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THE PEOPLE WE MEET IN RESORTS: A TRIP TO THE MALDIVES
Let me read it for you! Skip introduction: 3:00
It was a rainy Monday night in Tottenham Hale when Roman and I decided that we should take a holiday.
“But where could we go?” I asked
“We could go to a….resort?” Roman suggested.
It surprised us both when he said it. We didn’t like resorts; that was one of the things we bonded over when we were messaging on Hinge. We were city-breakers. We liked perusing galleries and drinking good wine, with views of ancient buildings. A resort? Eurgh. There was nothing to do, apart from lie around all day under the sun…
The wind howled and rain banged on my window.
“I could… do… a resort,” I confessed.
Four weeks later, we were on our first long-haul flight to the Maldives.
A ten-hour flight can expose things about your partner that you didn’t know about before. It turned out that Roman was a very nervous flyer. Even the smallest jig of the plane had him clutching onto his armrests for dear life.
He, meanwhile, learned that I was a high-maintenance flyer…
I was in the middle seat. I hated the middle seat (I’ve quacked about it once). After a lot of moaning, Roman had offered to give me the aisle seat that he had, but I knew that would be a dick move on my part, considering my legs are half the length. So, I remained bitterly sandwiched. I gave myself a pamper session to make me feel better;I sprayed mint spray into my mouth… Pshh… Pshh… and turned to Roman.
“Want some?”
Roman shook his head.
He didn’t want my eye drops, lip balm, mints, or hand cream. He didn’t want a donut pillow or compression socks either. I wondered if he was beginning to worry that I was going to be hard work on this trip. Oh well. Too late now.
We landed the next morning and took a boat to the resort, where we were greeted by a line of waving hotel staff. It was just like White Lotus (hopefully without the murders). We were given a cold flannel and a purple drink. I gulped mine in one and let out a dramatic gasp. They offered me another.
“Oh gosh, go on then!”
Roman was still inspecting his first drink like it was a test tube.
We were given a tour in a golf buggy. This was when we learned that ‘all-inclusive’ actually meant ‘mostly-inclusive’.
“And over there we have The Club… the breakfast is very good… but it’s not included in your package, unfortunately. And here you have Sunset Social, where you can have nibbles and drinks… but only drinks are included with your package. At the far corner is the Italian restaurant. Sublime… but it’s not included in your package.”
I didn’t care about pizza or The Club; I felt like I had just jumped into a postcard. After walking by the Thames for so long, I had forgotten that water could be so clear and the sky could be so blue. I could feel the Vitamin D sinking into my skin, making me happier by the second.
“Your sea is so clear!” I said to the hotel man.
“HA! This is nothing. You’re on a fake island. On the real islands, it’s crystal.”
…So it wasn’t all-inclusive and we were not really on an Maldives island, but it was glorious nevertheless.
What was in our package was the all-you-can-eat buffet. On the first night, I wandered around with my plate, excited about all the possible meals I could make. I returned to the table with a pick-and-mix of cuisines: sushi, focaccia, sweetcorn, and Mexican potatoes.
Hmm. I needed to get better at the buffet thing.
Every day, the guests would gather around the pool like animals at a watering hole. We had no interest in making friends, but we did start naming the guests from afar.
There was the ‘Honeymoon Couple.’ A very hot pair. One day, we watched in awe as the husband emerged from the sea with his new wife on his shoulders. It was like a scene out of an erotic beach novel.
And then there was Blade Runner – a seven-year-old who ran across the wall of the pool with robotic arms. She later pulled the deck chair into the water and challenged her terrified siblings to surf on it.
“Where are her parents?” said everyone at the poolside.
Next was ‘The Girl Group,’ a group of 12 women who would turn up at the pool in matching outfits to do a daily photo shoot. One day they were in polka dot dresses, the next in blue and white striped trousers. They jumped in sync, posed on the loungers, and waved their legs in the air. And just when we thought they had done every possible photo, a drone appeared. They put my girl group to shame.
Other notable guests were: Redhead Roman, White Lotus Man, Bartender Roman, the Cheating Couple, the father and son who did not talk, and the 95 women from China – they turned up all at once in the same red dress. We still don’t know why.
I could only imagine what we were known as by other guests; smothered from head to toe in factor 50+, lying on the same lounger every day, drinking cava at exactly 5 p.m. No sooner, no later. (We would have preferred to drink champagne, but it wasn’t included in the package.)
We were happy with our resort routine, more than happy in fact. Roman didn’t (to my relief) want to do pool Zumba, and we were on the same page about not doing anything risky like deep-sea diving or banana boating. We did get some snorkels, but that ended in a drama…
After breakfast, I went to the gym to burn off my morning banana bread, while Roman opted to snorkel. When we met up again, he was a frazzled man.
“I went to say hi to the fish, but the water filled up my mask. So I panicked and got a nose bleed. And I thought the blood would attract the sharks, so went to swim back to land, but cut myself on the coral and now I may get vibrio. Look.”
I squinted at pen dot sized mark on his foot.
“Ro, You know Google is bad for you”
“If I go pale -.”
“I’m sure you’ll be fi-”
“And if I get a rash, we have to seek immediate help! ”
I sighed. “Ok.”
So, there was no more snorkelling after that. We kept safe on the shaded loungers, with our factor 50, reading books. Our adventures were saved for the buffet.
Before I knew it, the week was over and it was time to go. I looked out to sea from my sea hut, and began to cry. Roman had no idea why I was crying, which was pretty usual.
“I don’t want to leave!” I explained through sobs. I was going to miss the colour of the sea, despite it being a fake island, the watermelon slices and banana bread breakfasts. I was even going to miss Blade Runner a little.
“At least we have the memories,” Roman said postivetly.
“Memories won’t keep me tanned, Roman!” I sobbed.
….Maybe I liked resorts after all.
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THE STORY OF WRITING A NOVEL PART 5: THE FINISH LINE.
CBA to read? Let me read for you. Skip introduction 2:25
Common misconception: every book has a Sex and the City-style launch. Nope. Most books get squeezed onto the shelf with only the sound of a single cork popping in the author’s kitchen.
But I had spent too many years with Amy Elman not to make a bit of a fuss. It would be like crossing the finish line of a marathon without a sound. Besides, who doesn’t like a party in miserable, grey, sober January? Especially a party for a book.
The first thing… to find a venue. Marissa, my agent, and I went on the hunt for a bookshop.
We started off with the big dogs in central London.
“No, sorry, we only launch hardbacks,” said one.
I was tempted to list off the benefits of a paperback. “Unlike a hardback, a paperback is light and flimsy so is easier for your customers to carry around.”
I did not say this, but I was stumbling across another lesson in publishing: not every bookshop wants to launch every book. We moved out of Zone 1 and narrowed our search to independent bookshops. I prefer them anyway; they feel more wholesome. If Waterstones is Hovis, an independent will be your local sourdough.
We found INK@84 in North London. It was near the Arsenal stadium, to the joy of my Spurs-supporting dad. It’s one of those cosy, warm, well-lit bookshops. The wood floor is well-loved, from the many feet of readers searching for their next story. It also has a library ladder that reminds me of Beauty and the Beast. It was the perfect place to launch Amy Elman.
