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JUST A DUMB CRYING WOMAN.
AUDIO QUACK. SKIP INTRODUCTION 1:38
One day, I looked up and noticed patches of paint bubbling off the ceiling in my hallway.
I asked the man upstairs if he could check his pipes.
He said, “All the pipes I can see are bone dry.”
I didn’t want to push it too much, so I drew pencil marks around the stain and told him I’d let him know if it got any worse. Six months later, it had got worse. I asked the man upstairs if he was sure his pipes were ‘bone dry?’ He eventually came down to see what the fuss was about. He took one look at the, now, brown stain on my ceiling and began to freak.
“Why didn’t you say something?” he said, accusingly.
Oh, so this is my fault.
“I did. But…”
“Do you know what the problem is?”
“Erm, your pipe is leaking?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
“It’s the pencil marks. We need to rub them out.”
“Could you just get your pipes checked?”
And then he said, “When the insurance people come, could you play the dumb woman? You know, act like you didn’t notice the stain until now?”
I looked at him.
I looked at the big brown stain the size of Russia on my ceiling.
And back at him again.
“Could you please just get your pipes checked?”
He left, agreeing to get a plumber in, but he wanted to return to mine the next day with his tools. I had a vision of him rubbing out my wall with an eraser, and me, somehow, ending up in prison for insurance fraud. So, I told him I would fix my own ceiling without any cost to him, but could he please just get his pipes checked?
A week later, he told me his waste pipe wasn’t as ‘bone dry’ as originally thought, but it was now fixed.
Well, that was fun.
I got my ceiling replastered and painted, and then thought, why stop there? Why not paint the whole place? I began with my bathroom (read here) and then moved on to my bedroom, kitchen, and living room.
I tried to rehang the artwork, but after the giant map fell on me for the fourth time, I realised I needed help.
Cue, ‘The Hang Man. ’
He was a quirky artist chap who came wearing a flat cap and carrying a shiny suitcase of tools.
“It’s not the most sophisticated collection you will ever hang,” I said apologetically as we stood before a framed illustration of Louis Theroux and a cartoon drawing of a bra.
“Leave it with me.”
He got to work. Radio 4 was murmuring in the background. There was some drilling and banging, and after three hours, he revealed what he had done. Somehow, he managed to make my walls look like something from Pinterest.
“Oh, wow. Thank you, Hang Man,” I said, gazing at my new wall.
“Just doing my job,” he said, putting his flat cap back on. He packed up his bag and drove off into the night.
My next part of the makeover was the sofa.
The challenge with sofa shopping is that there are many shapes, colours, and materials, and it’s hard to determine which one represents you best. Are you a cream L-shaped type? Or a moss green slouchy type?
For some reason, bachelors LOVE a grey sofa. And the grey doesn’t stop there; he will have grey bedding, towels, and even plates.
“Nice home, Stephen. It’s like stepping into a little rain cloud.“
I wasn’t going to go grey. I first thought I would go for a brown, torn, beaten leather sofa. I imagined that this would make me seem intelligent to my visitors. But then I thought about the reality of lying on leather when I was having an off day, and it didn’t seem so appealing. Also, the cost of a beaten leather sofa was more than I could bear, no matter how intellectual it would make me appear.
In the end, pink inspired me. I know, it’s a risky colour. It can give the impression that you dot your I’s with hearts and write in a diary every night.
“Dear Diary.
Stephen is still too busy to talk to me. (Grrr). I have called him five times. His mother, I’ve called twice. And his boss, three times. 😦 They all tell me he’s got a lot on his plate. I JUST WANT TO SMASH THAT PLATE!! (LOL!!!)
So, it wasn’t that kind of pink. More of a coral pink.
I found the perfect sofa in an outlet store. It had been a showroom sofa for most of its life. I liked the idea of it retiring in my flat, like a showgirl in Vegas who had done her work.
The day of the sofa delivery came, and I cleared the space, ready for the arrival. Then my phone started ringing.
“Hi. We’re delivering your sofa, could you please give us the full address? All we have is the street and postcode.”
“That’s strange,” I said. “Sorry. Of course, it’s -“
Suddenly, a voice spoke up in the background. “Like, what are we supposed to do? Guess the address like we’re some sort of miracle workers?!”
“No…” I said.
It was as if this voice thought I had purposely only given the road and postcode because I loved playing a game of ‘Yes or No‘ with deliveries.
Is it a terrace house?
No.
Does it have an outdoor space?
Yes.
I gave my full address, with the man still grunting away in the background.
“I can stand outside and wave?”
“No,” he barked. And hung up.
I gulped. I had a bad feeling that whoever this man was would not appreciate the two flights of stairs coming his way.
Despite my offer being refused, I went outside anyway. At the front of the apartment block, I met one of the delivery men.
“Mary?” he said, smiling.
“That’s me!”
