April

I wore the black!
I didn’t win!
I finish my book!
Yoga feet!
Ola, amigos and my apologies for a) the latness of this missive – I’m writing this on Friday 1st and it being a bank holiday weekend and all that, it might be Tuesday before this gets to you and b) its shortness, ie brevity. It’s just that I’m on the last go of the book, doing a final readthrough before the copyeditor starts on it and time is of the essence but I thought I’d like to say hello, however briefly, also to thank everyone who voted for me in the British Book Awards. You are so decent and I’m so sorry to have let you down by not winning. However, there was a certain bittersweet pride in the fact that I correctly predicted that Sebastian Faulkes would win it. I began swaggering around, boasting of my intuition and annoying Himself and a week or so later when Hell’s Kitchen started, I watched the opening episode, took one look at the Jody bloke and announced to Himself, ‘I don’t know who he is, that young Jody bloke, but he has this thing won.’ Himself was very impressed and suggested we stick a few quid on him, but just as well we didn’t, as the Jody bloke (I still don’t know who he is) was the FIRST, yes, mes amies, THE FIRST to be sacked by Marco Pierre White. So I am not intuitive at all. I’m quite disappointed. Did anyone watch Hell’s Kitchen? Isn’t MPW simply magnificent? Himself took such a shine to him that he disappeared for hours one afternoon and reappeared, looking all dusty and covered in cobwebs and wearing his ancient red-and-white Yasser Marrowfat bandana/scarf yoke around his head in the manner of Marco. He’d had to go up into the attic to find it. Then he spent the evening prowling around the kitchen, picking things up and putting them down and staring at me menacingly and now and again saying, “Interesting…”

I was quite upset when it all finished, although happy enough that Linda Evans won, she seemed like such a nice, nice person and nice counts for so much with me.

So what else? Well, there was Easter, then the following weekend Ema and Luka arrived from Prague! (Also with Niall and Ljiljana.) Ema and I went to High School Musical with my friend Siobhan and two of her little girls, Sarah and Emily and, I don’t know, amigos, it wasn’t really for me, maybe I’m just not their target audience. Also Ema and Sarah had passionate discussions about how this live version wasn’t as good as the film version, there was some business with bolognese sauce in the school cafeteria, which didn’t make it into the live show and they seemed disappointed, indeed, quite put out about it. I’ll tell you one thing I got out of it, though, I was wildly happy that I’m all grown up and don’t have to go to school anyone. Christ, the misery. And bad enough as mine was, at least it was single sex. Imagine the bitchiness and misery on a daily basis if there were boys involved!

There is a little video attached, where you meet some members of my family, introduced by lovely Ema. She has this ‘thing’ where she pretends other people are her parents, which can be confusing for the uninitiated. So just to get things straight, Niall is my brother, Ljiljana is his wife, they are Ema and Luka’s parents. Tadhg is my other brother, Susie is his wife, they are NOT Ema and Luka’s parents. Katie is the dog, Tadhg and Susie are her parents. Luka is Ema’s brother, he is NOT her cousin. I hope this makes things clear.



We had a lovely weekend with them, it was the twins (Tadhg and Rita-Anne’s) birthday on the Saturday, so we all went out, all 213 of us. Dylan is now nearly 11 months. Himself is attaching photos of him. (Dylan is Rita-Anne and Jimmy’s baby. I’m sorry there are so many of us, it’s very messy.)