Like every wannabe novelist, I had dreamed of the day my book would be out in the world. I thought it would feel like Christmas, but when I woke up on the 22nd of January, I felt tense, as if I were about to get married. (I have never been married, but I can imagine the whole death-do-us-part thing being quite daunting).
I spent the hours leading up to launch, staring at the walls of my flat, with my badly drawn Louis Theroux cartoon in a frame staring back. I imagined him saying.
“I kept telling you this was going to be nerve-wracking; did you listen? No. You just kept writing, writing, writing…”
“SHUT UP LOUIS!”
I was sent photo after photo of my book as it arrived on friends’ doormats. See. It was fun writing the book, it was more fun telling people it’s getting published, but gosh do they really have to read it? And then, the first review arrived on Amazon. An ARC-P (advanced reader copy-person) had promptly copied her review across from NetGalley as soon as she was able to. 3 stars. Brillant.
I decided to focus on practicing my launch speech.
Public speaking used to be fear. I choked up in front of the class during a public speaking test when I was 16. It was so torturous to witness my English teacher stop me and let me do it later in her office – just for her.
“Guantanamo Bay was a d-dark p-place…” I mumbled into my piece of rattling paper, as Mrs. Roberts stared at the floor.
I thought public speaking may be required when you’re an author, so during my master’s, I became an Oxford tour guide. And despite a few blips (saying spotty dick instead of spotted dick), the job cured me. I still have that fluttering feeling inside, but it’s less of a butterfly house and more like two butterflies swirling around each other.
The key is to practice. So I went round and round my dining room table speaking it aloud.
“Thank you for your carefully crafted questions that led to many mind maps and spirals. And for quietly removing the lines that weren’t funny…”
Soon, it was time to go to my launch.
Getting to Ink@84 was easy now that I’m a North London girl; just two stops on the tube. The only issue was that it was raining, and I had a box of Amy Elman tote bags and another of 50 Amy Elman biscuits. Merchandise isn’t required when you release a book, but I got a little carried away. After a few attempts to carry my tower of boxes, I realised I needed to take an Uber there.
“Break a leg,” Louis called out as I left.
There was that moment we experienced at the start of an event, where you’re wandering around the empty room, nervous that people won’t show, but one by one, people began to arrive. Before I knew it, the place was full of school friends, friends from the Oxford Brookes Creative Writing course, the publishers, the agency, Roman, Sex-Ed Tom, Mum… and Dad, who came wearing his favourite T-shirt – the one with HAHA NO printed across it.
“WHO ARE ALL THESE PEOPLE?” Hermione shouted in the middle of the room, holding her Brompton bike. It was as if she were surprised that I knew other people.
It was strange to have everyone in one space. Again, I’m not married, but I suppose that’s what happens on wedding days. Everyone you know, mushing together like a soup. Well, almost everyone. It was during the very-reheresed speech that I singled out Sausage.
“Sausage, my bestie of twenty years, flew in from America..” I looked up to the crowd and realised that I hadn’t actually seen Sausage yet, or Lettuce. I cleared my throat. “… this morning…”
I had contemplated reading a page in my book, but it seemed a little wanky. Literally. Amy masturbates in the first chapter. It was fun to write alone, but it was another thing to read it out loud with my parents standing there – so we scrapped the reading idea.
Next, it was signing books. It will never feel normal writing your name for a friend. Dad was in there first.
“Can you sign this one for my personal trainer? Say thank you for looking after my dad.”
“But Da-“
“Just here.” He tapped the page.
“And this one to Julie…..And this one to Ronnie…”
Just then, Sausage rocked up with Lettuce.
“Oh, darling, we thought it was a slide-in event,” Lettuce said in her leopard print coat.
“Erm, well, you missed the spee-”
“Is that your book cover on a biscuit?” she asked and left to inspect the biscuit display table.
And then there was Sausage. “I took a photo of my favourite book,” she said, and showed me a selfie she had just taken of her holding up another book. I burst out laughing. Nothing has changed since we were ten.
Those kinds of events, you never have a moment to stop and soak them in. You float from one lively conversation to the next until the hours have flown by. Suddenly, the room is almost empty, and the finish line has been crossed.
I packed up the remaining biscuits and tote bags, and headed home.
“So, how did it go?” Louis said, with his dry smirk.
“It couldn’t have gone better, Louis. It couldn’t have gone better…”
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HOW *NOT* TO SET GOALS IN 2026
Can’t be bothered to read? Let me read for you. Skip introduction 3:46
I found out the other day that I had been wearing one size 6 and one size 4 trainer for over a year and a half. It irritated me. I didn’t want to be the sort of person who fails to realise they’re walking around with odd shoes. I wished I was far more put together than that. What was worse was someone else had to point it out to me – Roman. “Is it me, or does one shoe look bigger than the other?” he said, tilting his head at my feet. I was about to launch into a ‘Don’t you mansplain to me’ rant, but then I checked, and he was right.
January is the month we attempt to fix ourselves by setting goals for the year, but wearing odd-sized shoes is not something that can be ‘worked on.’ What am I supposed to say, ‘Be more present with my footwear?’ Come on.
Besides I am already buried neck deep in goals:
Walk 10,000 steps, write 1,000 words, use serum in my hair, use serum on my eyebrows, wear a retainer at night, do a weird squat thing, drink water, compliment one stranger a day, travel to somewhere hot, travel to somewhere cultural, save the environment, wear a red light Slipknot mask for six minutes per day. (I’m on 10/84 sessions; if I don’t look like an 18-year-old by the end of it, I’ll be severely disappointed).
There’s a trend going around (mostly among Gen Zs) called ‘rebranding’. This is when someone has so many goals they are basically reinventing their whole being.
I typed in ‘rebranding 2026′ into TikTok and was given thousands of rebranding tutorials. One was called ’60 Days of Sexy.’
“This is how you’re going to be the coolest, fittest, and sexiest version of yourself in 2026,” the influencer said. (Well… not wearing odd shoes would be a start). She told us to eat whole foods, put on cute outfits, exercise, drink 2 liters of water AT LEAST, and do something fun for yourself. She’s not wrong; all those things make me feel marginally cooler, even sexier at times.
Others’ tutorials were a bit more extreme. One influencer said if you want to do a ‘RADICAL rebranding,’ then you should move somewhere else. I sighed. This is why Emily in Paris is bad for us. But then I remembered the time I moved to Australia at 26; I didn’t want to be Mary from England who hated the outdoors, I wanted to be tanned Mary, the surfer, who ate acai bowls all day. It didn’t have a label at the time, but I guess that was me trying to rebrand. Anyway, it didn’t work. I hated swimming, and the acai made my teeth feel funny. So, it was back to ‘Mary from England’ …but living in Brisbane.
Mid-rebrand That’s the thing about being in your twenties; you’re more open (vulnerable) to a rebranding. As satisfying as it is to create vision boards of the life you want and to write goals to create habits so that you become a different person – it’s pretty hard to make big changes, especially when they fundamentally aren’t you. It’s far easier to learn to accept your non-outdoorsy self.
