90. Marina Hyde vs. Trudie Styler

Don't know why this blog has suddenly come over all newspapery, but it might have something to do with my desperate efforts to keep my mind from atrophying while I have little to do bar drink and write bad fiction. (Don't panic; I am in the process of getting a job.)

Anyway, one of my regular enjoyments is the Guardian's Lost in Showbiz column, in G2 every Friday. Lost in Showbiz (or LiS) is written by Marina Hyde who is wonderful and who definitely DIDN'T shag Piers Morgan because if she had I would have to stop reading her columns immediately and that would cause me great sadness. LiS pokes fun at celebrity culture, but it does it in a way that is both amusing and sobering, which is quite a feat. Sometimes I'm so busy fuming with jealousy at the quality of the writing I miss the jokes and have to start again. But it's always worth reading twice. This week's extended edition on Chelsea Clinton's wedding is formidable.

But Marina saves her Sunday best for Trudie Styler, aka Mrs Sting. Trudie and Sting, as you probably know, work tirelessly for the Rainforest Alliance, when they're not too busy being rich, and LiS likes nothing better than to smack Trudie around a bit. She ALWAYS deserves it.

Have a look at this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/lostinshowbiz/2009/apr/14/celebrity

(You might have to copy and paste it. Sorry. It's worth it.)

Oh, happiness. I haven't met Trudie, but I've certainly met a few Trudie-lites, and without question they are what put me off working in the meeja. But now I have Marina to help lance the boils that those awful, witless, hypocritical, talentless, narcissistic fuckwits created on my poor innocent soul. So I thank her, and will send her money if she wants me to. Or Marmite. Whatever she needs.

89. Crystal Castles - 'Baptism'

I am the only person I know who would like this song. It has a serious trance beat and a mad Canadian woman shrieking at the top of her lungs. Love it.

I love quite a lot of Trance music, in fact, but I have learned not to expect anybody to listen to it with me. So it becomes a secret pleasure, just me and my iPod out pounding the streets or the treadmill, dumph beats at full volume. Still, whatever gets you through, right?

There are, obviously, many many songs that I love, but I have chosen this one for the blog because I discovered it the old fashioned way - by listening to the radio. BBC 6 Music, if you want to know. Thank god they've saved it. Anyway, Nemone with the silly name played this song and I sat very still and quiet all the way through it and held my breath in case she didn't tell me what it was called and where I could get it from IMMEDIATELY. So seconds later she had told me its name and I had downloaded it from Amazon. Ah, technology and old-fashioned together, my favourite.

Gimme Shelter by the Rolling Stones. Now that's a tune. Oh yeah.

88. Discovering a new writer

I don't mean finding the manuscript at the bottom of the slush pile and turning that person into a billionaire, I mean finding a writer previously unknown to me and becoming a fan.

It happened earlier this year with Elinor Lipman, who is not that well known here, but I think is quite famous in the States. She writes deceptively clever comedies of manners and is compared to Jane Austen. She almost deserves it. Finding an Elinor Lipman I haven't read in a charity bookshop is always a thrilling moment.

Then recently I discovered David Benioff. He'd been hiding in plain sight, because he is a Hollywood screenwriter, responsible for Troy (yuck), the early drafts of X-Men: Wolverine (um, nearly) and, most importantly, the adaptation of The Kite Runner. But before he was a screenwriter, he was a novelist, and when he gets bored of writing million-dollar screenplays he continues to pop out the odd novel, the latest of which is City of Thieves. City of Thieves is a cracking read, and I really hope it never becomes a film. David Benioff's first novel, The 25th Hour, became a movie starring Edward Norton. I haven't seen the film yet, but I'm halfway through the book and loving it. He is clearly a better novelist than he is a screenwriter, because The Kite Runner was a beautiful film but I suspect he'd have had to work hard to ruin it. Homer, meanwhile, continues to spin on his pyre, or whatever they did then.

David Benioff also has the gratuitous good fortune of being married to Amanda Peet.

I'm looking for my next discovery. Any suggestions?

87. Sun-Dried Washing

In the darkest days of last winter, when we had been shivering for months and we spoke to each other in whispers about feeling the warmth of the sun on our skin, one of the most frustrating daily discomforts was getting the washing dry. Herself refused to allow me to ruin us by using the dryer, so our clothes hung from the drying rack in front of the radiator for DAYS, obstinately refusing to achieve any status beyond, 'That might be dry, I can't tell. It's cold, my hands are cold, the room is cold.' I stomped about the place in as much wool and cashmere as I could fit on my body, thinking nervously about soldiers in the first world war and the ticks and lice they got as a result of never washing their clothes. Ultimately, I decided some extra wildlife might help keep me warm.

