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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 WILL BE BACK ON SEPTEMBER 17TH
Hello Quack-ers! A few things are happening on this side, so I am going to take a short break from The Quack. I will, however, be back with more facepalm stories on September 17th.
In the meantime, let’s appreciate the time I tried on these pinstripe trousers.
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SPERM-EXTERMINATORS & OTHER CONTRACEPTIVES.
AUDIO QUACK
Not a fan of reading? Let me read for you! Skip introduction 2:04
The humble condom and my cycle app has done me proud over the years, but it was time to find a less flimsy method.
I often wonder, like all women wonder, why men can’t do the birth control thing? Surely a sticky-paper-tube could be put up there that acts like fly paper? Or perhaps they could take a pill that would make their sperm lazy.
“Fancy swimming today, Mike?”
“Naaaah…”
“Yeeeeh. Me, neither.”
But, no. We have the science to put Katy Perry into space, but not to chill out sperm. So off I went, birth control shopping.
I was thinking, at first, to go au naturel (or as au naturel as possible) by using the copper coil. This is a T-shaped device that instead of seeping hormones into your body, it basically kills sperm with its copper ions. A sperm exterminator – a sperminator. How cool.
I began some serious medical research using Google. Soon, I found myself on the forum Reddit, where women from around the world had taken time out of their day to share their experiences with the copper coil.
It started out postivie.
“I looooove my copper IUD.”
“I’ve had mine since December and have really enjoyed it.”
But then it became less positive the further I scrolled down. Thier biggest complaint was how it intesified their Aunt Flow.
The verb gushing was mentioned a lot.
Gushing?!
One woman said she has had non-stop bleeding for 9 MONTHS.
9 MONTHS?!
Another ended her copper coil story with, ‘I regret it so much.’
Scared that I was going to drown in a puddle of my own blood, I decided to scrap the whole au naturel route, and instead, go for the hormonal coil.
I went back on Google to research the procedure of putting it in. A helpful nurse on Instagram did a demonstration with a plastic uterus and a coil.
“You just pop it in like so, and it opens up,” she said sweetly.
I grimaced at the screen. It seemed barbaric, and yet, she was so casual about it, as if she were demonstrating how to season a chicken. I returned to Reddit to find out how women felt about the procedure.
Someone asked the question:
How bad was your coil insertion on a scale of 1-10 for you?
These were some of the responses:
“9/10. My soul left my body. I saw a white flash of light, I’m not even being dramatic. I thought I was seeing heaven and was dying right there. The only thing I can equate the feeling to is having a white hot poker pierce me in the centre.”
“8/10 I went deaf and blind for a few minutes.“
“25/10. I vomited and kicked the doctor in the face and told them to get the f*** off me.“
Despite some women describing their experience as if they had been in a Game of Thrones torture scene, others found the whole thing a breeze.
“0 out of 10, for real”
“I didn’t even notice it.“
“Maybe I have a high tolerance because for me, it wasn’t as bad as everyone says it was.“
With that encouragement, I went ahead and booked the appointment. The next Tuesday morning at 10:02, I was shaking hands with my gynecologist.
She was everything you wanted in a doctor who was about to insert an alien object into you: warm, smiley, wearing florals, and had a collection of very serious certificates on her wall.
She asked me the usual questions at her desk, and then gave me a choice of three coils: one with a lot of hormones, one with not a lot of hormones, and one in the middle.
“I’ll go for the middle one,” I said, feeling like Goldilocks.
“Anything else I should know before we begin?” the doctor asked.
“Oh. Yes. I’m a fainter.”
I thought it was best to say, considering that only a few days beforehand, I almost passed out in the theatre watching Stranger Things. Not to mention the time I fainted at the hairdresser’s and again in the theatre during the performance of A Little Life.
“That’s useful to know,” she said.
She led me behind the paper curtain, where there was a serious leather chair with large footpads, monitors, and a tray full of tools.
I took everything off from the waist down, apart from my pink socks. I then put on the hospital gown and got into the dead-frog position, with my feet up and wide.
The doctor picked up her first metal tool. I gulped and concentrated on the ceiling, trying to dream of better places I could be. I was lying in a hammock in Bora Bora. I was watching a film on the sofa with popcorn on my belly. I was at a Taylor Swift concert.
The prodding began.
“So, going anywhere nice on holiday?” the doctor asked, trying to distract me.
“Um, no plans,” I squirmed “What about you?”
As she prodded away, she calmly talked through her holiday plans. She was going to Greece. No, she had been to Greece. She was going to France, I think. I don’t know. I wasn’t listening as I was acutely aware of what was about to happen.
Suddenly, pain shot through me. It was like a very, very small, but very, very real crossbow had been released inside. Boof!
….I didn’t faint like I fainted in A Little Life (nothing is more traumatic than that show), but I was close.