Health goals have always been around, but now the arts have been invaded. In the last few years, we have started to declare everything we read and watch. And then, like we’re all playing a 365-day game of poker, we reveal our number at the end of the year.
If you’re not familiar with Letterboxd, then well done, you’re still enjoying film. I’m cursed with the damn thing; I feel if I haven’t logged what I have watched, then did I even watch it at all? It’s tempting to set a goal in January – I want to watch 100 films this year, only to find yourself watching some terrible Netflix Christmas movie, just so you can get the numbers up. It also makes us disgustingly competitive.
In September, Poetry Ed had an impressive number of films watched; it was distressing for Roman, who was lagging. He was the film guy. It brought out a side of him that I hadn’t seen before. “But he’s logging short films! THAT’S CHEATING!!!” At the end of the year, Poetry Ed had watched 217 films – Roman had 216. It killed him.
It’s not just films its books too. I thought I was doing ok with my 30 odd books, and then I scrolled through Bookstagram.
“I have read 90 books this year.”
“I read…40 books every month.”
“I read 435 books.”
It took me a month just to read Butter! There must be no space in-between the words they are reading! Gatsby on speed….
InmyyoungerandmorevulnerableyearsmyfathergavemesomeadvicethatI’vebeenturningoverinmymindevesince“Wheneveryoufeellikecriticizinganyone,”hetoldme,“justrememberthatallthepeopleinthisworldhaven’thadtheadvantagesthatyou’vehad.”
I get it – there is something strangely satisfying about closing a book or ticking off a film, but weren’t the arts supposed to be there for us to escape our ambitions, for just a moment? And not to be an art w*nker about it, but are we really absorbing these character arcs if we’re jumping from one story to the next? Like when people watched Oppenheimer and Barbie on the same day, they wouldn’t have appreciated the genius cinematic work that is Barbie.
And that goes for all goals, are we really feeling that much sexier if we’re trying to reinvent ourselves entirly, rather than just tweak a thing or two?
So, this year, my goal is to try and not make goals. It will be quality over quantity when it comes to books and films. And I won’t strive to be a better version of myself by doing something silly like a…plank challenge. I will, however, keep wearing my red light mask, because I am 34, and I’ve got to give myself every chance. And, perhaps, be more present with my footwear.
AMY ELMAN DOESN’T FEEL SEXY IS OUT NEXT WEEK!
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THE WEEK MY BOOK CAME OUT IN GERMANY.
Let me read for you!
Last week I went to Cologne to launch my book, ‘This isn’t happiness’. I had never been to Germany before. It was on the list of places to go; I just hadn’t got round to it yet. Strangely, Mum was born in Cologne. My grandparents happily lived out there for a few years.
There is a black-and-white photo of them having a picnic in a field. My grandad, with his sharp jawline, and my football-sized Mum in my grandmother’s arms.
My grandmother (Momo, we called her) was born to be a headmistress. She’d put us to bed at 7pm on the dot, even in the summer holidays. We’d lie there for hours, with the sun blaring through the curtains, listening to the other kids screaming with joy outside.
She may have been strict, but like any good teacher, she’d push any kind of creative flair that her grandchildren showed. (There were over twenty grandchildren. Catholics.) When I was ten, she re-wrote my September 11th poem in flawless calligraphy and framed it. After she passed, we found poems and the beginnings of stories she had jotted in notebooks. So, it felt quite charming that my writing brought me to the city she once loved.
One of her many poems. Roman came with me on the trip. He dubbed himself ‘arm candy’ for the occasion. This time, I was in charge of booking the room, so no balloons. (See Paris trip).
The first morning, like typical Brits, we made an abstract breakfast from the hotel buffet. Roman had an omelette, a square piece of cheese and two olives. I had four bits of dried banana, melon and a bread roll. And with those random calories, we went out and explored Cologne.
As it was December and we were in Germany, the city was in full Christmas swing; it felt like we had landed in Santa’s grotto. There were little Christmas markets sprinkled everywhere. You could even take a tiny yellow train that choo-choo-ed you to each market. Arm-candy Roman said no to be choo-chooed in the tiny yellow train around the markets. So, we stayed on foot. We stumbled across Heavenue. This was an LGBTQ+ themed market. It had plastic flamingos and a very sparkly tree.
We had our first Glühwein in rainbow mugs, and I tried my first-ever crisp stick. There is no other way to describe a crisp stick than a fried potato twirled around a stick – not my most elegant meal.
Full of hot wine, we went to the bookstore called Manulit. It was a cool independent one, beautifully laid out, with a coffee bar. As soon as I walked in, I spotted my book in the middle of the shelf.
It was a real moment, seeing it out in the wild. I couldn’t help but think about young-blonde Momo being in this city 60 years ago, and thought of how funny life is, and –
“HEY! Mary, Mary, Mary,” Roman said.
“What?”
“Your name is only on one book, but my name is on EVERY book.”
*Sigh* The word Roman translates to novel. So, in Germany, Roman is printed on every cover, including mine. If this were a cheap romantic Netflix movie, it would have been seen as a sign
“You wrote a novel, and his name means novel.”
But I’m a cynical woman in 2025, so it’s more like,
“CAN’T I JUST HAVE THIS ONE THING! GOD!”
The bookshop owners found out it was my book because Roman told them. I could have died. They were lovely people, though, and asked me to sign the copies they had.
When I first got the German book deal, I had a vision of me wearing all black, sunglasses, smoking a cigarette, and signing my book with a half-arsed scribble. I’d explain the story with a straight face and a gravelly voice, “’This isn’t happiness’ is about a woman’s inner turmoil when the intimacy vanishes from a relationship…” *Puffs cigarette*
But it didn’t turn out that way. I don’t smoke, which didn’t help; I also smile too hard and think too much. I carefully wrote my name and asked them, “Have I done it right?” Like I was at school, showing a teacher my work.
“Perfect,” she said.
I gave her a massive grin.
Before leaving the shop, I bought a book and a cap that said, ‘Read More Books.’ Got to help the cause.
The next day, I was off to the publishing house in my red velvet blazer. Valérie, the editor, came to meet me. It’s always a weird moment meeting someone you have been emailing for a year, but she was super sweet. She gave me a tour, and I was doing so well until we got to the boardroom, where I dropped my glass of water, and it splashed all over the boardroom table.
“We don’t have any meetings today, it’s fine,” Valérie said.
I was then whisked away to create social media content with the marketing team, Ella, and Sophie. I gave an introduction to my book, where I again had the opportunity to sound slick but instead came across as a hyper Blue Peter presenter. “Will it work it out? Read the book, and you’ll find out…” Kind of vibe.
After lunch with the Pola team, I was taken to another very hipster bookshop called Siebter Himmel, which translates to ‘Seventh Heaven’. Up to that point, I had been signing my name with a kiss (x). It only occurred to me after the 10th book that perhaps the x doesn’t translate.
“X means kiss, right?” I asked Valérie.
“No. It means death,” she said with a straight face.
“What?!”
“Joking.” She burst out laughing.
Before leaving, I bought another book-promoting cap. Still helping the cause.
The last night in Germany was spent crawling around the Christmas market. Roman got his meat stick – like a crisp stick, but with, erm… meat.