Behind the smiling man was a bald man the size of a telephone box. He was wheeling my sofa on a trolley. He had frown lines deeper than the Grand Canyon. I took a deep breath and smiled. Sure, he sounded angry on the phone and looked angry now, but hopefully, if I were super friendly, he would soften up – like putting a block of butter in the microwave.
“Hello!” I said enthusiastically, as if I was greeting him into a party. He didn’t say anything back. I noticed he had accessorised his outfit with a chain necklace that was thick enough to lock up a bike… or a person.
We entered my apartment block, and the stairs were revealed. Predictably, he was not happy about this.
“We will have to take the cushions off if we’re taking it up six flights of stairs,” he growled.
I chimed in. “It’s, um, not six flights, it’s just…”
“JUST!” He rolled his big sausage head. “DON’T YOU DARE SAY JUST. THAT’S THE WOMAN’S CURSE WORD. IT’S JUST…. IT’S JUST…”
“Um. I was just saying it’s two flights of stairs.”
“YES!” He raised his voice and came closer. So, he was kind of really loud now. “BUT THERE ARE SIX PARTS TO THE STAIRCASE!” (I didn’t understand his logic). “RIGHT. THE CUSHION ARE COMING OFF BECAUSE I’M NOT GOING TO KILL MYSELF, LIFTING THIS UP THERE. OK?”
I felt a lump form in my throat and said a quiet “Ok.” My eyes began to warm up. I wasn’t upset that he was removing the cushions. I didn’t care about the cushions. I just hated being yelled at by Shrek.
He sliced open the wrapper to see the sofa and growled.
“Pink?”
“Mmhmm,” I whimpered.
He gave me and his partner the cushions, and we walked up the stairs together. Out of earshot, the partner apologised.
“I’m sorry. He shouldn’t be talking to customers like that. So that you know, I am going to report him.”
“It’s ok,” I said and sniffed.
Maybe it was the cardio of carrying the sofa up the stairs, or because my face resembled the inside of a strawberry, but by the time the sofa was in my living room, the monster man had softened a little. He asked if I wanted to keep the temp legs. I told him he could keep them because I’d lose them. He cracked a small laugh, and I smiled through tears. It wasn’t exactly the start of a beautiful friendship, but it was better than being yelled at.
They left. I went into the living room to see my new sofa. I sniffed, curled onto it, and whimpered as I hugged the pink cushion.
I then, got out my diary.
Dear Diary.
An angry, gigantic man came to deliver my sofa today...
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THE AUDIENCE THAT WENT WRONG.
Audio Quack! Let me read it for you! Skip Introduction 1:30
Last week I went to see Streetcar Named Desire. It’s one of my favourite plays and this production had Paul Mescal playing Stanley. I had spent an hour in a virtual queue getting tickets. It was like my version of Glastonbury.
It was around thirty minutes into the first half of the play, when I heard some commotion kicking off behind me.
“I can’t stay any longer. I’m sorry, it’s just not my cup of tea!” A hushed voice said. I glanced behind and saw a row of people standing, as an old man in tweed shuffled past them. My inner snob came out. I tutted. How does one not know if Tennessee Williams is not their cup of tea?
Further on in the play, in a silent, intimate moment, someone cracked open their can. ……*click!…fiizzzzzzz*
My inner-snob could have exploded. CAN NOBODY DO THEATRE AROUND HERE?!
Despite the audience, I thought the performance was superb. Marlon would be proud. But the disruptions did make me reflect on all the times when it wasn’t the play that went wrong, but the audience, and that includes myself.
The problem with the theatre is it brings out our more pompous side. When you tell people that you went to the theatre on the weekend, you make it sound like you wore a gown and arrived in a horse-drawn carriage. (When, in fact, you wore Levis and arrived in an Uber that smelled of lemons and vomit.)
But simply going to the theatre on a normal ticket wasn’t enough for my Farrow and Ball Mother. When we went to see Long Day’s Journey into Night with Brian Cox, she had, for some reason, bought a VIP package.
When we got to the door, we let them know we were the VIPs. The man whipped out his walkie-talkie. “Sinead, the VIPs have arrived.” Mum looked suddenly worried about the fuss she was causing. After all, the real reason why she paid for the package was because it included a private loo. Fair point though, queuing for the loo in the theatre is like queuing for Dishoom on a Friday night.
A lady named Sinead appeared and escorted us through the back ends of the creaky theatre. We went through a small door and then an even smaller one. I was beginning to worry that my family had set me up again, and that I was a door away from being on stage. (Read about my West End debut here.)
Eventually, we entered a very strange-shaped room. It was a corridor decorated like the Age of Innocence. There was champagne, wine, fizzy drinks and crisps laid out on a shiny brown dresser. Mum and I sat close together on a hard floral sofa. We could hear the muffling sound of the other audience members having fun in the bar… together.
Sinead stood to the side with her hands clasped as we sipped our drinks.
*….Sip…*
“Is anyone else a VIP tonight?” Mum asked.
