I Want To Get Younger Every Day, Please. Can You Help Me?

No comments for the books, eh? You lot are an unpredictable bunch.

OK, and not just to get comments, because I am not a comments whore, comments whore I am not, but a question for the ladies: after a war of attrition between myself and my hairdresser lasting several years, I have recently surrendered to using a proper expensive salon shampoo, and I am irritated to reveal that it IS much better and you DO only have to use about a third of the amount so it DOESN'T work out as that much more expensive than the cheap stuff. Thus I am now wondering if I should break out of my habit of using incredibly cheap moisturiser on the basis that even if the expensive ones have whale placentas in them, in the end all you really need is goo + sunscreen. Am I right? Am I wrong? Would you recommend your moisturiser to me? My requirements: I insist on factor 15 in my daycream. I don't tend to bother with any makeup on my actual skin*, so if it could leave my face looking nicer than before I put it on, so much the better. And if it could make me look slightly less like I am getting older every day, and slightly more like I am getting younger, that would make me a very happy bunny. Surely not too much to ask from a small pot of unguent?

*as opposed to mascara, lippy etc.

What I Read Before My Christmas Holidays

Seeing as the Revolutionary Road post provoked some enthusiastic commenting, I thought I'd do some more book ones. A Christmas Holiday book round-up is to follow. This is "What I Read Before My Christmas Holidays, Going Back As Far As October, If This Post Is To Be Believed."

1. Michael Ondaatje 'In The Skin Of A Lion'. Read this one in Uganda and left it with Gandalady who is currently enjoying it, I think. The precursor to The English Patient, it is a beautiful, emotional read and somewhat easier to understand than that book (which I consider to be a masterpiece miserably traduced by the film, even though it is a good film, but honestly, The English Patient is such an extraordinary novel: you don't even know which of the characters the narrator is until about halfway through. Start with Lion, then read EP. Golly, what a long bracket.) It's about a young Canadian man who falls in with, and in love with, various transients, immigrants and a former nun. Rather magical.

2. Margaret Atwood 'Moral Disorder'. Weirdly marketed as short stories when in fact it's a novel made up of individual episodes, telling a woman's life story. I wouldn't query the 'short story' designation except that far more people read novels than short stories, so you do wonder why they'd choose to call it stories when they could avoid that particular sales-killer. Anyway it's the usual deal from Atwood, subtle and sly and funny in surprising places, not her best perhaps, but mid-level Atwood is better than most other things. Much better than 'The Penelopiad', which will forever inhabit that sad dark place in my mind reserved for bad books by good authors.

3. EM Forster 'Where Angels Fear To Tread'. God, Forster is good. I hadn't bothered reading him much before because it all looked a bit worthy and minor Edwardian yawn yawn, but he's intelligent and funny and knows a lot about human nature, and his style is wonderfully economical. 'Where Angels Fear To Tread' is the story of a woman who goes on holiday to Italy and falls in love with a younger Italian man, scandalising her family. It's very good, but pales in comparison to the glory of the similarly-themed 'Room With A View', which is a marvelous, "what, you haven't read Room With A View, then what the hell HAVE you been reading" type book. I am determined to read all of Forster's novels, which sounds more impressive than it is. He only wrote seven.

4. Penelope Fitzgerald 'The Blue Flower'. Started. Panicked. Stopped. Complained to the person who recommended it to me. Got told off. Tried again. And bloody hell, it only turned out to be brilliant. It's a novel based on a true story about an 18th century writer who fell in love with a twelve-year-old girl. Believe me it is so much less yucky than that makes it sound. In fact it's a stunning evocation of life for a certain class of German family in the 18th century, blissfully free of cloying period detail and yet somehow magically evocative of the time and the place. The characterisation is magnificent, there isn't a drop of sentimentality anywhere in the book, and the whole thing is underpinned by a cunning, sharp sense of humour, even where the material would seem not to be humorous at all. And good luck getting to the end of the book without falling in love with the twelve-year-old yourself.