“Sorry,” I said in a hushed voice to the doctor, aware that I sounded very dramatic, like I was a dying person in a movie.
“This happens all the time,” she reassured me. (They really should look into this fly paper birth control for men.)
I was taken down the corridor to the recovery room with my pale ass hanging out of the back of the gown. (In those moments, I wished I had done squats.)
They gave me some water and a ginger biscuit. It took around an hour for my blood pressure to return to normal and the cramping to subside, and then I was let back out into the world with my coil and a high rating to contribute to the Reddit forum.
On the bright side, at least I didn’t accidentally kick my doctor in the face.
(For any women curious about the hormonal coil, it has been two weeks, and everything has been fine so far. You can get more information about birth control here.)
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THE STORY OF WRITING A NOVEL PART 1: THE BOOK THAT DIED.
Can’t be bothered to read? Let me read for you. Skip introduction 2:21
I was going to write about getting a coil put in, but changed my mind. Yesterday, Hodder announced they were publishing my novels, so I thought it would be more relevant to write about writing books.
It’s been almost six years since I decided I was going to try to write a novel, and it’s been quite the adventure along the way, so I thought I’d make a Quack series, telling the story of how it all came about.
This is part one… the book that died.
It was March 2020, and I was pulling my pink suitcase up the stairs at St Erth railway station in Cornwall. I had just moved back to the UK that morning from Australia after splitting up with my boyfriend. I had been in a relationship for a few years, so I hadn’t lifted my own bag for a while. It was a real shock to the system.
I was 28 and now living with my mum. Spring was in the air and so was Covid. Her partner Rich had been diagosed with Multiple Myeloma only a few months beforehand, so we were not going to fluff with the rules. Boris wanted us to stay indoors, so that’s exactly what we were going to do. We were the three (stationary) muskateers.
I was back to life’s drawing board. I had been a producer for most of my twenties, but not the best one. (I’m terrible at putting things into folders and not the most assertive person in the world).
Writing, though, was always something I enjoyed. I loved making up quirky characters and working out what they should do and say. I had written blogs, some terrible poetry, and attempted a few stories, but I was curious to see if I could go the whole hog and write a novel. If there was ever a time to find that out, it was during a global pandemic at my mum’s house.
Rich is an artist, and since I’ve known him, he has gone to his studio every day without fail. He says that you may not produce good work some days, but the main thing is that you are there. So the first thing I did was make myself a studio/writing space.
There was a trailer in the garden, which Mum and Rich lived in while they were developing the house. It was an off-yellow and had a plastic sign saying Arizona. I cleared it out, sucking up spiders with Henry and spraying out the damp stench with Febreze. I lit candles, put felt pens in a jar, placed a pile of paper on the table, and my laptop. I sat down and smiled…my very own studio. I felt like I was in Breaking Bad, but without the drugs.
Every morning, I would walk a few meters to Arizona. I had a few screenwriting books from my film school degree and a book called The Artist’s Way, which told me to write three A4 pages every morning to get the creative juices flowing. I did that for a while until I felt juiced up.
Eventually, I got my first idea for my book. A rom-com about a woman publishing a fiction book based on her teenage relationship, which would consequently bring her first love back into her life. It would be called Can of Worms. Sunday Times Bestseller List, here I come.
I would write in the morning, watch a film in the afternoon, and read in the evening. The goal was a film a day, a book a week. Rich is a film lover, so he would recommend movies to me. Most I liked…others I did not.
“So what did you think?” Rich would ask.
“WHAT ON EARTH DID I JUST WATCH? Why was he making him oink like that?”
“Not a fan of Deliverance then?”
“NO! It’s like a f**** up version of Without a Paddle.”
There were other skills in the house that were being tested during that lockdown. I learned all the states in America, and Rich taught me how to hang pictures properly – with a drill and tape and everything. Mum bought a sewing machine so we could learn how to make our own clothes. But after an afternoon of tearing apart a pair of trousers and making them into lopsided shorts and headbands, we decided it was best just to order our clothes from shops like we had always done. We tried to become bakers, only to kill a very old and expensive sourdough starter.
Meanwhile, Can of Worms was going swimmingly. I had made up a few writing systems for myself. I liked seeing the book as if I was building a body. The first draft was the skeleton, the second was the muscle… and so on. I would use Post-it notes to keep track of my chapters and change to a different colored Post-it note once I had redrafted the chapter. It was visually motivating to see the colours change. Seinfeld does something similar by putting a cross through each calendar day after he has done his writing, the idea being that he can never break the chain.
After a quiet Christmas with my lockdown musketeers, I woke up early on January 1st to watch the sunrise on the beach. This was the year Can of Worms was going to be published…I was sure of it.