“No, just you guys,” Sinead said and glanced at the floor. We could hear her thoughts…this is stupid.
We felt bad for Sinead having to stand in a room with two of the dullest VIPs ever. (I don’t even drink alcohol). But we didn’t want to be rude and leave the room early, so we resorted to trying to befriend Sinead by firing a zillion questions at her about her job.
“Do you get to meet any actors?”
“Do you get to work in other theatres?”
“What’s been your favourite production so far?”
Mum gets up. “Must pop to the loo.”
Please don’t leave me….
I smiled at Sinead. She smiled back. A roaring laugh came from the bar many, many doors away.
“So…” I began. “Have you ever seen a ghost in this theatre?”
Thankfully, the theatre was riddled with ghost stories so that filled the silence until show time. (Thank god for ghosts).
When I was in Manhattan, I took myself to Broadway to see Appropriate. The Americans are a different kind of theatre audience. They are enthusiastic. When Sarah Paulson came on, an eruption of whooping and cheering took over the theatre. I wanted to shout in my most BBC accent, “Can’t you see the lady is in character?!”
We Brits do not applaud actors when they come on stage, no matter how famous they are. Even if Laurence Olivier came back from the dead and appeared on stage, we would wait until the end of the performance before giving him a clap. That applause will be made with two hands. NO WHISTLING. Sometimes, we will even give the actors a standing ovation – IF they deserve it.
Yes, the Brits are a hard audience to crack. In the interval, you often hear mutters in the bar like, “I just think the director was missing the point that Miller was trying to make.” Or “She’s no Elizabeth Taylor.”
The last thing you want to do is to trust one of these audience members with a microphone, but that’s precisely what they did in An Enemy of the People, starring Matt Smith. I went along last summer to a matinee. It was all going brilliantly, (well I thought it was going brilliantly), until the interactive scene. In the second half of the play, they turn the audience into the ‘townspeople’ in the ‘local town hall’, and you have the choice to voice your opinion on the ‘council debate’. This would work in theory, but on a Saturday afternoon in Soho, not everyone understood the rules of drama.
“So, we’re going to open it up to the townspeople. What do you think we should do?” The actress announced.
The first person to speak was a man a few rows behind me. “I think Henrik Ibsen should have written a better play.”
“OOOOOO!” The audience went, like we were kids in a classroom.
The actress, a true professional, stayed in character. “What play, Sir? Who’s Henrik? We’re in a town hall, Sir.” The mic was swiftly moved on to the next person. “You there, the man holding the giant stick!”
The audience cracked up.
“The stick is because I’m disabled,” snapped the man in the mic.
The laughter stopped and every single person, including Matt Smith, squirmed.
The angry man began to speak. “I think this play…”
“What play, Sir?!!” repeated the drained actress.
She was going to get her agent on the phone after this.
Usually, I’m an impeccably well-behaved audience member. I put my phone on do not disturb, flight mode and turn it off. I don’t crack open cans in intimate moments, or wear my hair in a high bun. But there have been times I have let myself down, such as when I fainted in the middle of the stalls during A Little Life. (Read here). But even then, Mum waited until the interval to check if I needed to go to the hospital. (To disturb the audience in the middle of a play, even if your daughter may have died, is still unforgivable).
Sometimes, it’s not you, but the company you bring along. I like to go alone to the theatre so I don’t have to worry if the other person is enjoying the show. But when I went to see Tosca, I brought along one of my more eccentric pals.
We should have gone through Door D, but there was a small queue, so my friend insisted on going to Door E. We got to our row where everyone was settled. At the other end, we could almost see our empty seats. Basically, we either could disturb 15 people or 4 people. It was a no brainer. But before I could drag him back up the staircase, he ordered the row to their feet.
“Excuse me, we need to get over there!” he said, pointing far in the distance to the two empty red chairs.
The row glared at us like we had asked them to get up and strip off.
“Can’t you go to the other side?” barked the woman sitting directly below us.
“Yes, we can,” I said through gritted teeth, and attempted to drag my friend away, but it was like trying to drag a big stubborn rock.
“No, we’re here now. Come on everyone, get up!”
The woman surrendered, getting to her feet, angrily. The row reluctantly followed, all moaning and groaning as we shuffled past. “You should have gone the other way.” “You were meant to go through the other door.” Meanwhile my friend was firing back sarcastic comments to wind them up.
“I know. I know. It’s terrible.”
We finally got to our seats, and my friend had one final kick. He turned to the row and said, “OH NO! Wrong seats! Back we go!”
The row glared.
“JUST KIDDING! HAHAHA!”
I yanked his arm to sit him down. And then, because this was an opera, we had to sit in our row which we had been socially exiled from for the next three hours. If you’re going to make enemies with your fellow audience members, make sure it’s on your way out of the theatre.
BLOG SOUNDTRACK
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HAVE YOU GOT ANY WORK EXPERIENCE?
🎧 Too busy to read? Let me read for you! Skip introduction 1:55.
