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thérèse

Playtime

Globe-trotting has its rewards and one of them is exhaustion. Since coming home I’ve had the urge to do some mental spring cleaning and been re-reading Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way. Her program spurred me on when my first book – How to Stay Upwardly Mobile When you’re Spinning Out of Control was languishing in a drawer, rejected by a publisher because it was too similar to a book they’d recently published called Mommies Who Drink.

I wrote How to Stay Upwardly Mobile back in the pre mommy blog days when there was always a steady stream of material on tap. When you emigrate from a quiet English village to the west side of LA with two teenage children, the well is never dry. If I’d been able to tweet about it, I’d have had more followers than Lady Gaga and Kim Kardashian combined, but the mommy blog boat sailed without me.

The Artist’s Way starts from the premise that we all need to reconnect with our creativity from time to time, to wake up our inner artist and play a little. Julia suggests creating a play-date – remembering the things you enjoyed doing when you were young and revisiting them. Play dates are to be approached with childlike abandon. As I’m not really a grownup this should be easy. I’ve always loved acting, dressing up and playing ‘make believe.’

I’m going to test out new waters. I will be playing ‘thérèse the roving reporter’ with my new camera next week. I will make believe I’ve been hired by the top selling international magazine Good Housekeeping to be their ‘woman on the ground’ on both sides of the Atlantic. I will be blending seamlessly in this city devoted to reinvention. Stay tuned for a whole new take on La La Land.

Happy St Patrick’s Day

May the road rise up to greet you. May the wind be at your back.
– Irish Blessing

My grandmother sailed steerage from Ireland to Ellis Island looking for work and a new life. Fifty-one million people chased the American dream that way. Can you imagine two whole weeks on the Atlantic Ocean in the bowels of a ship rife with dysentery? After a few years mopping floors in New York Grandma went back home to visit family. She married Peter Mulholland and never returned to America. I emigrated a century later courtesy of Virgin Atlantic, disappointed the seat didn’t go completely flat and the wine options were limited.

I’d been planning an Irish theme for today, excited to share memories of summers jumping streams and picnicking on Slieve Gullion mountain or playing the mandolin in pubs as a student. I was going to riff on my passion for W.B. Yeats and love of Oscar Wilde. I might have debunked a few myths about leprechauns or challenged the authenticity of the burial site of St. Patrick, but I am unable to wax lyrical – am in San Diego recovering from the flight here.

Clearly, when Robert Louis Stephenson suggested ‘it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive’ he had never flown American Airlines. At a certain point on the way from Miami I was no longer traveling hopefully, I had lost the will to live. The wind was definitely at our backs and I wasn’t confident the road would not be coming up to greet me.
Surely there comes a moment when an old plane is sent to the place where old planes go to die? I mean you wouldn’t drive here in a 1980’s Buick.  Still, thinking of my mother who walked barefoot to school, the oldest of nine children and of my grandfather who worked in a granite quarry in Killeavy, I’m counting my blessings today. After all, I’m the one in the family who did get to live the American dream.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day and as they say in the ‘auld country’-  “ Slainte”

Life is Too Short to use Hash tags

I’ve been blogging for over four years, blissfully unaware that I was part of a growing pandemic. Did you know that there are approximately one hundred and sixty-six million blogs? Yes 166,000,000 of them and growing; a new blog is being born every half a second.

There are also gazillions of blogs advising bloggers on blogging. In an industry that is barely a decade old, there appear to be some experts and some hard and fast rules. It appears that to be a successful blogger you need to have a consistent brand and stay ‘on message.’ Clearly I am doing a very bad job of this. A quick review of thérèse archives reveals a smorgasbord of topics, a hotchpotch of ramblings and a distinct absence of messaging.

I began struggling to identify a theme, a topic where it could be said ‘ she is an expert in her field.’ I was flailing around for a category, visiting other blogs and getting precipitously close to hanging up my literary spurs when I had my epiphany. It came to me in a flash –‘ First World problems.’ That’s what I write about. That’s the glue that holds it all together. It was a moment similar to the one in Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion when they decide to claim they invented Post-its. “Something everyone knows, but no-one knows who invented it.”