By February, I decided it was good enough to be put on the shelf. I had a fantasy of printing my manuscript and sending it off to publishers in a big brown envelope, but Google told me that this was not what you do.
First, I had to get an agent. There was no printing or brown envelopes required. Instead, I was instructed to send the first three chapters by email, along with an outline and pitch line, and reasonable suggestions of other novels that I would compare my book to.
“My book is Normal People meets Moby Dick.”
(I didn’t say this).
I made a spreadsheet of agents, with (another) colour system.
Orange meant it needed to be sent.
Green was sent.
Red was rejected.
Over the next few months, line by line, my spreadsheet turned red. Can of Worms wasn’t having the future I thought it would. In my gut, I knew it wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t romantic or comical…which was catastrophic considering it was a rom-com.
I didn’t want to give up though, because I had used up all my lockdown, writing, so it would have been a waste to pack it all in. What I needed was some guidance from people who knew what they were talking about. I began to search for a creative writing course, and that’s when I stumbled across the Oxford Brookes Creative Writing MA. I sent off Can of Worms in the MA application, and I got accepted onto the course, so it had some use.
By August 2021, Rich was in a sort of remission and back in his studio, and Mum had gotten into selling everything she had on Vinted. It was time for me to leave my musketeers behind. I packed up my car and moved to Oxford, with the goal of becoming a better writer.
Part 2 – The MA – coming soon.
You can now pre order AMY ELMAN DOESN’T FEEL SEXY on Amazon!
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BILLBOARD DAD
Can’t be bothered to read? I’ll read it for you. SKIP INTRODUCTION | 2:11
In 1998, cinema magic hit our screens. The Olsen Twins released Billboard Dad. I thought, finally, a movie I could relate to. However, as I watched it, I became severely disappointed that it wasn’t a story about a dad working in the out-of-home industry, but about the eleven-year-old twins putting up a poster of their dad in an attempt to find him a new girlfriend… because that’s not weird at all.
Dad began his career in the mailroom of a poster company when he was sixteen. There, he found his life calling – posters. When Mum started dating Dad, he would have a Dictaphone in his glove box so that whenever he was driving, he could record any billboard issues he saw while on the road.
“Red alert. Cadbury’s poster torn, Olympia. Cadburys holding. Over.”
The billboard spotting continued throughout my childhood. Dad would slam on the brakes, the family would be flung forward, and he’d reverse to see the poster we had just passed moments ago.
“Red alert. The Persil poster is dirty on the A40 out of London. Over.”
So it was etched in my brain that a damaged poster was a very bad thing indeed. Now, as an adult, I find myself having to bite my tongue whenever I see a glitching digital screen on a bus shelter or an out-of-date poster on the underground.
“What’s wrong, Mary?”
“The Budweiser advert at that bus stop…”
“Yes?”
“It’s flickering.”
“Ummm….oookay”
Generally, people don’t pay much attention to outdoor advertising. They’re just there, decorating the walls, streets, and escalators – seeping into the subconscious.
I have been aware of posters since I was old enough to walk. Dad would always point out posters and say, “One of mine.” I never quite knew what he meant when I was a kid, so I assumed he was solely creating the posters for McDonald’s himself and putting them up there.
He would leave the house in the morning with a briefcase and go to his office, where, I imagined, he would draw his next poster. He would return in the evening, sometimes past my bedtime, and other times early enough to read me a chapter from George’s Marvellous Medicine.
I thought his office would be at the end of our road, and one morning I packed my own pink briefcase and went to find him, only to reach the end of Lydalls Close and find that there was no office or Dad there. It was later that I worked out he took a train to London every morning.
There were perks to being born into a billboard family. Dad once brought a gigantic vinyl poster home with him, and my brothers worked out that if they laid it out flat on the hilly part of the garden, blasted the hose, and used all the Fairy Liquid in the house, the vinyl poster made an excellent waterslide.
There were also parties at our house. A lot of them. I was told that these were important because adults needed to network. There was karaoke in the kitchen, a bucking reindeer at Christmas drinks, and a summer party featuring a live band called See You Next Tuesday. One morning, after a party, I found underwear scattered around our garden, leading up to the pool. Networking was strange.
Dad had a knack for persuading his colleagues to carry on post-work drinks back at our house. Mum’s steak sandwiches became legendary on those occasions. Dad, who was training me for networking, would want me to say hi to every Tom, Dick, and Harry who was in our kitchen drinking Oyster Bay.
I’d be in my room with my Sylvanian Families when Dad would barge in, knocking over the hedgehog family with his foot.
“Come and meet Lawson.”
“Who’s Lawson?”
“Come to the kitchen and you’ll find out.”
“Do I have to?” I’d whine as I reached over to save Mother Hedgehog.
“Come on,” he would demand and walk off. And I would sigh, and follow him. Networking was not a choice.