And if you are only going to read one of these books, make it... The Blue Flower.

Pride and its relation to Fall

I am writing a long post about books, and I don't have time to finish it now, because I'm off to the theatre ('August: Osage County'). Just in case you were wondering why I hadn't blogged since Monday.

Meanwhile: yesterday I was on the phone to my mother and she mentioned that she had burnt the soup. Burnt the *soup*? Is that even possible? Apparently so. She had put it on the hob, and then forgotten all about it while she pottered around outside doing some gardening. Poor woolly-minded woman, it's tragic what age does to a once-intelligent brain. Hung up the phone, went out, met a trio of handsome men in the library, indulged in semi-flirtatious highly intelligent chit chat because I am both gorgeous and smart. From there to Portuguese class with my mother, that poor, mentally-enfeebled lady. Crap class. Unbelievably crap class. Teacher breathtakingly appalling, we both agree that we are never going back despite having booked for ten weeks. Poor appalling teacher, I am so much cleverer than she. I walk out early, feeling superior. Get home, open front door. Entire house filled with acrid smoke. I have burnt the stock. Left it on the hob for EIGHT HOURS. Fossilised remains of a chicken is welded to the bottom of the pan. Smoke alarm has beeped itself to death. Not much time left before entire house would have burnt down.

Moral, anyone?

Revolutionary Road

Fans of excellent gushy awards acceptance speeches - which I am, in a kind of I hate it I love it I can't watch yes I can oh god please stop, PLEASE STOP, please don't stop sort of way - can't do much better than watching this sterling effort from Kate Winslet last night:



(Did anybody see her when she got the Supporting Actress gong? More contained?)

Fans of excellent books - which I certainly am, in every way - can't do much better than reading Revolutionary Road. I'm on a bit of a mission about this because I'm in a sudden panic that not enough people will have read Revolutionary Road before they see the movie. If you have sat next to me at dinner or indeed anywhere this week, this is what I have been talking about. Advance apologies to future dinner neighbours.

The film, as you'll know if you watch that speech, reunites Ms Winslet and Leo DiCaprio from Titanic and then throws in her husband too for the ultimate in love-ins. Actually I'm sure the film will be good if a tad smug, and I'm looking forward to seeing it. But it will not be, can not be, as good as Revolutionary Road, the novel.

Revolutionary Road, the novel is SO GOOD. I can't do the dispassionate reviewer thing here because I am too anxious that you might not read it. It has to be one of the best novels of the 20th century, or indeed of any time. The book is about a married couple in 1950s suburban America who live on a knife edge between happiness and unhappiness. The smallest shifts in their lives and relationships keep tipping them from one side to the other. Or perhaps it is about a married couple in 1950s suburban America who are hanging over an abyss of unhappiness and all they have to cling onto is that knife edge, only it's cutting more and more deeply into their hands. Yes: I think that might be it.

They key thing is, vis a vis book v movie, is that the magic of the novel isn't so much in what happens, but in the exquisite, wise, meticulous observation of the shifts in the characters' internal lives, and how that shapes and is shaped by the decisions that they make. I'm certain that Leo and Kate will act it beautifully, but there really is no substitute from the level of detail that you can have in a novel - in this novel. So if you see the film you will enjoy it and you will think you have understood the characters, but it will be nothing in comparison to the depth of understanding you can get from the book.

Please read it before you see the film. Please, please. Run, don't walk, to your nearest independent bookshop. Or order it right now. Look, you can get it from play.com and help balance out Amazon's market share of online retailing, ensuring a more competitive marketplace. Whatever. Just get it and read it before you see the film. You will not regret it.

Best Shop Of The Holiday

Chicken King, Nampula. A shop divided into thirds. One third was a restaurant serving chicken. One third sold frozen chickens to be cooked and consumed at home. And one third sold chicks, chicken feed and vaccines.