My elation was about as short lived as Michele’s on discovering the Post – It is attributed to Spencer Silver and Arthur Fry. Turns out that First World problems is a phrase coined by G. K. Payne in his work Built Environment and according to Wikipedia it became an Internet meme in 2005. So, not only did I not invent it. I am ten years behind the times.

Turns out I’ve also shot myself in the branding foot by having a proliferation of names. It’s too laborious to explain how this came about, but the monikers range from – full name Marie-Thérèse (formal) to‘ Terry’ (informal) to ‘thérèse’ (nom de plume) and Lady Robinson (very formal indeed.)

I’m also not directing traffic to Facebook, adding hash tags to Instagram photos or Twittering like a thing possessed. Shirley Conran’s immortal phrase ‘life is too short to stuff a mushroom’ has always stayed with me as a mantra and I now add my own. Shirley was encouraging us all to be Superwoman in those days. I gave up on that idea a few years ago. So I’ll just keep on posting for your amusement and mine. That’s the lovely thing about having your own blog – you can make your own rules – and use your own punctuation !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!************#######wahoo

Happy New Year at Last

You may remember that I postponed making my New Year resolutions until February 17th aka the Chinese Year of the Sheep. If Google hadn’t published an image of a ram bashing its head on a tree today, the date could have slipped under my radar.

Knowing little about rams or why the Chinese have dedicated twelve whole months to one, I Google searched and fell upon a WikiHow piece – How to Defend Against a Ram. You may find this useful in the year ahead.

We are advised never to turn our backs on a ram. Also, if he gives you a mean look then ‘ there is the likelihood of an oncoming charge.’ At this point they suggest tackling the ram as you would an opponent in volleyball.
Never having played volleyball I imagine I’d be dead at this point. I’m also really bad at reading the subtle facial expressions of sheep. The next piece of advice is to drag the ram to the gate, let yourself out and close the gate behind you leaving him in the field. My advice would be to stay out of fields.

As you know, I am of the city, preferring the gentle hum of traffic to the dawn chorus of the birds, nevertheless when our kids were small, I threw myself into country living with abandon, even going so far as to grow my own vegetables.

After investing in a digger and some hoes, a pair of Crocs and a Barbour jacket I planted out tiny shoots and seeds in neat lines and lovingly tended rows of beans, carrots, sweet corn and cabbages. Months went by with every spare moment spent tilling, watering and weeding. The supermarket was only ten minutes drive away which was just as well as the vegetables were organic and prone to slugs. They were dwarfish in size and unrecognizable in shape, but I had the zeal of the newly converted believing that one- day we would see the fruits of our labors.

Our garden was surrounded by a hundred acres of farmland, which will only seem idyllic to anyone who has never lived in a house surrounded by a hundred acres of farmland. One afternoon six enormous tractors came into the field and sprayed pesticide on all the crops, including ours, which happened to be down wind. This left us no longer organic.  A little while later the rabbits celebrated Thanksgiving on our patch by eating all the carrots and cabbages. That brought an abrupt end to my Beatrix Potter phase and our foray into self- sustenance. After that I’d have happily taken a gun to the rabbits and possibly to the farmer who delighted in riding his machinery as close to the end of our property as his wheels would allow. We’d have had a more tranquil existence under the flight path at Heathrow.

Anyway I digress. This is the Year of the Ram/Sheep/Goat according to which Chinese Mandarin symbol you choose. I am making only one resolution. I will do my level best to avoid running into a ram, or for that matter, a sheep or a goat. Happy New Year.

Around the World in Thirty Days

I’ve zipped past the north-pole and flown over China before re-entering the blogosphere this week. I’ve been around the world in thirty days.

“That’s impressive.” I hear you say.