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I went into adulthood with an almost bare CV and the inability to bullshit. I had a film production degree, a Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Award and some work experience at Oxfam in 2005. That’s it. When you apply for an entry-level job, you discover a strange level that you’ve missed: the entry-to-entry-level job. Also known as work experience.
And so, off I went into London to fill my A4 piece of paper with experiences of work, so that I could be…. well, I wasn’t sure what I was going to be.
Experience 1- A Casting Assistant
I did have one work experience on my CV from when I was seventeen. I spent two days in a casting studio off Piccadilly Circus.. The first thing that happened was I was forced into a studio to have an impromptu photoshoot. I had a striped shirt on because I thought that’s what people wore to offices. Now I have a collection of professional photos where I look like I sell insurance. (I will not be showing them).
For the rest of the week, I helped out the casting assistant, who sat on a pink exercise ball, so she could tighten her core whilst getting paid. She insisted on having The Jungle Book soundtrack on repeat. Please…no more Bear Neccessities!
Every few hours, a new casting session would begin, and a group of similar-looking actors would fill the room. At 10 am, the room would be full of 5ft 10 blondes. A couple of hours later, it looked like an elderly home. I had little responsibility except to take a Polaroid of each actor and stick the photo on the forms. I thought I was doing a great job, until the casting assistant peeled off one of the photos and asked me to do it again.
“This time, get all of his head in!”
Experience 2 – A Music Video Runner.
Fresh out of film school, I got a job as a runner on an indie music video. It was a one-day shoot with multiple locations and an extensive shot list. One of my main jobs was driving the producer to the shoot in Kent and every location throughout the day. I was so worried about getting lost and wasting precious time that I added all the locations to my TomTom the night before.
The music video was directed by two hipsters who hired a vintage car. (Don’t ask me the make). It looked cool, but it broke down after the first take. The frazzled producer sent me on a mission to find some towing straps so they could pull the car along.
“Don’t be long”, she ordered as I drove off.
I had no idea where to get towing straps from. I tried BP garage, they didn’t have any but they did have some rope. I bought it because I didn’t want to return empty-handed. I was on my way back when the producer called. I didn’t want to seem like I was ignoring her call, so I tapped the phone as I went onto the roundabout.
“Hello?” I said, panicked.
BEEP! Goes the car coming at me from the right.
“What’s happening Mary? Where are you?”
“Nothing. On my way back.”
“Did you find a towing strap?”
I glanced at the blue rope on the passenger seat.
“Kinda.”
They didn’t use the rope.
Experience 3 – Marketing Intern for a food PR company.
I was making videos for small companies and writing a food and drink blog. I had a wonderful idea that I could combine the two, so I applied for work experience at a food marketing and PR company.
The office was quiet, too quiet. The only noise was many manicured nails, typing out press releases for restaurant openings and damage control statements for the coked-up chefs. Casual Fridays were a little noisier as they’re allowed to have the radio on.
I was put to work with various things, but what I hated the most was corporate push calls. I was instructed by the 22-year-old marketing executive to call HSBC in Canary Wharf and ask if they’d like a burrito voucher for their workforce.
She told me, “The highest person you can speak to, the better.”
It went like this.
“Hi, would you like a burrito voucher for your workers this Thursday?” CLICK “………Hello?……….. Hello?”
The perk of the job was I got to go to food events. I ate a lot of burgers in those months, and I went to a champagne tasting at The Hippodrome. One day, the marketing manager was sick, and nobody else was free, so they asked me to go to a supper club on an old tube carriage. They told me not to say I was an intern because my job status would insult their client. You sent the intern?!
I sat in a restored tube carriage in East London, surrounded by food journalists. We ate peppery parsnip soup as they spoke about the industry and the big names within it. I laughed and nodded along like I knew exactly what they were talking about, then the conversation turned on me.
“So Mary, what’s your job title?
I put down my spoon and wiped my mouth with a napkin to buy me some time.
Do not say you’re an intern. Do not say you’re an intern. Do not say you’re an intern.
“M-M-Marketing manager for…. food.”
“Oh, what does that entail?”
The carriage was silent.
“You know, promoting chefs and nice meals…and stuff.”
“Splendid. And who are the chefs that you work with? Heston? Artherton?”
“Erm…”
Let’s just say it was a far cry from Catch Me If You Can.
Experience 4 – The guy above the pub.
My Bloody Mary blog got me an invite to a blogger’s event at a restaurant in Sloane Square. I talked to man about how I wanted to learn Photoshop. The man told me if I helped him in the office for free, he’d give me free Photoshop lessons. Perfect.
His office was a small room above a pub on Fleet Street, which looked like it needed a good clearout. The man sat beside me on his big computer, and I worked off my laptop. I was doing some admin when he asked if I could help him create jokes for his book-themed bingo night.
“I need something funny that rhymes with 50. Can you think of anything?”
“Um. I don’t know. You could do something about 50 Shades of Grey?”