When I was a teenager, I made the mistake of asking Dad, “But do billboards actually work?” I may as well have asked if Tottenham Hotspur was a synchronized swimming team. That summer, I was sent to his office for a week of work experience, where I not only learned that billboards work, but also how they work.
I took along my friend Jess for the week. We learned about target marketing, updated the contact lists, and were taken out to a pub lunch or two or three. On Thursday, we were put into a marketing executive’s car to inspect the posters and screens of their clients, just like the dates my dad took my mum on.
It was then that I realized I did not inherit my dad’s passion for posters because, at some point during the drive, I fell asleep.
I have been asked a couple of times if I have ever been tempted to be an ‘out-of-home nepo baby,’ but despite a brief stint in a creative agency, I have stayed away from the advertising world. Slightly terrified, I was going to end up naked in someone’s pool, to be honest.
Dad, though, has never left the posters behind. Even the other day, we were walking through Bond Street station, and he pointed to the escalator screens.
“One of mine.”
Last week, there was a surprise. Dad, Jack, and I, along with Julie, Lawson, and all the other close friends he had met through successful networking, had a pint and then wandered over to Piccadilly Circus. There on all the famous Piccadilly screens was Dad’s face.
I felt like an Olsen twin. Thankfully, it wasn’t an ad to get my dad a girlfriend; instead, it was a celebration of 50 years in the industry and for the money he had raised for charity along the way.
There was a party afterwards, of course. Jack and I stood in the room, surrounded by billboard people who had at one point in time danced in our kitchen and eaten one of Mum’s post-work steak sandwiches. One or two may have been naked in our pool. There was no networking now, just a lot of chat about golf and advertising in the ’80s…the good old days.
BLOG SOUNDTRACK
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THE CATHOLIC SCHOOL PROM.
CBA to read? Let me read it for you. Skip introduction 2:30
On my way to Sainsbury’s to stock up on Marmite, I walked past a group of Oxford students dressed up for their ball. It took me back fifteen years to the time I had my school prom….
*Wavy flashback screen*
It was 2010, and the first woman, Kathryn Bigelow, had won Best Director at the Oscars for The Hurt Locker. An ash cloud was covering the sky from a volcano in Iceland, and Bruno Mars released his first single, reassuring us he liked us just the way we are.
Oh, her eyes, her eyes
Make the stars look like they’re not shiningHer hair, her hair
Falls perfectly without her tryingHer stretch marks, her stretch marks..
And so on.
Our school was a quiet all-girls Catholic school tucked away in the corner of Oxford. We weren’t sporty, arty, or academic, but we were kind, wholesome, and could recite the Hail Marys off by heart, so that has to count for something.
By sixth form, most of the cool people had left, leaving a tiny year group of around 30 behind.
Over those last two years of school we created a hall of fame of men on the back of the common room door, shared our Twilight books and GHDS.
There weren’t many fallouts, except for the time K* tipped Hermione’s sea monkeys out of the window. She was not happy.
The prom (or as they elegantly called it The May Ball), marked the end of our school days before the exams began. It was the most anticipated event of our school life, and we had big ideas for it.
We had grown up watching American films of what a prom should be: mountains of fairy lights, a DJ, balloons, and boys. There was always that moment when someone entered the prom, and the room took notice because she was in a dress and had curled her hair.
“Oh my God, is that Stephanie? She looks so different with curly hair…“
In A Cinderella Story, Hilary Duff comes down the stairs in an old big white dress. Her presence makes Chad Michael Murray (the jock) go into a trance—forgetting all about his super-hot girlfriend in her thigh-high boots.
It’s exactly this Hilary Duff moment we are all aiming for at prom.
The May Ball committee decided our theme was going to be … magical wild garden. In our heads, we saw hanging ivy, fairy lights, and dry ice to make it feel like we were walking through a fairy tale land. The venue was the school lunch hall, and the plan was a reception on the lawn followed by a three-course school meal, and then the local DJ – DJ Pete – would spin some Black Eyed Peas for us to dance to until midnight…or 11:30.
Prepping ourselves for the ball was the priority. None of us were getting into Oxbridge, so revision was put aside as we planned our outfits. I spent weeks bouncing between ASOS and Topshop and every other shop on the internet, wondering what I could possibly wear to my school canteen. I ended up buying a dress with a sequin top and a white wispy skirt, that I had seen Taylor Swift wear on a chat show. If that wasn’t going to give me my Hilary Duff moment, I don’t know what will.
On the Thursday before the big ball on Saturday, I skipped P.E. to get a spray tan. The next morning in assembly, the P.E. teacher made an announcement asking me to come and see her after the assembly to explain why I wasn’t in her lesson.
After we had sung Ave Maria, I walked over to her—nice and bronzed—and apologised, but said I needed to get a spray tan for the ball, as my dress was very unforgiving.