We watched a flamboyant conductor lead a band through some Christmas favourites by the cathedral. We were singing along with our Glühweins waving in the air.
I could see why Momo loved this city so much.
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THE STORY OF WRITING A NOVEL PART 4: THE BOOK THAT CAME TO LIFE.
Can’t be bothered to read? Let me read for you!
Note: Some dialogue has been exaggerated for creative purposes.
Where were we? Ah, yes! An agent had taken a shine to my manuscript, Lab Rat. The following week, I was on my way to their office for a face-to-face meeting. I carried the same nerves as if I were heading to a job interview. What if she doesn’t like me? What if they made a mistake and had emailed me instead of the actual author they wanted?
Oh, sorry, there has been a mistake we meant Marie Numan.
I arrived at the agency, and something was wrong. The reception area was an empty white room with dust sheets.
“Hello?” I called out. I began to panic, thinking I had fallen for an internet con and was about to be chopped up. But then the door in the far corner opened, and a woman appeared. I recognised her from the ‘Meet the Team’ page.
“Is it Mary? Thought so. Sorry about the mess, we’re having some work done. Come in! She won’t be long…” Lovely. I wasn’t going to be chopped up after all.
I waited for the agent in the meeting room. There was a whiteboard, some glasses, and an empty jug. I could hear muffled phone conversations from the next room. The second door of the day flew open.
“Josh is a dick! Linda Butters is a dick! And I fucking love Amy!” The agent put her coffee mug and folders on the table. Bang! She sat down.
“Thank you very much,” I muttered. The next forty minutes, I sat in a daze as Lab Rat was praised. It was terribly bizarre. I, an adult, had made some characters in my head, and now I’m in a boardroom, having a professional discussion with another adult about them. She offered representation on the spot. It reminded me of when I passed my driving test for the first time.
“Well, you passed,” the examiner said.
“Really?” I said back in surprise. (I could have sworn I bumped the curb on my three-point turn).
I left the agency and walked around central London in my own world; things were happening around me, but I wasn’t taking any notice, like the guy in the Bitter Sweet Symphony music video. A bus driver and a van driver had gotten out of their vehicles and were having a proper fist fight in the middle of Regents Street. I was in such a cloud that I could have walked right over to them.
“Fellas, it’s a beautiful summer day. I’ve just been offered representation. Let’s just love, hey?”
I had a date that night. It ended on the balcony of the Punch & Judy pub in Covent Garden. The moon was out, I had my favorite shoes on, and for the first time since starting the ‘Let’s write a novel!’ malarkey, I felt truly happy with myself.
Later that week, I signed the contract under the bridge at the BFI. There’s a chapter in the book where Amy has a moment on the South Bank, so it felt poetic for us both to have a good turning point there. I know that’s weird, but I had been writing as Amy for so long, she had become almost real. (I was moments away from madness).
As soon as my name was on the dotted line, I was like Leo in The Wolf of Wall Street. “LET’S GET THIS BOOK ON THE SHELF!” But this wasn’t Wall Street. This was the publishing industry – the slowest thing known to man. It was like boarding a doped-up snail. It turns out, making a book takes time. From June to November, I did two rounds of edits with the agent, which included: adding a lobster dinner, killing off a child, and creating a Liverpudlian stripper. (To read about this Liverpudlian stripper, preorder Amy Elman Doesn’t Feel Sexy today!)
Once my agent and I were happy with the manuscript, we sent it off to publishers under a sparkling new title: Stalemate. This was a terrifying stage. Not life-threatening-terrifying, but the book could receive no offers from publishers, so Amy Elman would be buried in my fiction folder along with Can of Worms forever.
My agent advised me to forget about Amy and concentrate on Book 2. I had been deeply single for a few years, so I had plenty of material to start a book with. However, I still found myself distracted by the fear that it would all disappear. The uncertainty of it all was turning me into a prickly bitch. I thought I’d give therapy a go. Everyone else was. I turned up for session one, and another patient let me into the practice. This was a mistake. I was supposed to have waited for the therapist to collect me. The therapist got angry and told me off. I cried like a kid who was in trouble at school. Therapy wasn’t for me.
Just after I sent off the Pola contract Fortunately, there was movement with the book. A very cool German publisher wanted it. Blimey. I hadn’t even thought about other languages. Amy was, unexpectedly, going international. A few weeks later, I opened an email while walking down St. Giles in Oxford. It was my agent telling me I had a UK offer from one of the Big 5. I burst into happy tears in the middle of the street. I received two further offers, so it went into an auction. After some emails, two phone calls, and one ‘clear-my-head walk,’ I decided to go with Hodder.
And the Hodder one. I was officially signed and was ready to ‘GET THAT BOOK ON THE SHELF,’ but then I was sharply reminded about the doped-up snail I was riding. It often takes about a year for a manuscript to become a book. It was going to be a long wait.
I met my editor at the Hachette headquarters. I was awkwardly overdressed in a blue suit. The title was going to be changed for the 4th time – Amy Elman Doesn’t Feel Sexy. The manuscript was handed back to me, covered in red comments from my editor. I saw each comment as a tangle that I needed to brush out. It was rather satisfying. As I muddled my way through the words, the sales and marketing team got on with the cover, the blurb, and all the other things that make a book a book. Slowly but surely, Amy Elman was brought to life.
In the meantime, I was back and forth with Germany on edits and translation queries like, “Sylvanian families are not popular in Germany; could we say he dresses like Bilbo Baggins instead?” Super highbrow stuff. They retitled the book as ‘This isn’t happiness’ and gave it a sexy cover.
Even though the publishing industry is slow (not sure if I mentioned that), the year somehow whizzed by. It’s 8 weeks now until the UK launch, and this week, ‘This isn’t happiness’ will be on the shelves in Germany. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a tad nervous. Books have a life of their own, so who knows what will happen next.
I had a biology teacher who once said our GCSE grades would follow us around like a bad smell for the rest of our lives. I sometimes worry that this book will be just that – a bad smell. Hopefully not. Hopefully, people will pick it up, enjoy it, maybe chuckle a little, put it down, and move on to the next book… that’s the dream.
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CAN YOU SURVIVE THE ROMANTIC GETAWAY?
Let me read for you! Skip introduction 4:12
When New-Boyfriend-Roman suggested a weekend away in Paris, I had two voices in my head.
One said, ‘Maybe it’s too soon to go on holiday. It’s only been a few months. Holidays are notorious for revealing details about a partner. What if he insists on getting a guidebook and spews out facts about every building? What if he brings a blow-up pillow for the Eurostar? What if he says words really loudly and slowly to the French waiters? “I WANT THE BRR-EEAAAADD. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”‘
The other voice said, ‘Oh-La-La, Mary. Stop overthinking and go to Paris.’
I listened to the latter.
We took the Eurostar on Friday night. I came armed with a picnic; rosemary nuts and a travel-friendly bottle of rosé. Roman arrived with more luggage than he had ever brought on holiday.
‘I’ve never had to bring my posh shoes abroad before,’ he said.
We got to our hotel late and barged into the room (not through sexual tension, more so because we are over 30 and tired). We paused in front of the bed, where there was a display of red and white balloons.