“Like what?”
I knew I was going down the wrong path.
“I don’t know. Get frisky with fifty…?”
He scowled like he had tasted something disgusting. “That’s not funny.”
By 11 a.m on Tuesdsay, the man had lost patience with his free worker. I asked if it was okay to send the email I had typed out, to which he huffed and then revealed that he was going on holiday next week, so I
really needed to learn things more quickly.
But… how will you teach me Photoshop if you’re in Tenerife?
I teared up on the commute home. I wasn’t quite sure how I got myself into this situation, where it looked like I was going to do this man’s job for free as he went on holiday. That evening, I sent him an email saying; ‘Thank you for your time and that I’m sorry to say this, but I had suddenly been hired on a major film project, and so, unfortunately, we were never going to see each other ever again. Kind regards. Mary.’
After that strange experience, things looked up. (I got paid). I worked as a waitress in a Kennington pub. I kept writing my blog and making corporate videos, until I finally got full-time employment in an advertising agency It kept me going until I moved to Australia, where I was met with a familiar barrier…
“But do you have Australian work experience?”
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THE LAYOVER
🎧 AUDIO QUACK. 🎧
Skip Introduction 1:35
Sausage had a long layover in London. She was returning to Washington D.C from Africa, and her connecting flight didn’t leave until 4:30 that evening. It was just enough time to squeeze in a brunch with her oldest friends. If it were me, I wouldn’t have left Heathrow because I’d be terrified of missing my flight even if it was eight hours until take off. Sausage, though, has never worried about time. The clock works for her, not the other way around.
Thanks to the Find a Friend App, I found Sausage coming out of Chiswick’s Tesco with a supply of Quavers. (Whenever in the UK, she stocks up on her favourite potato starch snack).
We wandered down to Lettuce’s flat, where Amy joined us. The four of us went to the same catholic girl’s school, so no matter how different we are as adults, we are bound together by memories of singing Ave Maria every Monday morning.
Lettuce, like the rest of us, lives alone and has made the space her own with a colour palette of creams and burnt orange. She had made an ambience with scented candles and Justin Timberlake’s acoustic set. I KNOW WE’RE SHOWING OUR AGE.
Her cream sofa and rug matched her cream Chihuahua named Effie, who took a fierce dislike to me from the moment I appeared at the doorstep. She followed me around and barked and barked as if shouting, Who are you? Who are you, bitch? Get out. Get out. Get out. Intruder! Intruder!”
It can make you feel self-conscious when a dog singles you out like that, like when a baby starts to cry when you hold them. It’s as if they can sense something is deeply wrong with you.
We sat in the living room with tea and spoke about girls we went to school with. Meanwhile, Effie was still yapping at my feet.
“Isn’t she married now?
Get out! Get out! Get out! Get out!
“Everyone is married now.”
Get out! Get out! Get out! Get out!
“Apart from us…”
Get out! Get out! Get out! Get out!
Before the fluffy demon could bark itself to death, we left the flat and went to the High Road Brasserie for brunch. It took us time to scout out the table because Lettuce has an ick about sitting close to a restroom or even having it in her eyeline. “If I’m paying to eat toast, I don’t need to see that.” We finally settled on a table around the corner and ordered three normal fry-ups, extra beans and no black pudding. And my plant-based fry-up with extra mushrooms. Love me some mushrooms.
Our conversations had moved on from the girls at school to our dating lives. We are all single in our early thirties and unsure what to think about it. Is it good or bad? Is it us or them? One thing is for sure: as time passes and we get more settled in our routines and sea-salted scented flats, it’s becoming increasingly less appealing to have to adjust to someone else’s needs.
“Like, what shall we have dinner?!” Amy piped up. “I don’t want to have to have a joint decision of what to eat. You eat what you want to eat, and I’ll eat what I want to eat!” she said, exasperated.
Speaking of food, our fry-ups had arrived.
“You want him to have the pick of the bunch, but he picks you,” Sausage said, waving her fork in the air.
“That doesn’t happen,” I argued.
“It does!” Sausage snapped back. “It happened to my friend. Her husband saw her from across the room and fell in love with her straight away.”
“He did not…”
“Did too!”
Lettuce interrupted the dispute by showing us a footballer’s Instagram page.
“We’re DM-ing each other,” she announced. The three of us squinted at a beautiful (10 years younger) man in a red kit.
“Does he play for Liverpool?” I asked.
“Not sure,” Lettuce said, inspecting the photo for clues. “Amy, who does he play for?”
Amy, who worked in the FA for a few years, glanced at the photo and said, “Belgium.”
“Ooh,” we said in a chorus.
“So, shall I date him?” Lettuce asked.
“No Lettuce!” we said in unison.
She put her phone away and sighed. “See, the thing is,” she said. “I don’t know what way to go. Do I go for the director or the actor? The businessman or the artist? The coach or the footballer?” As Lettuce listed her options, I realised her dating pool differed somewhat from mine in Oxford. Do I go for the theologian or the scientist?