She opened her mouth to say something and then gave up. We both knew I wasn’t going to be an athlete after all. Besides, the tan was making me look remarkably more toned than any of her badminton classes had.
The big day arrived and so did my hairdresser, who was also, conveniently, my boyfriend. (He had asked me out the summer beforehand when he was cutting my hair. Never did my hair look so good as when I was dating that man.) So he curled it in the kitchen, and then we went to the ball. My great friend Carrot (read about him here) was also with us. I was never not going to have Carrot there.
It was a warm, blue-sky evening, and we all looked stunning. Cabbage had made adjustments to her dress to make it her own, which is fitting considering she is now a fashion designer. Hermione was rocking the haircut that my boyfriend had given her. And Sausage wore a white dress with black roses that made her look like she could be in a Bond film…
It was all lovely… but there was just one thing missing.
Apart from one mixed disco with a Catholic boys’ school, we hadn’t done much socialising with the other sex, so boyfriends came few and far between. The turnout was 50 girls and 10 terrified boys – so it didn’t quite resemble the proms we had seen in the movies.
My best duck impression We took a zillion photos outside (yes, even before Instagram), and then made our way to the lunch hall… it was time to enter the ball. When we stepped inside though, it wasn’t quite the mystical garden we had dreamed of.
Someone on the committee (Sausage) had messed up, and instead of hiring a dry ice machine, they had hired a smoke machine. The hall resembled the set of a vampire movie, but not the vampire movie we wanted.
So we sat in the fog with our ten men, eating chicken off plastic plates.
I don’t remember much from that night as I drank a lot of cheap wine before Mrs. O refused to serve me anymore. I do remember, though, that the sequins on my Taylor Swift dress scratched my arms to death, and I also had a steep learning curve with tit tape.
I sent a video note to Sausage asking if she could fill in the blanks about the ball, but she couldn’t remember anything. It was fifteen years after all. A lot had happened.
An hour later, she sent another video. This time, she was standing in a very familiar dress….
“Guess who still fits into her ball dress?!”
BLOG SOUNDTRACK
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FINDING MY TRUE COLOURS AT THE RUGBY.
AUDIO QUACK | SKIP INTRODUCTION 2:05
“Football is a gentleman’s game played by hooligans, and Rugby is a hooligans’ game played by gentlemen.”
My great-granddad on my mum’s side was a miner in the North East and played rugby for Northumberland. So, you would think we would be one of those rugby families. However, the football gene my dad carried was far too strong, which meant I found myself growing up in a raging Tottenham household instead. I tried to fit in. I even attempted watching a whole season when I was fourteen, but I couldn’t quite get on board.
Read about my traumatic story with football… here.
I didn’t really know rugby existed until 2003, when England won the World Cup. I know some people felt inspired enough to actually play the game, but I channeled my excitement by buying the official top and playing “True Colors” on repeat.
Around the same time, my older brothers began playing rugby at school. I would be taken along by my parents on Saturday afternoons. It was both terrifying and incredible to watch a bunch of boys throw each other around. I stayed far enough away from the pitch in my Vans hoodie, listening to Avril Lavigne on my Walkman, contemplating how to get a rugby boy to like me. I had a steep learning curve ahead.
After the match, the families of the boys were served sandwiches and tea in an unheated room with haunting portraits of former headmasters. It was a chance for parents to bond. I would stand close to my dad, munching on my egg and cress triangle sandwich, and watching him attempt to mingle with other dads.
“Watching the game this afternoon?” Dad asked, bouncing from foot to foot and checking his watch.
“What game would that be?” a dad with a more southern accent would reply.
“What game…?” Dad said, spitting feathers. “SUPER TOTTENHAM VS ARSENAL. Come on, you Spurs!” he called out, raising his fist in the air.
The other dad glanced at the fist. “Sorry, more of a rugby man myself.” And then walked away, leaving my dad with his fist in the air. It was then I recognised there was a gap between football and rugby fans.
As an adult I haven’t followed rugby or football, so it’s fair to say I didn’t deserve to be at the Rugby Premiership League final on Saturday, but my friend Amy got me a free ticket. Sure, it wasn’t as good as when she got me a ticket to Taylor Swift, but I took it anyway.
Also coming along was Hermione and her sister’s partner, Frank (aka Hot Dad Frank). Hermione made yet another WhatsApp group for the occasion: ‘Premiership Final’. Now, together, we’re in…
Birthday Punting
Rye Girls
Taylor Swift Forever
Palma
It was Bath vs. Leicester, and as none of us were from either city, we had to decide who we were going to support. I have never been to Leicester, but I had been to Bath to do a tour of the Roman Baths, and it was a nice day out, so it made sense to support them. I’m sure there are nice days to be had in Leicester, but for this year, Bath was my team.