Right, so listen, like I said, I’ve finished The Brightest Star in the Sky and I’m really really thrilled with it and I don’t think I’ve ever said that before about anything I’ve written. It just worked out so lovely, it’s a very sweet book, I mean, obviously being me and the melancholic miseryguts I am, there is some darkness at the heart of it, but I have to say, there’s an overall lightness to it, an upbeat, hopeful feel. Yes, in all fairness, I’m proud of it and I hope you’ll enjoy it. It’ll start coming out in October – first publication is in Ireland and then UK, Australia, New Zealand, then it won’t be until the new year in US and Canada, then the translated versions depend on how long the translating takes. So I say I’m finished, but I’m not really. It’ll go to the copyeditor and she’ll come back with a million queries, then I’ll go into a slump, then I’ll come out of the slump and do the changes, then there will be more, then eventually it’ll be typeset and Himself and myself will proofread till black dots are dancing in front of our eyes and we can’t walk straight, then finally, FINALLY, it’ll be done and then I’ll wake in the middle of the night, gripped with the horrors, that this book is utter shite and that the printing presses must be stopped IMMEDIATELY, then Himself will yell, ‘You always do this! Pull yourself together for the love of God!”

The only problem with finishing the book is that it is now very clear to me that I’ll never be able to write anything else ever again. I have Himself driven mad, he says I do this every time I finish a book and I keep saying, ‘But it’s different this time, I really am all used up,’ and he keeps replying, ‘Yes, and you say that every time too.’ But the fear is huge. I know that I always feel like this, but still, it hasn’t stopped me considering what else I might be able to do and the unpleasant fact is that, in this current apocalyptic climate, I have a narrow skill-set. (I don’t even know if I’m saying that right.)

Skill-set 1) I could make soup. I like making soup. I think I’m quite good at it. I could try opening a soup shop.

Skill-set 2) I can still do double-entry book-keeping. Often in my dreams, I’m back in my old job and I can still remember everything. Gas, no?

Skill-set 3) ….ah….right…feck it, surely to God I can do something else. I mean, christ alive, is that all I’m capable of? Soup and sums?

Quick change of the subject to something far nicer. Sisley. Make-up brand. So lovely. Now, I’ll be honest here, I got sent this product, I didn’t shell out my own readies, but by Christ, lads, it’s good stuff. It’s Sun Glow pressed powder and it’s for the Summer, like, you know, for a sunkissed glow but without being all glittery and shiny like so many bronzers are. Matt, that’s what I’m trying to say, but it’s lovely because you get the powder, then you also get a bronzer, a DUO, to be exact, so you can shade and tone and blend and highlight and you get a lovely fat brush to apply it and fyi Sisley also do a great fake tan. I like it because it doesn’t make you orange, it’s subtle and natural looking and so nice.

Also, face pigmentation. Are you concerned? Well, I wasn’t UNTIL, yes, UNTIL I discovered that the reason that I look like Uncle Fester so much of the time is not just because of exhaustion and my eyes being sunken into the backs of my head but because the skin around my eyes in ‘highly pigmented’ and if I could unpigment it a bit, I wouldn’t look half so knackered/old/scary. THEN about 4 seconds after I discovered this pigmentation scenario, didn’t a parcel arrive from Dermalogica, with a brand-new, hot-off-the-presses anti-pigmentation kit! I mean, this is serious, serious, state-of-the-art stuff. It’s called Chromo White and it’s a 5 part process and it requires commitment – every night I have to rub a lightening cleanser in for 30 seconds and as anyone knows who has ever done this, 30 seconds can be very long. There’s something called C-12 concentrate which is meant to accelerate brightening and improve skintone, there a nightcream, an even more concentrated powder that you add to your night cream and a scarily complicated exfoliant called Powerfoliant – I’ve already used it and while I don’t know if I’m any less pigmented, I am definitely SOMETHING, somehow improved – tighter, smoother, brighter. I am not making this up.
Which brings me to yoga. When so many of you wrote in so kindly about ways to treat insomnia, yoga was suggested again and again. So I thought I’d give it a go. Now, my experience with yoga up until now has not been a happy one, I always found it way too hard, all that jumping and holding poses and worst of all, that codology that yoga is not competitive because I found that was not the case. I’d be trembling in a pose, bursting blood vessels in my eyes from the strain of keeping myself upright, rather than give the hardbodied girlie next to me a reason to snigger. But obviously the problem was my attitude and the thing was that I wasn’t doing yoga to be calm or settled or to sleep better but to have a smaller arse and really that’s not the way, is it?