The thing about being single in your 30s is that you don’t know what way you’re going to go. Who you may end up with, or if you’re going to end up with anyone at all. You don’t know if this is it; this is your life. You have arrived. The traditional family life that you had always expected is not going to materialise. And so even though there is happiness, it’s in a different way.
Or maybe not. Maybe tomorrow, you’ll walk into your coffee shop, and someone is there, waiting to change the path. (Someone Amy wouldn’t mind discussing her dinners with). And if that were to happen, we might look back at this time in our lives as if it was just a layover before a new journey began.
Sausage needed to leave to catch her flight. We went to Ealing Broadway and stood on opposite platforms, waiting for our trains. She was taking the Lilly line to Terminal 5. I was going to Paddington. My train arrived first, and we waved furiously at each other from across the tracks until the train got in the way.
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THE MUSICAL THEATRE FAILURE.
AUDIO QUACK
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Skip intro 1:10
Some of my friends hate musicals. They just can’t get on board with fifteen people singing about a daughter working out who her dad is, or the French Revolution or two teenagers hooking up over the summer.
Sex-Ed Tom and I, though, love a musical. On Saturday, we went to see Titanique, a mock musical where ‘Celine Dion’ tells her version of the story Titanic. It was my third time seeing it because, honestly, it’s the funniest musical I have ever seen on stage. (This Quack is not sponsored by Titanique).
My love for musicals goes way back to when I saw Annie. I was around five and had learned all of the songs. For a period of time, I would sit on my bedroom window ledge and look out to the skyline of Didcot and sing, “Maybe far away. Or maybe real nearby.”
I asked my Mum for a red cardigan so I could look like her.
“We can get you a red cardigan,” she said.
“And I want to be an orphan,” I demanded.
“Erm….”
I got my red cardigan, and Mum slept with one eye open until I moved on to my next musical fixation, Lion King. And then it was Cats. (DO NOT mention the film). And then Blood Brothers. West Side Story. Jersey Boys. Whatever musical it was, I fell in love with the big songs, the dancing, and the dramatic stares that the actors do when holding a note.
In the hope that my passion would turn into talent, my parents signed me up for a theatre school in Abingdon. It was three hours every Saturday afternoon, an hour of acting, singing and dancing. I learnt to leap across the room, sing Bare Necessities, and how to do BIG expressions on stage from a white-haired woman named Pam, who only had one expression which read, I could have been Judi Dench.
The school put on West Side Story. I was with the younger kids who came on stage once to sing Somewhere. “There’s a place for us…”
I was an Italian gang member in 1950s New York and wore combat trousers and a blue T-shirt from Gap, which I was super proud of. My grandparents came to watch my debut in Abingdon, and my grandmother’s critique was that I wasn’t pushy enough on stage.
“If you want to be on stage, Mary, you must push yourself to the front.”
I didn’t know what she meant. As far as I was concerned, if Verity felt strongly about being at the front of the stage, then who was I to stop her?
Sadly, my road to becoming a West End musical legend came to a grounding halt one Saturday when I refused to get out of Mum’s MX5. I was not in the mood for leaping anymore. I hated singing Bare Necessities over and over again. And Verity was being a bitch. The day after my MX5 sit-in, I quit drama school, and my parents had to wave goodbye to their hope of having a West End star daughter.
What made this blow worse was when their friend’s daughter became an actual West End Star. Siobhan competed in How to Solve A Problem Like Maria and went on to be the lead in musicals like Sandy from Grease and Sally Bowles in Cabaret.
“Siobhan is so talented,” Dad would say. “She can act. She can sing, she can dance.”
“She sure can,” I would reply, and then continue to eat my Ben & Jerry’s Caramel Chew-Chew.
Even though I knew I would never be a star, I still loved watching musicals on stage and the screen. When I was 17, my boyfriend took me to Cineworld for a gift to see High School Musical 3. I watched with gooey eyes as Zac Efron spun Vanessa Hudgens around a flower garden in the rain, singing, “Can I have this dance?” I turned to my boyfriend to see if he was as moved by the scene as I was. Nope. He had his head resting on his hand and looked as bored as someone in a maths class.
As a grown-up, musicals still have that same effect on me. I’ll watch a show and obsessively listen to the soundtrack for weeks afterwards. In a post last year, The Euro Final: The Musical, I wrote about the Euro final day being musical. It’s a small but very real fantasy of mine to live in a musical world where people break into song.
This is how it would be:
A man and a woman are sitting in the corner of Starbucks. The man says, “I’m sorry, but I’ve got so much on at the moment, so I don’t think I can give you the time and attention you deserve.”
Out of nowhere, a piano starts playing.
The man closes his eyes in despair. (He hates living in a musical world).
The woman starts singing.
🎶Oh, look what I have…. another emotionally unavailable man. 🎶
At the song’s crescendo, everyone in Starbucks is on the tables singing.