‘Um, Roman, did you order balloons for the room?’ I asked. I had seen towels shaped as swans, but balloons, if anything, seemed impractical.
Roman seemed frazzled. ‘I asked for champagne on arrival and perhaps some decorations, but I didn’t know they meant balloons. I thought they meant…’
‘Towels shaped as swans,’ we said at the same time.
For the remainder of the weekend, the balloons floated around the carpet, in the way, like tiny pets. Neither of us had the heart to pop them.
We had, of course, written a to-do list for our trip. (We bonded over our love of lists.) Roman wanted to show me his favorite paintings. So off we went, hand in hand, on a crisp autumn day through the city. We arrived at the Musée d’Orsay, where there was a long queue snaking around the barriers, down the steps, and around the corner.
‘Well, at least we tried,’ I said, turning away. Roman pulled me back.
‘Where are you going?’ he asked, as if it wasn’t obvious.
‘There’s a queue.’
‘So?’
‘Well, it means we will have to wait a long time…’
‘And? It will be worth it. Come on!’
It wasn’t that I was bad at queuing. I just had my limits, and that queue at the Musée d’Orsay was an anaconda. Roman, though, was unfazed by it. One of our differences had been uncovered. I did not want to scare him off with my inner prima donna goblin (yet), so I queued.
Once we were inside, Roman marched us straight to his favourite painting, and then we some impressions of statues.
“See, it was worth the wait, wasn’t it?” Roman chirped as we left the museum.
Now that it was established that we were a couple who queud, there was no stopping Roman. We spent the next morning freezing our bottoms off, outside Musée de l’Orangerie. There was a family in front of us with three kids under the age of eight, fighting with sticks. Roman saw them as cute; I saw them as three extra people I had to wait behind. It’s not like they were going to go back to their friends and brag about how wonderful it was to see Monet’s Water Lilies.
(It was pretty wonderful to see Monet’s Water Lilies.)
I made the mistake of telling Roman that I hadn’t been inside Notre-Dame, so he insisted on joining the never-ending queue for that. And then the next morning, we were sitting in a café, sipping our black coffee and admiring the view of the Sacré-Cœur.
‘Have you ever been inside?’ he asked.
‘Y…yes,’ I lied.
He tilted his head, unconvinced. It’s early days, but he was familiar with my fibbing face.
‘Right.’ He put down his coffee mug. ‘We’re going in.’
‘Noooo…’
He walked his new petty girlfriend up the steps to the Sacre-Coeur. To keep me entertained, he told me about a scene in John Wick where Keanu Reeves fought on the stairs we were climbing.
‘And then he fell all the way down, and the whole cinema was like…’
We got to the top.
Of course, everyone in the city seemed to be there. A long, long line roped around the landmark. And then it began to rain. Phew, nobody queues in the rain, I thought.
‘Come on,’ said Roman.
Oh, they do.
Roman took us to the back of the line. We huddled under a brolly as we shuffled toward the entrance. And this could have been romantic, if I wasn’t whining the entire time.
Once again, we went inside, and as we left, Roman said, ‘See, it was all worth it.’
I was sensing a pattern.
The other quirk (which Roman knew about but hadn’t appreciated how quirky it was until we set foot in France) was the plant-based diet I insisted on following. It’s easy in London; most menus have some sort of flavoured cauliflower or quinoa shaped into a burger. French chefs, though, don’t want to lower themselves to that level.
In the weeks leading up to the trip, we spent hours scanning menus on TripAdvisor. Even the vegetable dishes had some cheese snuck in there. We managed to find two restaurants: one called Hébé and the other, La Pérouse. La Perouse was dimly lit with patterned red tablecloths; there was a piano player, and an intimidating wine list that had as many pages as a dictionary. One bottle went for 30,000 Euros. When the sommelier returned to take our order, we asked for their ‘house-iest of house rosé, please.’
The third restaurant was left for me to find. After hours of scrolling through TripAdvisor, I thought I found one in the city centre, which could cater for vegans and normal people. Not their words.
On arrival, it seemed pleasant, but quiet. Very quiet. There was one other table with two people on. As we ate our starters, the other table paid and left. Don’t leave us!! For the rest of the meal, we wished for someone to come in – anyone. A single noise and we’d shoot our heads round at the door. False alarm. We kept our voices low, aware that our two waiters could hear our conversation.
‘So, Roman,’ I whispered. ‘If you could meet any celebrity, who would it be and what would you say to them?’
‘Tom Cruise. I’d say, thanks for the films,’ he whispered back.
I finished off my plate of grapes. (It was the plant-based version of the raisin crumble.) We got the bill.
‘He booked the restaurant out for you,’ the waiter joked and laughed. His laugh echoed.
On the last morning, we visited the Eiffel Tower.
‘Have you been to the top?’ Roman asked.
‘Yes!’ I said, excited, because it was the only thing I had actually done before. I went up with my business studies teacher on a school trip. ‘But if you want to go up to the top …I’m happy to queue,’ I said. I saw the big old queue and gulped.
‘Nah. I’ve already been up there. Twice. Besides, it’s nice to admire it from the outside.’
Thank god.
We walked back to the hotel to collect our bags. Had we survived our first romantic getaway? I was worrying that I had become a little less appealing to Roman during our time away. I had been concerned about discovering unattractive details about him on our trip, but, upon reflection, it was I who was the pathetic queuer, and it was my millennial dietary requirements which resulted in us sitting in that dead restaurant on our final night in Paris.
‘You had a good time, right?’ I asked.
At that moment, an elegant, elderly woman with a neck scarf stopped us and started speaking in French.
‘Sorry, we speak English,’ Roman said.
‘Oh,’ the lady said, and then began to speak in broken English. ‘Never separate!’ She nodded at us to check that we understood her instructions. We nodded back, and she walked away.
I took that as a sign that we had survived the romantic getaway.
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THE STORY OF WRITING A NOVEL PART 3: THE CRINGE ERA.
Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Story of Writing a Novel.
Can’t be bothered to read? Let me read for you. SKIP INTRODUCTION 3:15
It was May 2022, and Poetry Ed and I were in the Covered Market in Oxford, thinking up names for a blog I wanted to start.
“What about Jelly Duck?” I said. Poetry Ed scrunched his nose. I crossed ‘Jelly Duck’ off the list. “Ok…What about Woodstock Pigeon?”
“Woodstock Pigeon?” Poetry Ed repeated back in a disapproving way. I sighed and crossed it off. We had been set free for the summer to do our final assignment for our Creative Writing MA. Our task was to write the first 18,000 words of a novel by the end of September. I thought I might as well start a blog too. It was a good way to practice, and as I didn’t have anything published, it was something I could show someone – if they ever asked. But first, I needed a good title.
“Peachy Pigeon?”
“Please stop.”
A few days later, I decided on The Oxford Quack. It was going to be a weekly blog featuring short real-life stories and observations. My first post was about an interaction with one of my neighbours regarding the recent death of someone in the block of flats that I had just moved into. She told me the funeral details as if I should be attending. It reminded me of the Friends episode when Ross moved into his apartment, and he was expected to care about Howard the handyman’s retirement.
I was nervous about posting the first blog, but I seemed to survive it—partly because only my mum and Poetry Ed read it. After that, I wrote posts about my creative writing course and my tour-guiding job.