Best Dream Of The Holiday

The one in which Martin Amis apologised to me in person for having written London Fields.

What to Read in Paradise

I spent my New Year's Eve (and a few days surrounding it) at Nkwichi Lodge on the shores of Lake Niassa in Mozambique. If you click the Accommodation tag you can see my room. Nice, eh? It was a stunning place, completely peaceful and isolated on the perfect, private, deserted ivory-sand beach you see above, with clean, clear fresh water to swim and snorkel in every day (though not between dusk and dawn because that's when the crocodiles come out...)

I say "isolated". From our start point in Pemba - a coastal city in Northern Mozambique - we had to drive six hours, fly one hour, drive a further four hours largely over unpaved roads, and then take a boat for an hour to get there. On our first night we were pretty tired and I was the first to get to sundowner drinks on the beach. The only other people there were the hotel's owner, his parents, and the hotel manager, a young Kenyan. I introduced myself and we chatted for a while about what I do in the UK before moving on to other topics (such as how the mirror-like lake water can turn to a North Atlantic storm with 3-metre-high waves in a heartbeat: visitors be warned, you can't get there any way other than by boat...)

The next morning, the hotel manager came over and said that he'd finished the book that he'd been reading (Alexander McCall Smith's Tears of the Giraffe) and had started a new one. Oh yes, I said. He opened his bag and pulled out... Gods Behaving Badly. His sister in Kenya had sent him a copy for Christmas.

It's official, GBB is like cockroaches, it gets EVERYWHERE.

Upon Mature Reflection

Having finally watched the dances online from the second half of the final, I now know that Tom and Camilla's showdance was a work of utter genius and blew Rachel and Vincent right out of the water.



LOVE it. What I like best about it is that it's a proper *dance*, not just the lift-a-thon that we've got used to from every other year. It has showmanship, energy, character, fun and charm - everything Tom's been all about from the start. A worthy winner. Rachel who?

UPDATE: Oh god. I just saw Lisa's - hadn't realised she did one. Icky. Kind of... necrophiliac. Not a good choice of style.

Initial thoughts upon watching the Doctor Who Christmas Special

What? Who are the - hang on - and the furry things? With the faces? Why are they - hang on, I don't get the - how is he blowing up their heads? With a sort of video canister? But why? Isn't she a bit cold in that top? Wait a sec, who are those guys? What are they doing? Why does that Cyberman have a weird brain thing? What are the kids for? What are they doing? Why aren't they - wait a second, what about - but I thought Cybermen were - hang on, I'm not getting this bit. That's a nice dress. OK, I think I've just about - no, no, I've lost it again. Oh, he's put his glasses on, excellent. What are they doing with the - and why are the - but, but - wait a sec. Ooh! Is that made out of Meccano? What's it doing? What's it for? Transformers! Robots In Disguise! Sorry. OK, I think I finally get the - no, wait a second, is she - oh no, what's he doing now? But I don't understand what that means about the - wait, now he's doing what, exactly? But why? Why? Why?

I probably shouldn't have watched it with jetlag. I liked all the David Morrissey bits though.

Also: in future episodes let's all watch out for Emily Price, for whom many guineas are offered in reward.

Initial thoughts upon returning to the UK

1. Matt WHO?
2. When is the sun going to come up?
4. Oh.
3. Seriously, Matt who?
4. 200 e-mails are about 190 too many.
5. OOOOH. The sexy one from Ruby in the Smoke. OOOOOOOOOOH.
6. Why doesn't my PVR know that the Strictly Come Dancing Results Show is an intrinsic part of the Strictly Come Dancing Final?
7. TOM? Are you kidding me?
8. Can I fit another jumper over the four I'm already wearing?
9. I really, really fancied Matt Smith in Ruby in the Smoke. Get. In. GET. IN.
10. Happy new year, many happy returns of the Who.