🎶Another.
Another.
Another.
Just another emotionally unavailable man! 🎶
Until that world exists. I will have to make do with the songs on stage and the screen…or do I?
After Titanique, Tom took me to a bar in Soho called “The Room Where It Happens.” I had never heard of it, but it’s an upstairs piano bar on Greek Street, which only plays musical theatre numbers until 3 am.
It was a dark, creaky place, with a layout of an old house that probably once was filled with a plague-ridden family. Tucked up next to a wall was a piano surrounded by (primarily) women screaming Let it Go. Sex-Ed-Tom and I slotted into the crowd and joined in. Summer Nights. Don’t Rain on My Parade. Colours of The Wind…We sang them all. Well. Sex-Ed Tom sang them. He sings in a choir every weekend and has been on choir tours, so he’s actually a good singer.
I, on the other hand, refused to do any more theatre school by the time I was 8 years old, and that was, audibly, very, very obvious.
BLOG SOUNDTRACK
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SEEKING APPROVAL FROM MY FARROW & BALL MOTHER.
AUDIO QUACK. Let me read for you! Skip Introduction: 1:37
A couple of years ago, I was inspired by Pinterest to paint a dark green statement wall in my bathroom. One evening, I got out my paintbrush, put on an audiobook (Curtis Sittenfeld’s American Wife) and changed my white bathroom to a green one.
By 1 am, I was sleepy and sloppy, so when I stepped back to admire my work, I found it to be a bit…’splatty.’
I lived with my ‘splatty’ bathroom for a while before I realised I couldn’t bear the sight of it. Whenever I tried to relax in my bubble bath, the green splodges on the skirting boards would catch my eye. It also didn’t help that whenever Mum came to visit, she would give her criticism, which would be artfully disguised as a throwaway comment.
“A light terracotta would work in here.”
“But I just painted it green.”
“Oh yeah….”
“You don’t like the green, do you?”
Her pitch would go up. “No. No. I do like the green. The green is nice.”
I would usually do the sensible thing and ignore my Mum, but Mum, unfortunately, knows what she is talking about. It’s her thing. She’s been the interior designer for a pub, a townhouse, a holiday home, a ski chalet… She can list the names of Farrow & Ball paints as if they were her nephews and nieces.
“I see some Elephant’s Breath on that skirting board.”
“This alcove needs to be Broccoli Brown!”
“Make it Cooking Apple Green!”
Growing up, Mum was always doing something to the home. When her first child, Jack, was born, she painted the skyline of our local town Didcot on his walls. For the first year of his life, he slept next to an illustration of the power station.
One of my earliest memories was watching Mum paint the lounge a dark plum. I stood by her and sprayed a bit of polish on the wall because I wanted it to sparkle. That was when I learnt you do not polish walls, especially freshly painted ones.
Mum saw the house as her canvas. There wasn’t Pinterest back then, but magazine cutouts and paint samples were always piled on the kitchen table. It was exciting living in a home that was constantly changing. One day the hallway was yellow, the next it was white. One day there was a wall, the next there wasn’t a wall.
My favourite time was the summer when Dad had his 40th birthday party. The kitchen was being gutted out, so to make it look less like a building site, fish, flowers and shapes were painted across the walls. At 8 years old, I was living in a real-life fairy house.
There was a constant smell of paint and the noise of a builder’s crackling radio. White dirty cloths would cover floors. Sometimes, there would be no floors at all, just beams that made for an excellent obstacle course. Dusty men would congregate in the kitchen for tea breaks with their paint-splattered trousers and shell-dry knuckles.
One of the first loves of my life was a blonde plasterer named Luke. I was six—he was sixteen. To the enjoyment of the other tradesmen, I followed Luke around until my Mum rescued him.
“Leave Luke alone,” she said, dragging me away.
“But I love him….”
There were tradesmen who would come and go, like Luke (who was scared away), and then there were more consistent ones.
In Year 1, I was tasked to draw my family. So, I did. I drew Me, Joe, Jack, Dad, and Mum. Next to Mum, I drew two other men, one bald and the other with dark scribble for hair and a beard. When the teacher came round to check the work, her eyes widened.
“Who are the other two men, Mary?” she asked carefully.
“That’s Andy, he does the lights. And that’s Lorenzo, he does the bricks.”
Fast forward to my thirties, and I’m standing in my green bathroom on a video call to Mum, asking what colour she thinks would be best.
“Yes, I think that very light terracotta would work well. Setting Plaster is its name,” she said as I moved the phone around the room. “And what are you going to do about that cabinet on the wall?”
“You don’t like the cabinet, do you?”
“No. No. I do like the cabinet. The cabinet is nice…”
So, before I painted, I risked my life by unscrewing the bathroom cabinet and balancing on the toilet lid as I removed it from the wall.
Then, it was time to call for help from the Dom of Painting – Hermione. (Whip sound).