Well kind of. Thank you. But let’s be clear here. I wasn’t sponsored to cycle, swim, abseil or walk any part of the trip. I’ve scaled no mountains, broken no speed records, discovered no new lands.  My iPhone photographs are not going to be featured in National Geographic. Publishers aren’t in a bidding war for the serial rights to my next book and there are no movie options in the works.

Unlike Jules Verne’s character in Around the world in Eighty Days, my ‘Tour de Monde’ did not involve rescuing anyone from a funeral pyre in India,  robberies, opium dens or being chased by Sioux warriors.

When you fling yourself from the sunshine state, to an icy January London and have to navigate Paris in the rain before hitting the heat of Dubai the greatest challenges are sartorial. One of the most stressful parts of anticipating my trip was deciding what to pack and on arrival, what to wear.
Call me superficial. I really don’t mind, but you try getting a table at Brasserie Lipp in ‘Paris Fashion Week’ if you’re not looking pulled together. You try going to a series of meetings with PR Teams, publishers, event planners and public speaking events in your trainers or turning up at a formal dinner in the middle-east sporting ripped jeans and a leather jacket. Unless you’re Johnny Depp it just doesn’t work.

Nevertheless, by day four of my trip despite careful planning (weeks of obsessing,) my hair needed color, my nails were split, the hotel mirror was holding unimaginable terrors and the jet lag had set in. At this point all resolutions about not drinking too much wine were thrown to the far reaches of the soon to be circumnavigated globe.

Several glasses of Sancerre will lift the spirits of a weary traveler and buying a glass for all the other guests in the hotel bar is a wonderful way of making new friends. I will return with tales of ambushing Russell Brand, taking part in an impromptu photo-shoot and having a shower thirty-five thousand feet in the air just as soon as I have my land-legs back. Right now my own bed feels like the most wonderful place on earth.

Service Not Included

​I love going to restaurants and while I am not a ‘foodie’ I do have some basic requirements that I thought were des rigueur, until I experienced a whole new dining experience. It was one of those minimalist places; wooden screens, architectural lines and tables in booths behind bamboo screens you know the kind of thing. The décor was similar to sushi places I’ve been in except for one detail. In the center of each table there were mini barbecues sunken into wood. At first I thought they were there for ambience, a take on a pit fire, but it turned out to be more prosaic than that; the food they serve you is not actually cooked.

​I’m still struggling here. Isn’t the whole idea of a restaurant that they get to cook the food and we get to eat it? That’s why they’ve caught on surely.

‘Do we get to do the washing up as well?’  I wondered.

This is broadly how it works. You pick from a menu, then the waiter brings you little packages of meat, fish, vegetables, whatever you’ve ordered, wrapped in aluminum. They tell you what’s inside each parcel and after that you’re on your own.

By the time our packages arrived I’d had a couple of glasses of sake and was getting into conversation. I kept unwrapping and tossing my prawns onto the grill then forgetting to fish them out again. My onions all turned to charcoal and I completely lost the asparagus because it shriveled and dropped through the mesh. I was also lathered in sweat from leaning over to rescue things and as we left the restaurant had indigestion and an assortment of hot sauces and pickles down the front of my shirt. It wasn’t cheap and I was confused when my friends started working out the tip. Surely service was included.

Judging from the delighted expressions on the faces of other diners, I can see this method of eating probably answers some primal hunter-gatherer impulse. Certainly it’s the closest people on the west side of LA are likely to get to foraging for food.

What is it about sushi? I’m not convinced that uncooked fish wrapped in seaweed or a tasty treat of raw egg topped off with sea urchin is a delicacy. I also like to be comfortable when I’m eating. Call me old–fashioned but I appreciate a regular chair at table height. Balancing on a stool trying to grab a plate as it jigs along on a conveyor belt is not my idea of relaxing, especially when the additional challenge of chopsticks awaits when you’ve finally located your food. No. YOU are the restaurant. YOU do the work.