Parading tourists around Oxford lent itself to peculiar moments. One tourist tried to kiss me, another thought I could help get their child into Oxford (I could not), and I was bollocked by a librarian for being too loud in front of my tour group. I wasn’t even in the library. It made me cry, but it was excellent Quack content.
When I wasn’t marching tourists around the city, I was in my flat, slowly working on my MA assignment. The novel was about an awkward physics teacher, Amy Elman, trying to reignite her sex life with her fiancé before the wedding day. I called it Alpha Female.
I wrote in the morning before the world could distract me with headlines about Pete Davidson and texts from Sausage. I invested in a fold-away bed desk, so I didn’t even have to leave my bed. Once I had done what I thought was a good writing session, I put on my headphones and marched around the city listening to Taylor Swift. Well done, me.
Alpha Female was handed in on time. The grades came back in December. And to my surprise, I got a distinction. I never get distinctions. I was ecstatic. Maybe I wasn’t the worst writer in the world.
The Anthology followed: a collection of extracts from everyone’s final projects compiled into a book and sent to agents. There was a launch, where we could read our pieces aloud in a classroom at Brookes University, where an agent or two might or might not be present. Past students had been signed from the back of this launch and had gone on to publish real books. If there was ever an opportunity, it was now. I felt like Eminem in 8 Mile.
As the likelihood of agents turning up was slim, I set up a live stream and emailed the link to over 100 agents. Two agents tuned in, but that was enough. I immediately received an email after reading my extract, requesting that I send my complete manuscript once I finished it. Boy, was I smug.
I spent the summer furiously writing Alpha Female with a buzzing feeling in my gut. This was it. Whenever friends asked me what I was doing, I’d say with swagger, “I’m writing a full manuscript for a literary agent. A real one. She requested it. Yah. Yah. Yah.”
By the end of October, Alpha Female was ready for the big send. My work was done; all I needed to do was wait a day or two for the agent to read it, and then the signing could commence…
One month later, I was refreshing my inbox again and again. No reply. I sheepishly sent a chase-up.
“Hi there! I hope all is going well. I know you’re very busy, but just checking you received my manuscript… ”
A month went by… nothing. Was I being ghosted? I would lie awake at night, thinking about what a turd of a story I must have written to be blanked completely. I had visions of them reading the first page, rolling their eyes, and deleting it.
After another week, I grew bitter. ‘Fine if you don’t want Alpha Female, someone else will!’ I sent it to five other agents. Hahahaha!…I was met with silence.
I entered 2024 with an unwanted manuscript. I had been working on it for almost two years (on and off). Alpha Female was dangerously close to being buried on my iCloud alongside Can of Worms. My Microsoft Word was rapidly becoming a graveyard for novels.
I spoke to someone who spoke to someone, and managed to get on a video call with a very kind indie publisher, who had previously worked as an agent. There were a lot of questions.
“Would you get the ick if a manuscript were 69,000 words?”
“It’s a little short…”
“Do I need to be an influencer to be published?”
“No, just write a good book.”
“I haven’t won any writing contests, does that matter?”
“No, just write a good book.”
After a deep breath, I loaded up Alpha Female and reread it with fresh eyes. It wasn’t terrible, but I could see that the middle was problematic. I deleted a quarter of it and started again.
Just write a good book. Just write a good book. Just write a good book.
The following months were what I refer to as my ‘Cringe Era.’ I wasn’t sure if I was writing myself out of a hole or just digging deeper into one. My poster of cartoon Louis Theroux stared at me disapprovingly from the wall as I rewrote chapter after chapter. I imagined him saying in his curious voice, “Some people might think you’re wasting your time writing this, Mary. W-what do you think?”
SHUT UP LOUIS!
I spent some Saturday nights writing like a loner and had days without seeing anyone. I could hear a faint ticking noise and realised it was my biological clock. I tried a date or two, but I wasn’t any fun. I’d tell them I was writing a book, almost apologetically. It felt cringey to be doing something so indulgent.
“Oh, don’t tell me you write in coffee shops?” One guy asked.
Sometimes.
“No.”
I decided to put dating on hold. I couldn’t risk wasting time on real men when I had fictional men to worry about. I was just going to have to ignore the sound of my biological clock for a little longer.
It was around June when I felt the manuscript was ready. Taking inspiration from ‘Piglet‘ and ‘Fleabag‘, I retitled my book ‘Lab Rat’ and sent it to a fresh bunch of agents. Two got back and told me it wasn’t for them. I began to panic. Louis Theroux glared at me from the wall. “I told you so.” SHUT UP, LOUIS! But then one morning, an email popped into my inbox.
“I absolutely loved Lab Rat. Could you send me the full manuscript, please?”
I literally screamed.
PREORDER AMY ELMAN DOESN’T FEEL SEXY
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MIND THE GAP: MOVING BACK TO LONDON.
Can’t be bothered to read? Skip the babbling – 2:35
When I told my boyfriend Roman that I wrote some poems about London, he assumed I meant in a journal… not that I went full hog and self-published a book on Amazon. When he found the flimsy paperback and managed to wrestle it out of my hands, he opened it up and read Brixton Date as I covered my ears and sang ‘LALALALA!’
I don’t have many regrets in this life, but I do wish I had held off on pressing ‘publish now’ on ‘Oh London Town, You Let Me Down’.
I wrote it during my quarter-life crisis when living in Australia. (A popular quarter-life crisis destination for us millennials.) There, in the Brisbane Library, I was overthinking my time in London. I had lived there from 19 to 26 and had a lot of questions. Why did I drink so much gin? Do I even like Brixton? How did I end up in advertising? Are Honest Burgers really the best burgers? I should have just written a page in my journal like a normal person, but no, my overthinking turned into poems with rhyming couplets like:
‘Fat cat’ / ‘Rat.’
and
‘Love’/ ‘Pub’
And.verses like:
‘Maybe you’re my hero,
just for today
or maybe
You’re just another man.’
*squirm*
When I wrote it, I was certain I would never return to London to live EVER AGAIN. As far as I was concerned, I had grown out of place in the same way I grew out of the Easter Bunny. London was for the wide-eyed 24-year-olds who believed they could conquer the world… before they realised simply buying a sofa was an effort.
There is a rough plan people seem to follow in life: we do the ‘big city thing’ in our twenties, marry the love of our lives, and then move to a big-ish town to have kids. It’s what my parents did; they went from Battersea to a town called Didcot.
In my novel, *PLUG* Amy Elman Doesn’t Feel Sexy, Amy is saving up for a deposit to move out of London and live in a dreamy house in the countryside with her fiancé, Josh. I wrote it because I felt a lot of people could relate to this scenario. (She is also trying to work out why they are not having sex – but that’s another blog.) *END OF PLUG*
It was the plan I thought I would follow. By now, I should have kids with names and a strong opinion on Peppa Pig, but somehow, at 34, I have found myself back in London. North London, of all places. My view from my window of Oxford houses has now been replaced with the view of Alexandra Palace. The Bodleian Library was the biggest attraction nearby; now it’s the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, which has delighted my dad.