Well, now it’s all different mes amies, I am a swotty floaty yoga type. (I’ve done about 3 classes.) I am doing like the teacher lady says and meeting my body in friendship. Oh yes. I am the only person doing my practice right now. And all that. Yes? Lovely stuff. Except for my feet. I am not being grandiose when I say I have the worst feet I’ve ever seen. The soles of them are the hardest I’ve ever come across and I’ve often said I’d come in handy if I was stranded on a desert island because I could start a fire simply by rubbing them together. But they’re worse than merely hard. On the ball of the foot, they’re practically… (I’m cringing even typing this) yellow. Oh God, god, god, god, the shame. The excruciating shame. And in a yoga class, people have to see your feet and I always try to seclude myself in a corner right down the back but yoga teachers (I’ve found) have a habit of breezily saying, ‘Lets all face the other way today, just for a change’ and suddenly, instead of me and my shameful feet being closeted down the back of the room, they are suddenly leading the effing class! Right up the front, with serried ranks of yoga doers behind me, all getting an eyeful of my appalling yellow feet, and me dying a death every time we’ve to go into child’s pose and the soles of my feet are exposed to all and a sudden yellow light fills the room. And I have tried every foot emollient on the market and even though I think I’ve found what works best – I’ll tell you in a minute – the best is still a little David to the Goliath that is my appalling feet. Every day OF MY LIFE I scrub with the diamond foot smoother from Bliss – you use it on dry feet – and it is miles better than pumice stones and things you use in the shower with water. Then the best foot cream of the hundreds I’ve tried over the years, is by Origins, I can’t remember what it’s called but it smells minty. But I was being credit crunchy the last time I ran out of it and instead bought a vat of something called Silcocks base – do you know it? I’ve a feeling they might only sell it in Ireland. It might be sold in other countries under a different name and it’s a thick, white ungent, you get a massive bucket of it for about a fiver and sometimes I take a little bottle of essential oil - the house is riddled with them, lavender and peppermint and suchlike, I’m forever buying them in the hope they’ll help me in some vague way – and add them to a handful of Silcocks base and pretend I’m Jo Malone. But my feet are still atrocious. Not as bad admittedly as when I neglect this routine – I’m not saying the Silcocks base isn’t good because it’s quite good - but still shameful and it does inhibit the enjoyment of my yoga somewhat. But as my mother would probably say, at least I have feet…

So lookit I have to go, I’m sorry this is so rushed. Thank you to all of you who may have voted in the Irish Book Awards (they’re on on Wednesday May 6th.) Unlike the British ones, I have no instinct on which one of us will win, but I’d be happy for any of us to because we are all friends and that’s a nice feeling. The night itself will be a laugh, either way.

I hope you had a nice April and that May treats you with kindness and if May can’t, then maybe you’d consider being kind to yourself, because that’s always within our power. Thank you again for voting and thank you for reading this and I’ll be on to you again at the end of the month.

Namaste! (As us diehard yoga types say.) (It means ‘The divine in me honours the divine in you.’) Actually I wouldn’t mind making up my own one. How about ‘Magnumste’? It means ‘the icecream lover in me honours the icecream lover in you.’ Or MarsBarste? ‘The chocolate lover in me honours the chocolate lover in you.’ Or Clooneyste? It means (obviously!) ‘The George Clooney lover in me honours the George Clooney lover in you even though you are not his lover in the biblical sense and if you are, you are one lucky cow and any time you feel like ringing me and giving me a blow-by-blow, I’m at the end of the phone.’

And with Magnumste and MarsBarste, you know when you bow your head to your joined hands, lets add our own little detail, lets stick out tongue out slightly, as if we were licking the Magnum or Mars Bar. (Or indeed, Mr Clooney.) Oh Christ, I feel an avalanche of irate emails from people saying I have dishonoured Namaste, coming on. Please, no! It’s only a joke! I honour the divine in you, I do, I really do, I’m just having a bit of fun!

Lots of love and thank you again

Marian