Fast forward six months, into the days we hardly dared speak or dream of back then - pure blue skies, bright sunshine and warm dry breezes. The washing, no longer heavy with winter woollens, dries in two hours and carries with it a scent of summer. We trip about the place in cotton and linen, a blush of colour in our cheeks and on our forearms, smug and proud in our rarely-used sunglasses, drinking lager on pavements, faces tilted to the evening sun.

Little children scream with laughter in the playground, the washing flaps gently in the breeze, the goldfinches and greenfinches and wood pigeons chirrup and coo, and winter feels like another country. Long may it last.

86. 'Something's Gotta Give'

This film (with a terrible title) stars Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton and is both preposterous and wonderful. Jack plays an ageing lothario who won't date women under 30, and Diane plays a happily divorced playwright. She's too old for him, he's too immature for her. They fall in love.

Good things about the movie: Diane Keaton, Jack Nicholson, Amanda Peet, Keanu Reeves (I know!), the house she's supposed to live in, Frances McDormand.

Bad things about the movie: THE TITLE!; Frances McDormand only has three scenes, which is a CRIMINAL waste if ever I saw one; Diane Keaton wears these horrible high heeled wedge flip-flops; I don't live in that house on the beach.

Herself and I treat ourselves to SGG once a year, or more if we need cheering up. It's funny, well-observed, and as fluffy as a souffle.

85. 'Days Like Those'

Rebecca Tyrrel is a journalist, as is her husband, Matthew Norman. For years Rebecca wrote a column for (I think) the Independent, entitled 'Days Like These', all about her life with Matthew and their son, Louis. I don't read the Independent, because I have enough brain cells to want to read the occasional long word, but some clever person had the idea of combining all Rebecca's columns into a book.

The premise is that Rebecca is scatty, numerically dyslexic and long-suffering, Louis is small and addicted to Doctor Who (long before its renaissance) and Matthew is a neurotic hypochondriac intellectual snob. Sounds awful. Funniest thing I've read in YEARS. Literally hooting with laughter. Dribbling. Carrying the book about with me, reading while I"m walking, waking Herself up in the middle of the night laughing. I think the honest truth is that I see something of myself reflected in Matthew and it reminds me that I must be forever grateful to Herself for putting up with me.

After the book was published, the column morphed into 'Days Like Those', but continued to be funny and beautifully judged and completely mad in the best English tradition.

And every now and again, when I have a day like today during which no sensible, productive cerebral output has been possible, I cheer myself up with a few of Matthew's restaurant columns, and a dose of endorphins thanks to 'Days Like Those'. So I will rise from my chair and leave the eyrie certain that I must try harder tomorrow, but with a smile on my face.


Corrections and Clarifications: 'Days Like These' was first published in the Daily Telegraph. When the column moved to the Independent it became 'Days Like Those'.

84. Wrapping Presents

The thrill of wrapping presents is imagining the little face lighting up as the paper is torn away. Giving a loved one a present he or she genuinely likes or even loves is always cockle-warming, and the wrapping is an important part of the ritual.

I don't indulge in ornate wrapping. There are not too many frills and gee-gaws on my packages, and quite often I prefer plain old brown paper and string. But pushing my laptop over to one side of the desk to make room, cutting out the right sized piece of paper, fishing the sellotape out of the drawer and folding the paper into a tidy package with neat corners is a contented few minutes, if you're me.

Of course, Christmas can sometimes threaten the fun. But I've discovered that the trick to Christmas wrapping is to set aside a decent amount of time, have a drink and maybe a toothsome snack somewhere nearby, put on some Nat King Cole, and relax into it. After all, unless you're nuts you'll have bought thick rolls of cheap paper which will certainly ruin the planet, and have cut up last year's Christmas cards into little labels for the parcels. A couple of different coloured bobbins of shiny ribbon and a sellotape dispenser and you have the first festive moment of the season.