Oxford is an excellent city if you’re a mum, a student, or a doctor discovering vaccines, but I’m none of these. So, I swallowed my (rhyming) words and moved back to the Big Smoke.
It’s been eight whole years since I left. I feel like Simba returning to Pride Rock, except I’m not a future king or a lion. So perhaps that’s a poor metaphor.
London hasn’t changed a lot, but there are a few differences. There are these fluffy musical bikes that hover around Covent Garden like Furbies on wheels. Uber is now a boat, and there’s now the Elizabeth line, which puts the other lines to shame.
I have to bite my tongue to stop myself from saying things that make me sound old:
“I remember when the giant Ikea was a Topshop and we would go there to buy their waist belts and girl boxers.”
“When I was your age, there was a cafe which only served cereal.”
“We used to drink gin out of jam jars…”
Bottomless brunches and gourmet burgers were my favourite pastimes when I was 25. Now 34, I find myself pointing out posters on the underground for West End shows. “That looks like a bit of me.” And adverts for healthy letterbox meals. “Look, they do plant-based bolognese, darling.” But as well as feeling my age, I’m also excited to be in the thick of it again.
On Sunday, Roman and I went to see George Clooney’s new film, Jay Kelly, at the BFI London Film Festival. I gave it five stars. I highly recommend it.
After we headed to a gallery in Bermondsey called White Cube, it’s white and cube-like. Gunpowder and Abstraction was the exhibition. It was okay, but we were more intrigued by a couple who were wandering around. The man was in a top hat and tails, while the woman wore baggy jeans and a jumper. We were trying to guess if he had come from a wedding, was an actor still in costume, or was a ghost tour guide.
We went to a wine bar in Borough Market for a glass of rosé. There was another date behind us, dressed normally this time.
“I was in an argument with my sisters, and I got so angry that I went outside and punched a wall,” the man said, loud enough for me to hear and remember.
“Mm,” said the woman. Not impressed. (In the history of women, I don’t think the ‘punched-a-hole-in-the-wall’ story has ever been impressive.) They walked out of the wine bar, not hand in hand.
Roman and I left not long after, and on the tube back up north, we spoke about what a great Sunday it was and how nice it was that it was all on our doorstep.
I said to Roman, “Maybe I could write another poetry book… ‘London Town, You’re Not That Bad After All.’”
Joking, of course.
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THE STORY OF WRITING A NOVEL PART 2: LEARNING TO WRITE.
Can’t be bothered to read? Let me read for you.
Previously on The Story of Writing a Novel.…I got locked down at mum’s house. I wrote a book called Can of Worms. Agents rejected it. I moved to Oxford to learn how to write.
It was October, and I was walking into Oxford Brookes on my first day of my Master’s. What the hell was I doing here? I hated school. Why was I now paying to be back in a classroom at 30? Is creative writing even a subject? The playwright and creative writing tutor, Hanif Kureishi, said that creative writing courses were a waste of time and that most people who enrol are talentless. Was that me? Single, ageing, and talentless? If I were going to be a writer, surely I would have something published by now, even if it’d just be an article on BuzzFeed. Instead, all I had was an old Bloody Mary blog and a failed manuscript called Can of Worms. Sally Rooney, who was the same age as me, had already published three books. She was a writer. I was… well, I wasn’t sure what I was, except that I was a little lost on campus.
I went to reception to ask for help.
“Are you a teacher?” the student-child-man asked at the desk.
“No, I’m a student….A mature one.”
“Oh, right,” he said, rather judmentally, and then pointed me in the right direction.
Great start.
My elderly self eventually found the right classroom. There was a gaggle of equally nervous wannabe writers hovering by the door. They each held a laptop or a notebook close to their chests and were mumbling to one another, debating whether to let themselves into the classroom or wait for our lecturer. We decided as we were adults, we could be trusted to be in a classroom alone.
“Don’t quit your day job!” was the first thing the lecturer said as he came through the door. I got out my new notebook and wrote on the first line of the first page, “Get a day job.” He went on to explain, in brutal detail, that there was no money in writing. I thought of Hemingway and how he had a second home, so there must be some money kicking about. All I had to do was write as well as he did.
We were instructed to get out the first book on our reading list – Metamorphosis.
I had already been through a drama with my Metamorphosis book. As soon as I got the reading list, I ordered it to my new flat in Oxford. The delivery man took a photo of the parcel outside my door. When I returned home from my coffee, it was no longer by my door. I later found the parcel ripped into tiny shreds in the communal bin. It was going to be the first of many deliveries (a dressing gown and three pairs of Levi’s) that would end up missing. I reordered Metamorphosis and made sure I was home when it was delivered.
After a lengthy discussion about Kafka, the lecturer set our first writing exercise with a tight twenty-minute deadline. Write your own version of Metamorphosis. It was 2pm. My eyes were heavy. My quinoa was digesting. The classroom chair felt like a rock. My mind was as blank as the white page of my Microsoft document.
“Melanie woke up to find her arms were pigeon wings…” No. Backspace.
“Melanie woke up and flapped.” No. Backspace.
“On Monday morning, Melanie woke up to find she was a pigeon. Not a dove, a pigeon. One of those city ones with feathers the colour of oil who pecked at crumbs in Trafalgar Square.” Mmm. No. Backspace.
Huff. I felt irriated like an actress who was expected to perform without the right staging. How could I create under these crass lights? But my new peers seem to be managing just fine. All I could hear were twenty keyboards furiously tapping away. Tappy. Tappy. Tappy. I sunk in my chair. I was that talentless person.
Twenty minutes were up, and we had to put our writing up on the screen for everyone to read. Mortifying. Some had written a whole page; I had only managed to write a measly paragraph, which I thought was an okay paragraph, but my lecturer did not.
And it went on like this for the rest of the semester. I would present a piece of writing that I thought was good, and the lecturer would tell me how it wasn’t. As the weeks went by, I began to gather what it was that made my writing bad.
“Big verbs are a sign of an amateur writer.”
“Don’t describe the grass as manicured.”
“Don’t start your story with ‘I’.”
“New York can never be described as depressing.”
“If nobody laughs, it’s not funny.”
“How can he be hissing if there are no Ss in his words?”
“Your protagonist has no charisma.”
At the end of each semester, we had to submit a short story. I was given a Merit in both – not a bad mark, but not great. Grades have never stressed me out, especially in creative subjects, but I had a voice in my head. “Oh, Mary, Mary, Mary, how do you expect to be a published author if you can’t even score a high grade on a short story?“
I was learning a lot about myself as a writer. By the second semester, I knew for sure that I wasn’t going to be an edgy highbrow author who smoked and claimed to be inspired by James Joyce. “I just adore circular narratives.” I was going to be far less cool than that. I noticed that my best reactions were when I wrote witty things rather than dramatic things. I couldn’t describe landscapes like Carmen or write poetry like Ed. I did enjoy dialogue and quirky metaphors, though. So, I leaned into that, and it all started to feel a little easier.
Post drinks in the union It was good timing because we were about to start our final project, which required me to write the first 18,000 words of a novel. I sat down at my dining room table with A3 paper and started a mind map of ideas. One idea stuck: a comedy about sex drying up in a relationship. Genius.