The stark difference between football fans and rugby fans can be felt in the walk from the station to the stadium. On the rare occasion I have blessed Tottenham with my presence, I have found myself walking in some sort of beer-guzzling tribal parade to the stadium.
On Saturday, though, the Bath and Leicester supporters flowed in one happy march. I saw not one man peeing, not one. I didn’t even hear a curse word. It was so civil that some houses had cake stands in their driveways for the fans going by. We stopped at one, run by a teenage girl and her mum. The teenager was raising money to go to Cambodia for her gap year. We sure were in Twickenham now. We bought a brownie, a cookie, and I got a packet of love heart sweets – the ones which have compliments on them like “hot lips.”
(I hope the teenage girl’s stand was more successful than the one I did when I was young with Big Bro Joe. We set up a table outside our gate at home during a heat wave and offered to spray the evening commuters with water on their way back from the train station. £1 a spray. We didn’t make a penny.)
So with our brownies, cookies, and packet of love hearts, we made our way into the stadium. Just before entering, we saw a crowd gathering in a hoop. In the middle of the circle was a man on one knee, proposing to a woman. She reminded me of the redhead from Stranger Things. The noise of the music, the buzzing of the burger van, and the cheering fans meant we couldn’t hear what he said, but she nodded, and they hugged and kissed, so I assumed it was a yes.
I’m sure the Stranger Things girl meant it, but I do wonder how many people say yes to public proposals because of the pressure, only to swiftly pull their partner to a corner afterward.
“Look, Steven, I know I said yes in front of the whole of Twickenham , but you know I have a problem with your credit score….”
We got our beers and settled into our seats, which were on the lower level behind the goal. Basically, it was a good seat, and I did not deserve it. At first, I was alarmed by seeing a mix of fans surrounding me, some in Bath tops, others in Leicester. Shouldn’t we be separate?! I then remembered it wasn’t football, so these grown-ups could be trusted not to punch each other in the face over a game. How delightful.
Hermione put on her bucket hat and took out a box of Waitrose grapes from her backpack and shared them out.
The game began.
I know the rules of rugby. Kind of. But any confusion, Frank was there. He plays number 10, which I learned was the one who kicks the ball. He was very useful in answering all the questions. What are they doing now? What does that hand gesture mean? Who’s that? He was also handy for getting the beers in. (It felt kind of mean that he missed the first part of the second half to get us drinks – considering he was the actual fan).
As I ate my love hearts under the sun, watching the men throw each other about, I couldn’t help but wonder how my family had got it so wrong with going the football route. Rugby is far more sophisticated… even the music is more pleasant. Wouldn’t we rather sing the rugby anthem, Jerusalem, than the football song… Vindaloo?
Jerusalem Lyrics:
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green?Vindaloo Lyrics
Can I introduce you please
To a lump of cheddar cheeseEven the guy who had the drum in the stadium (who are these men that carry drums to matches!?) wasn’t particularly aggressive with it. Just a light few taps, and then everyone sang in tune… “Bath!”
It got me thinking, how on EARTH do people prefer football over rugby? There had been a proposal, Waitrose grapes, a bake sale, no fights, no C-words… What’s more, Bath won.
What a lovely day, or as my love heart sweet said, “Epic.”
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THE GREAT BRITISH BIRTHDAY
AUDIO QUACK | Skip Introduction 1:37
It was that time of year again, Hermione’s birthday. Like last year and the year before that, it was an outdoor event. Although this time she had stepped it up a notch, and instead of a picnic in the park, we were going punting.
The annual no-nonsense birthday invitation was sent in a WhatsApp group appropriately named ‘Birthday Punting.”
Please meet at the boathouse at 1230 with picnic lunch bits. I’ll be bringing hummus, strawberries and champagne. We will punt up the river to The Victoria for a drink and then back to the boathouse. Then cross over into Jericho for a pub crawl, starting at Rose and Crown around 4:30/5ish if you’d like to continue the party. Please emoji this post to confirm attendance at punting so I can work out what to book. Smiley wavey face. Upside-down smiley face.
One by one the guests sent their emojis.
1 rowing boat 🚣♀️
1 trophy 🏆
4 thumbs up 👍
1 bunny 🐰
1 love heart made out of hands 🫶
1 canoe 🛶
1 high five 🙌
It’s an odd thing to do for fun – pushing a boat up a river with a pole, but it’s one of the popular activities you can do in Oxford, along with reading and creating vaccines. Since 1860, historical figures have enjoyed a punt down the river Cherwell including Tolkien, Lewis Carroll, and Oscar Wilde. And now on the last day of May in 2025, there was us.
We gathered, as ordered, at The Cherwell Boathouse at 12:30 with our snacks and drinks. Hermione had her big voice on, separating us into boats 5 and 21.