My wrapping year begins about now, with the Parental Birthday in mid-July. Then I get a little hiatus again for August, before the glut of autumnal birthdays begins in September. This year is the first time in my life I have managed to pick up the odd thing as I've been going along, and I'm looking forward to handing over those presents as they are that tiny bit more special than a book, or a DVD, no matter how carefully chosen. And most excitingly of all, this year my BF will hatch a babyBF and I'll have the opportunity to wrap the first of what I'm sure will be many over-indulgent and spoiling presents. I'm looking forward to it already.

83. A Prize

The other evening a couple of friends and I went along to a literary quiz at a local charity bookshop. It's not your normal charity bookshop: the selection of first editions and rare books is impressive and the fiction section features very few pink covers. Anyway, arch-sceptic that I am, I turned up thinking that it would either be full of book weirdos and embarrassing, or high-brow and clever and I'd be embarrassed for a different reason and have to get my mother on speed-dial. In the end, of course, it was somewhere between the two.

My friend Jill (whose debut novel, The Last Kestrel, is published next month - please look out for it) turns out to be fiendishly competitive and excellent on poetry and foreign literature. Joanna is not at all competitive and excellent on twentieth century female writers and 19th century american fiction. I am good at faces and fairy tales. We knew this.

There were twenty people in the room, 5 teams, and we came joint second. I hadn't paid enough attention to the e-mail and had no idea that there were prizes to be won, or I might have done some swotting. We won a voucher for books to be spent in the store that evening, and when the quiz was over we spent a merry half-hour spending our winnings. Fun! It has been a long time since I won anything and we all went quite pink and felt rather pleased with ourselves. We might even go back for more.

82. A Goldfinch

I am quite blind, and a bit dim, but I do like watching the birdies flit about in the garden and at the beach. Recently in London my eye has been caught by a tiny little bird which flashes gold as he flies past. My oracle on these matters, my friend Mr Matthew Hunt Esq., thought that maybe I was catching a glimpse of a goldfinch. Reader, in this he was entirely correct. As ever.

Yesterday as I sat in the eyrie weeping with and for one of my characters (it must be going well if it makes me weep, surely?) the most beautiful bird I have ever seen close up landed no more than three feet away, on the parapet outside my window. I had to stop crying immediately because I couldn't see him for tears. He had a scarlet and white and black face, and honest-to-goodness GOLD on his wings. I held my breath, but still he flew away.

Then he came back, and had a look at me. I don't think he would have thought me breathtakingly beautiful, but you never know. I think he might have babies nearby. I can hear chicks cheeping, so I have been shouting and throwing things at the magpies and wood pigeons in the hope that my Goldfinch and maybe his lovely wife and babies will remain unmolested by those grotesque vandals.

The thought that he might come back and let me look at him again provides all the inspiration I need to be at my desk early, and to stay late. I am going to put some nuts out on the parapet now for him. I'll let you know if there are any developments...

81. Police Motorbike Outriders

Sitting in the Borough High Street branch of Pret a McManger this morning (as you do) I watched a single copper on a motorbike co-ordinate a three point junction heavy with traffic to let Princess Anne through in her smart blue Jaguar. He never got off his bike, which means he did the whole thing with one hand. It was wonderful to watch because he was completely confident and skilled. And then he zoomed off after the bouffy-haired Principessa, no doubt to perform his tricks on the other side of London Bridge.

I've seen outriders work their magic before and been impressed by it. This time I had a perfect view, and I enjoyed the performance. I hope that copper knows he's good. I hope the rookie coppers want to be him when they grow up. Dammit, I want to be him when I grow up.

80. Home-made Elderflower Cordial

As part of a restorative, rejuvenating and bucolic week in Suffolk, Herself and I made Elderflower Cordial. We found a tree a mile or so down a private track which appeared to be in good health, and plundered it for its delicately scented flowers. We even put them in a basket, rather than a bag. La La La! Add syrupy water, lemons and citric acid and 24 hours later you have Elderflower Cordial. Which somehow manages to taste of all the Elderflowers on the tree, rather than the 15 or so heads we used. It's summer in a glass.

I respected the purity of the process for at least three days, before seeing how the cordial went with vodka and tonic. The answer is, like Fred and Ginger. The vodka gives the cordial sex appeal, the cordial gives the vodka class. I had the double joy of sitting by a pretty rose-filled courtyard, with wood pigeons cooing somewhere nearby, reading my book and drinking a cocktail part of which I had made myself, while eating toast covered in home-made chicken liver pate. Delicious, nutritious and just a little bit smug - this is what good holidays are made of.