If this trend continues there’ll be ‘do it yourself’ hamburger kits at the local grill and we’ll be making our own iced vanilla, one-shot, sugar-free latte in Starbucks. I now have a whole new appreciation for the service at our favorite French restaurant. Come back ‘fine dining’ all is forgiven.

Au Revoir

I’m not clubbable. Like Groucho Marx said, “I don’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member.”

The only club lounge I’m interested in is the First Class one at the airport. Also like Groucho I have spent a day at the races. I’m sure you’ve seen photos of the queen at Ascot. ‘Ladies’ Day’ in the royal enclosure is all about the hats. I was keen to check out the dress code in LA. What would be appropriate here in a guaranteed eighty degrees of heat? I wondered. I Googled The Turf Club and saw they had strict guidelines and made no concessions to the weather.

There were to be ‘no jeans, leggings, stretch pants, short sleeve or zipper sports coats, baseball caps or visors.’ Ladies (including children), were to wear a dress or suit, skirt or slacks with a matching jacket or tailored blazer. Gentlemen’s attire stipulated a jacket and slacks but ties were optional. Hello. I thought. If I’m going to be channeling my inner flight attendant, I want my man trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey. As there’d been no mention of leopard print or sequins, I had my outfit down.

That’s the thing isn’t it? Clubs are all about homogeny. On the rare occasions I’ve been to golf clubs I’ve been surprised to see so many men wearing the same pink monogrammed sweater, striped shirt, khaki pants and polo shirt. It’s like a game of ‘Where’s Waldo’ trying to pick someone out at the bar.

I do understand the urge to blend though. I was musing on these things as I packed my suitcase today for my trip to Europe and the Middle -East. Next week in Paris it’ll be navy sweaters and a trench coat. In London I’m favoring the knee -high boots and sweater dresses. My greatest challenge on this jaunt will be Dubai. Never having been to the emirates before it presents a new challenge. I’m not fond of headscarves and I don’t own any Louis Vuitton. Ah! Well I have time to figure it out.

A bientôt my friends.  See you on Instagram and Facebook. I’ll try to keep in touch by posting from the other side of the pond.

Once Bitten Twice Shy

Some memories are indelibly burned into my psyche. Rural living would be one of them. I mean let’s face it you can’t wear Louboutins in a field can you? At one point during our thirteen-year sojourn in the British countryside, my family wanted a dog. I wasn’t keen on the idea but you know when you’re outnumbered.

With hindsight I should have insisted on a purse-sized mutt; a spaniel or a Chihuahua, because Sandy, the hyperactive border-collie that came to live with us turned out to be mad. It’s as simple as that. He was a stark-raving-insane-out of control-lunatic. I have a hyperactive thyroid, but this dog made me feel like a sloth on Valium.

It may seem obvious, but if you don’t have sheep, you don’t need a sheep-dog. Sandy the dog, had a pathological need to round things up. I fully expected to come home one afternoon to find the postman and a couple of visitors corralled in a corner of the garden. I was getting up in the dark at five o’clock in the morning in the dead of winter to race around fields with him because I couldn’t risk the kids being dragged across a main road or have him break loose and cause a pile-up on the freeway. I’d come back from these marathons and he’d be leaping up and down as if the previous two hours had been a warm up.

I wasn’t free to leave my own house. I’d open the front door and he’d charge over and mug me. One day it took three complete changes of outfits before I finally managed to sneak out the back door to work.

In the end I called an emergency family meeting.

“Either that dog goes or I do.” I told them.

There was a pause, a little too long for my liking, before everyone agreed that we would all be happier, including Sandy if we were to find him a more appropriate home. He lived out his days happily on a farm. Although by that stage I would have happily seen him roasted on an open spit in the medieval banquet hall at Warwick Castle.