“Which one do you want to go in, Mary?” Hermione asked.
I looked at 5 and looked at 21. “Um…um…”
“PICK ONE!”
“Oh, um, which one are you going in?”
“5!”
“…I’ll go in 21 then.”
If you live in Surfers Paradise, you are meant to be able to surf. If you live in Saint Moritz, you should be able to ski. And if you live in Oxford, you should be able to punt. I, however, cannot. (This is probably no surprise to readers who are aware of my lack of sporting ability).
The last time I went in a punt, I was 14, had a MySpace page, and was with a bunch of my hormonal friends who were dressed head to toe in Jack Wills. I didn’t offer my help then, and I wasn’t going to offer it now. It’s not laziness; I just know what my strengths and weaknesses are. My brain is too consumed with remembering lyrics from 90s Britpop songs to think about things like left and right, steering, measurements, and angles.
Thankfully, Hermione’s friendship group is a very practical bunch and can be divided into three categories: teachers, sailors, and farmers. I assumed out of that lot, there would be a capable punter, so all I needed to do was relax and enjoy the ride.
I settled in Boat 21, poured myself a soda and lime in my plastic wine glass, and soaked in the sun. Perfect.
We pushed off from the bank. Hermione’s boyfriend Sam was our punter, and Camilla was on steering. We (they) got the boat to the middle of the river, and we were off.
Just as we went under our first bridge, Frank shouted, “STOP! I LEFT THE CHEESE!” We twisted around and punted back to the boathouse to collect the cheese.
Despite our false start, our boat made a swift recovery and we flowed right past Boat 5. I knew I had made the right decision because whenever I looked back at Boat 5, it was either horizontal, colliding with another boat, or stuck in a bush.
The thing about punting is it’s a lot harder than it seems. It’s one of those activities that appears to be romantic from a distance, but the reality is not quite that. We went past a boat with a young woman sitting adorably, while her partner, sweating buckets, tried to navigate the boat around the river bends.
“This is nice, isn’t it Stephen?”
“Uhuh….”
Eventually, we had to stop to wait for Boat 5, because we could no longer see them. Ten minutes later, they came around the bend and we reunited to have our picnic.
I thought I would make up for my lack of punting skills with food. I came with the most pompous snacks I could find: an olive and rosemary sourdough loaf, Mr. Filbet’s dry roasted nuts, vegan gummy bears, and basil breadsticks. I thought I would be applauded for being the snazziest food provider, but then Frank announced that his cheese was homemade using the milk from the cows on his farm. Yeah, alright.
As the birthday manual promised, we next went to The Victoria for a drink. It wasn’t long until Hermione was using her big voice again because we needed to “CHOP CHOP, GUYS!” since the punts were being charged by the hour.
Due to a chain of events, I ended up not in my peaceful Boat 21 but in Boat 5 for the return journey.
Hermione was the punter, and I was landed with the responsibility of steering, which involved me ferociously pushing water with a tiny paddle, desperately trying to avoid hitting other punts and the riverbank.
“Which way should I push!?” I panicked. Mikey didn’t have the same urgency as me.
“On the left, Mary. No the left…”
We zigzagged across the river, water splashing everywhere, getting tangled up in the willow trees, having near misses with other boats, one of which had a bride in it. And there was an incident involving a mallard duck.
I stared longingly at Boat 21 which was ahead of us, of course. It was peacefully skimming the river, everyone having pleasant conversations beneath the sun.
“MARY PADDLE!” Mikey said, snapping me back to my new reality. “NO, TO THE LEFT! TO THE LEFT! TO THE RIGHT! TO THE RIGHT!”
Too late, we ended up tangled in another willow.
The experience gave me flashbacks to a traumatic event when I rode a donkey up a hill in Rhodes. The man walking the donkey wasn’t paying attention, and so didn’t see me face-planting branch after branch. Never again.
When we finally arrived back at Cherwell Boat House, I checked that all my limbs were intact before moving on to the Rose and Crown; it was 4:30 after all, and despite my traumatic voyage, I was keen to continue the party.
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BLOG SOUNDTRACK
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MY RETURN TO HINGE.
Can’t be bothered to read? I’ll read it for you!
Skip introduction | 1:51.
I was ovulating in a remote villa in France when I redownloaded Hinge again. With no man in sight, a catalogue of virtual men was my second-best option. It had been over a year since I left the online dating arena, but now I was ready to return (I think).
I uploaded recent photos and worked on creating effective prompts. These prompts are there so people can understand you better and make a judgment about whether you are compatible.
In my time away from dating, I realised I needed a man who was more chilled than me, to balance out my uptightness. The best way I could sum this up was… “I am looking for someone who doesn’t worry about missing a flight but never misses a flight.” I listed a few of my interests (coffee, Pilates, film…) I KNOW I’M BASIC.
