at all interested, have a look on their website or give them a shout. So there we are, mes amies, September. Is anyone obsessed by The Wire. I am. I had to throw myself into it during the Summer because of no longer being able to take Big Brother (this made me very sad) and I need something to be obsessed by and people said The Wire might do the trick and yes, indeed it has. That Jimmy McNulty. Cripes, imagine being married to him. I'm very fond of so many of the characters. The part where Bubbs goes to the NA meeting and Steve Earle is sharing? AMAZING. I was so moved I cried, it's so uplifting to see people getting clean even though I admit I'm a bit too fond of Solpadol but at least I'm not drinking, which is my primary addiction and not Solpadol. Or Ben n Jerrys, although Christ knows, you wouldn't think it to look at me. Did you have a nice September? Did anyone get new boots? Or indeed a new lipstick? Oh before I forget! You know Strictly Come Dancing? Well, I'll be on It Takes Two with Claudia on Oct 3rd. Also, I hope, doing a behind the scenes thing on Sat 18th, which will be shown on Monday 20th. More news just in! Himself went to a gammy back specialist (the same man who cured me of my slipped disc) and has to go for a MRI scan! Cripes above. Things must be bad. Anyway, have a good October and thank you for all your kindness to me, I very much appreciate it. Lots of love Marian xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx |
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Photo © Neil Cooper