We also bought two guinea pigs around that time, which we were assured were both female. Twelve more guinea pigs later we realized our mistake. I think the chickens may have overlapped with them. My memory is not reliable here, I’ve blanked out a lot from this period of our lives would need trauma counseling before the full details could emerge. I do remember discovering Sandy the dog with feathers in his mouth and that being the end of the fresh eggs. By the way if you ever buy chickens don’t get Bantams. They look really cute, but the eggs are about the size of a pea and you end up knee deep in chicken shit and still have to buy proper eggs from the supermarket.

Of course in California we have ‘Doggie Day Care,’ a service that to the best of my knowledge is not available in England. Here you get a daily report on what your dog had for dinner, which other dogs they spent time with, their mood and general progress. You can check them into The Club in Beverly Hills for an afternoon of grooming and massage treatments while you pick out a seasonal wardrobe for them. You can send your pooch on a mini-break to Paradise Pet Resort a facility designed for the more privileged of canines.

You can keep a dog in LA and have absolutely none of the work that goes with it. A dog-walker’s no problem. You can book house calls to shampoo, manicure and pedicure your pooch and there’s a neighborhood ‘Dog Poop Removal Service.’

Here I could have a sanitized live accessory. It might even be fun, but you know what they say – “Once bitten twice shy.”

Out With the Old

Walking down our street yesterday I noticed a hole in the ground where there should have been a house. It took a moment to register that it was the site of a “tear down,” a concept unfamiliar to the English. We love nothing more than to renovate, but rarely from the ground up, we like to have something to work with, we strive for what the French call ‘benign neglect.’

I’ve always fallen in love with the potential of a place rather than the reality of it. I would gaze fondly at a derelict cottage, mentally transforming it into four pages of Homes and Gardens. We always ran out of money half way through our project, usually at the point where we’d put on a new roof, replaced all the plumbing, rewired the electricity and were about to embark on the fun stuff. Pictures of our kids are set against open plaster and exposed brickwork. There are very few baby photographs where they aren’t covered in a layer of dust.

We were purists. We’d spend entire weekends bringing an original Victorian fireplace back to its former glory, stripping paint from banister rails and lovingly restoring old moldings and original features with reclaimed genuine artifacts. The paintwork was all Farrow and Ball mixed to the exact original shade of the oldest part of the building. The new window frames were individually carved to the same design. The kitchen with its flagstone floor and open fireplace was a work of art. By the time we sold our nineteenth century country house in Stratford it was worthy of a profile in Architectural Digest.

It took us exactly thirteen years to finish it and exactly two weeks for the new owners to rip it apart, close up all the fireplaces and tear out the original features, though the building still stood. By then I was past caring, ensconced in California where people just build their dream homes then tear them down when they fancy a change.

In our street there are medieval castles, Spanish Haciendas, bungalows, ‘English’ cottages, Tudor and traditional houses, all sitting happily side by side without an authentic brick between them. Hey it’s California. It’s out with the old and in with the new.

New Year? Not So Fast …

year_of_sheep

This New Year’s day I will not be trying to moderate Sancerre consumption, cut back on Nicorette gum, exercise more or aim to finish my next book by Easter. I have decided to postpone all resolutions until February 19th which according to the Chinese calendar is the ‘ Year of the Sheep.’

This has several advantages. While many of you are writing checks to your local gym, juicing your carrots and celery and forgoing your gin and tonic, I shall be partying on for several more weeks, secure in the knowledge that almost one and a half billion people will also be ignoring the first of January.

A review of last year’s resolutions has demonstrated that this is wise. If you see the old year out with gusto and Auld Lang Syne the new one in with several glasses of bubbly, the chances of bouncing out of bed at six am all wide eyed and bushy-tailed on the first of the month are seriously reduced. In fact experience has shown that the only way to get a glimpse of the dawn is not to go to bed at all.

No, this year I shall not be beating myself up by the weekend. Our holiday lights will stay up through January. I have accepted that a calendar date has failed to deliver a new improved me over the years. Let’s face it, January can be bleak. Why make yourself more miserable by attempting an overnight personality transformation? As they say –  “Always be yourself because the people who mind don’t matter and the people who matter don’t mind.”