I built from there. I created my protagonist, an awkward physics teacher named Amy Elman, and her fiancé, the gym bro, Josh Butters. I didn’t know it then, but I was going to spend the next three years of my life with Amy and Josh….
Next time on The Story of Writing A Novel…The birth of The Quack and the time I (almost) got signed.
PREORDER AMY ELMAN DOESN’T FEEL SEXY
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THINGS WE WOULD LIKE TO DO NOW WE’RE NOT SINGLE.
Can’t be bothered to read? Let me read for you. Skip intro 2:00
“Good morning, Mare! Happy Birthday!” a voice said. I peeled one eye open and then the other. An outline of a human was standing over me. Everything came into focus. A smiling man, holding a Starbucks coffee, blinked behind his glasses. That’s right, I thought in my haze, I have a boyfriend now.
29, 30, 31… I happily blew out my candles alone. At 32, I had a wobble. I was worried that people were noticing my singleness, so I forced my ¼ of a boyfriend to a birthday lunch. He was a Canadian doing an MBA. His LinkedIn profile was filled with business lingo and rankings. He told me he couldn’t do any contact sports because he had to protect his intelligent brain. I told him I had no excuse not to play a contact sport – I was just lazy. He didn’t laugh. It was a struggle to find things in common. And neither of us cared that much. We were friends with benefits, without the friendship.
His mum’s long-anticipated visit clashed with my birthday lunch. Disaster. I suggested he invite his mum along; that way, I could have a fake boyfriend, and he could see his mum. I assumed the 37-year-old man wouldn’t want his mum to be at his fling’s birthday lunch and instead ditch her for me. Cut to my birthday. I am sitting at a table in the Grazing Goat in Marylebone; my friends are to my right, and my family is to my left. Directly opposite me was my ¼ of a boyfriend’s mum, who seemed confused as to why she was there. I wasn’t the girl for her boy. I knew that, and she knew that. It was excruciating. I had never hated my big mouth more.
By my 33rd birthday, I had learned my lesson: A boyfriend is for life, not just your birthday. So, I was back to blowing out the candles alone. And I was happy. I spent it with my friends, and there was no energy spent on trying to impress a bloke’s mother.
This year, though, I woke up on my 34th birthday with a proper boyfriend. His name is Roman. * (After a lengthy discussion over Thai green curry, we agreed that I should call him by his actual name on The Quack, instead of giving him a nickname like Bacon).
The story of finding Roman will be told on another Quack. For now, all you need to know is that I have a boyfriend and we share things in common. We spent the summer in exhibitions, pretending to know art, and in wine bars, pretending to know wine. We bonded over films and our shared love of punctuality. We’re that annoying couple who will arrive bang on time to a party.
“Roman! Mary! Sorry didn’t expect you this soon!”
“Well, Stephen, you said 19:00, so we’re here at 19:00. Or, 18:58, to be exact! Chuckle. Chuckle. Chuckle.”
We also realised that we both got a thrill from ticking things off a to-do list. It didn’t take long for us to start a co-list on my phone’s notepad. It was called:
‘Things we would like to do now we’re not single.’
It included:
- Be that couple in Paris
- Watch a film in an outdoor cinema under a blanket.
- Bake an apple pie.
(Yes, girls, I know we can do all these things single, but sometimes you just want to bake a pie with a bloke.)
Roman added ‘go to a spa’ to the list. I had been to plenty of spas in my time; some might call me an expert, but Roman’s only experience of a massage was the ones he had received from his barber. I couldn’t believe it. How does one reach 35 without having a stranger rub their body? I wanted to be the one to open doors to a better life for my new boyfriend. Stick with me, son, and you’ll never have tense shoulders. We all do it in new relationships. We like the kudos of exposing the best sushi in town or giving them access to Soho House. I call it the ‘Aladdin effect.’ “I can show you the world…”
So, on my 34th birthday, Roman and I went to a spa.
“You’re going to love it!” I told him. (This was more of an instruction than encouragement.)
It was near Covent Garden. We were escorted down brick stairs that were lit by candles. Roman looked uneasy, as if I had taken him to a cult. After all, it was still early enough in our relationship for such a twist to happen. Surprise, I’m a psychopath. After a slight panic in the changing rooms (Roman didn’t know where to put his clothes), we were taken deeper underground to a cave area with various pools: a hot pool, a bubbly pool, a pool where you could swim, a pool filled with red wine, an ice-cold pool, and a salt pool.
The spa man said in an airy voice, “Be free to dip in and out of our pools, and we’ll collect you when it’s time for your couple’s massage. Enjoy.” The man disappeared into the darkness. Roman stood in his gown, tightly tied around him.
“This is weird,” he said.
“No, it’s luxurious relaxation,” I said. “Come!” I took his hand and headed to the hot pool. We hung up our dressing gowns on the pegs and got in. “See, relaxing,” I said as I leaned my head back on the edge of the pool.
Moments later, we had company: a larger man with white fur covering his skin. He was the type you would see holding a fat cigar in a bar. With him was a woman with a killer body dressed in a black thong swimsuit. They sat on one side of the pool, and we sat on the other. It was awkward like the tube ride, except we were semi-naked.
They didn’t stay for long. After a short, hushed conversation, they got out. It was only when we got out a few minutes later that we realised they had mistakenly taken our dressing gowns instead of theirs. I could just about bear it, but Roman had his eyes tightly shut in despair as he slid his arms through the gown.
“This is so disgusting. Oh god. oh god. Oh god.”
It was time for our massage, which was good because Roman was pretty tense at the thought of wearing the giant hairy man’s dressing gown. We were taken into a dimly lit room with two beds, puffed up in fluffy towels. The masseuses explained what was going to happen, and then they left the room so we could prepare ourselves. Roman stood like a deer in headlights.
“What do I do?” he asked. I was already taking off my bikini top.
“We get into bed and put our face in the hole,” I said.
“What are these?”
He was holding the paper underwear.
“You can wear those instead of your swim stuff, so you don’t get cold.”
“Are you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
I sighed impatiently. “Because I won’t get cold.” I got onto the bed and put my face into the hole. Meanwhile, Roman took his sweet time, inspecting the paper pants, stretching them out and grimacing. The masseuses knocked on the door. “Two minutes,” I called out from the hole. Roman hadn’t quite grasped that there was a countdown. “Just put them on,” I told him.
“Oh. Erm. Gosh. Ah. Fuck it.” Roman said, then put them on. He made his way to bed and looked at it as if it were a puzzle. “Do I go on the towel or -” There was another knock.
“One minute,” I called out again. I turned back to Roman. “Get under the towel!” He peeled the towel back slowly and popped himself under the towel. The door opened. I hoped that Roman knew that from now on, he wasn’t allowed to talk..
Best AI could do. Thankfully, we didn’t speak again until after our massages were done and the masseuses had left the room.
“You can get up now,” I told him.
Roman stretched with a smile on his face. Apart from wearing another man’s dressing gown, he was happy with the experience. And I was happy because I had my first successful non-single birthday in years. And we were both very happy because we had ticked something off our list, ‘Things we would like to do now we’re not single.’
Walking to birthday dinner post massage.
THE QUACK 