When that was done… I was good to go.
Hinge generated $550 million in revenue in 2024. In other words, it’s not a warm-hearted charity that yearns to help singletons. It’s free, but with plenty of encouragement to pay. For £9.99, you can be seen by 11x more single men for one hour. For £89.99, you get a 3-month Hinge X package, meaning you can set even more dating preferences and can send unlimited likes. I didn’t go as far as paying for Hinge X, but I did pay for Hinge +. A girl’s got to do what a girl’s got to do.
An accurate representation of my Hinge inbox. So, there I was on Hinge +. Not much has changed since the last time. There were a lot of inflated job titles being tossed about. (CEO, Founder, Property Developer, Man in Finance). There were those who were still searching for a partner/new best friend to go climbing, biking, or paintballing with. Lots of skiers. Too many skiers. One man was looking for a woman to ‘live off the grid with him.’ Another was looking for someone to ‘split his Peloton subscription with.’ A stingy cyclist… how hot. And a CEO who thought women would be interested to know that his sister calls him “Mr. Worldwide.”
On the whole, though, most of the men who liked me seemed like decent chaps. (And the ones who I liked but didn’t like me back also seemed like decent chaps.) There was one bloke in particular, though, who caught my interest. He was ten years older, my type, and had a dog.
We began voice-noting almost instantly. He sounded like Colin Farrell, and this made me very happy indeed.
“Can you ski, because everyone on this app can ski?” I whispered.
He sent one back in his Irish accent. “No, I don’t ski; I was actually on the verge of asking the Hinge admin team if a ski photo was required to make the app work.”
“Great,” I said. “I have a fear of being bullied into ski holidays for the rest of my life.”
And our conversation continued like that.
He asked to meet, but I was busy. He asked to meet again, but I was busy. The third time, though, Sunday evening, I was free. Lovely. He suggested the London Bridge area and would book us a table. An actual table.
I thought of the kind of table it would be. Perhaps that one on the balcony that overlooks Borough Market; there will be a wax-dripping candle and the third cheapest merlot on the table. I will wear my new black skirt and laugh a lot. Maybe he could be my +1 to Hermione’s punting birthday party. Maybe.
@bedaleswines Friends often tell me I overthink men, but I think you can’t be too prepared for a date. So, I brushed up on my Irish history by listening to The Rest Is History podcast. You never know when someone might test you on their country’s history.
It got to Saturday night, and all I knew was the outfit I was going to wear, that the Easter Rising happened in 1916, and that there was a table booked in London Bridge at some point tomorrow evening. I messaged the bloke and asked what time I should be sitting at this table. He texted back.
Would 5 work?
Great! I replied. Even though I thought it was a funny time to eat dinner. I also gave him my phone number. (We had been speaking via the Hinge app until this point).
I spent Sunday morning on Google Maps, working out the best way to get from A to B. I was going from a BBQ party in East Putney, which on this Sunday was a 50-minute commute to London Bridge. I was a little sad that I would have to leave the BBQ early, but these things we must do if we don’t want to die alone.
At 10 a.m., the bloke sent me the location of the mystery table. I opened the link.
Hell is this? It certainly wasn’t a table on a balcony overlooking the market – I’ll tell you that for free. It was this back road, dark ‘neighbourhood’ pub, with a rough-and-ready beer garden. I understand that London is an overcrowded city, but this place didn’t seem to need a table booking at 5 PM on a Sunday, which got me thinking – maybe he didn’t book a table.
*Clasps hands*
Dear St. Valentine, all I want is one Hinge date to book me a table. Just one.
After whimpering at the Tripadvisor photos and reviews (one of which was titled, ‘Wetherspoons for Savoy prices’), I pulled myself together.
Maybe it’s a good thing. The man who books the fancy place knows how to play the game, whereas this guy is humble and chilled out. You wanted chilled out, remember?
I took a breath and sent a text back.
Great, see you then.
A man’s time to shine Later that afternoon, I was biting into my vegetable kebab when I received a message from the Hinge bloke. I read the top line and rolled my eyes…
He asked if we could meet tomorrow or another time instead because his friend had ‘played him at whiskey last night’ and he was too hungover to meet me. He said it was rare because he hadn’t been hungover before.
It was three hours before out date.
Back in the day, I would have given him the benefit of the doubt, maybe the poor 43-year-old did get peer pressured by his mate to drink too much Jack Daniel’s… But that’s old Mary. I don’t have time for this. My eggs are rusting.
I texted back.
Aaah don’t worry, get better soon.
I then unmatched and blocked the bloke.
On the bright side, I no longer had to commute across town to sit in a pub to swap travel stories. Also, my knowledge about the potato famine had improved significantly.
And so, my Hinge adventure continues…
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THE QUACK 