Hermione is often dragged in by friends to help with painting, because she does the job with her teacher’s head on. I hesitated to press send on the text asking for help, knowing what it would entail, but it had to be done.
She arrived at my door with brushes and tape. Mountains of tape…
As expected, she had zero tolerance for slackness. She stood over me, inspecting my tape work.
“It needs to be at the edge! This is why you had splatty walls!” She peeled it off and re-stuck it again. After she was satisfied that all the tape was correct, we were finally allowed to paint.
We did it in one afternoon, and then, because I didn’t have a boyfriend, I used her boyfriend, Sam, to put up the shelves. He sat like a toddler in the hallway, organising the screws and plastic things as Hermione and I had coffee on the sofa. He was done in no time, and I had shelves where the old cabinet used to be.
Hermione was happy because she very much liked seeing Sam doing DIY. And Sam was happy that she was happy. And I was happy because now I could show Mum my new bathroom.
I put her on a video call.
“Better. So much better. I’m loving the Setting Plaster. And the door, it looks like that Railing colour.”
“It is Mum!”
“Looks beautiful!” she said. I sighed with relief. My bathroom had my Mum’s approval. But suddenly, she said, “What about one of those stand-alone baths?”
“You don’t like my bath, do you?
“No. No. I do like your bath. Your bath is nice…”
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#BODYGOALS
Can’t be bothered to read? Let me read for you | Skip introduction 1:54
Gym-uary. That’s what this month should be called. I don’t know why we get ourselves so motivated in January – It’s not like anyone sees you in February. (Unless you can be bothered to clip a suspender belt around your waist for Valentine’s Day).
But here we all are again, posting photos of dumbbells with captions like, ‘Let’s go.’ The Christmas jumper is now stuffed in the back of the wardrobe. And the Sweaty Betty sports bra is back to work. My friends are all at it; Hermione and her boyfriend Sam, told me they’ve signed up for a class every single day.
“Yelly lady yelled at me in boxercise. Then, in spin class. And now she’s going to yell at me in abs,” Sam said, resigned to his fate.
“It’s also heaving,” Hermione said, then straight after. “You should come.”
“As appealing as that all sounds,” I said. “I don’t like gyms at the best of times, so I’m certainly not going to go now, whilst everyone is there sweating out their mince pies. Besides, yelly instructors make me cry.”
“It’s important to build muscle, though,” Hermione nagged. She then mimed her workout in the middle of my kitchen. “I do this,” she said, opening an arm out one at a time like a very slow cheerleader. “And this.” Her arms curled up and down.
It brought back haunting memories of when I tried to do the gym in my twenties. I would sit on metal machines sprayed in Dettol to disguise the stench of humans. And I’d push the heaviest weight I could to try and get Rachel Green’s perky boobs. I must have been doing something wrong though, as all I got was robust armpits.
So, no gym for me, but that’s not to say I’m not doing anything. I’m just doing it out of public view. It was only yesterday that I used Sian’s Peloton login and did a 30-minute Pilates video in my living room, with an enthusiastic Californian instructor. I’m sure she wouldn’t have been as enthusiastic if she could have seen me.
“Well doooooone!” she encouraged from 5,000 miles away, as I wobbled in my side plank.
“Thank you,” I said through a tight breath.
“Work that core!” She cheered.
“What core?” I cried.
When I was a teenager in the early 2000s, the core was only something in the earth’s centre or the stick in the apple that weirdos would eat. Those were simpler days – when muscle was not required.
Size 0 was the trend back then. A quick flick through Heat magazine, and you were met with photos of celebrities with arrows pointing at ripples on their thighs. CELLULITE. It was claimed that Victoria Beckham was living off Nobu’s Edamame Beans. The teeny-tiny Olsen Twins were pictured in Manhattan holding black-americanos-Starbucks the size of their heads. It was accepted they had eating disorders, along with Nicole Richie… but they looked so cool in their boho clothes, so it didn’t matter. And there were also the shiny, tanned, lean magical creatures called Victoria’s Secret Angels, who strutted down the catwalk in lingerie as one of their rockstar boyfriends cheered them on from the sidelines.
As a teenager, I absorbed it all as I tried to learn what the world required of me as a woman. In my copious eyeliner and Abercrombie & Fitch hoodie, I researched the Victoria’s Secret model’s diet and believed that if I lived on steamed spinach and white fish, my body would be just like theirs. Maybe my legs would even grow ten inches.
At the age of 13, I began recording the food I ate and my weight. Once I learnt what calories were, food became a very unfun game: the fewer calories, the more points. An egg had 70 calories, even less without the yolk. Score.
There was little out there about exercise. The one workout I heard about was Britney Spears doing a zillion crunches a day. Apart from that, the sole purpose of a woman exercising was to burn the calories she had so naughtily consumed.
Despite all my efforts to steam vegetables, count calories and burn them off on a treadmill like a lab rat, at 16, I still wasn’t even close to a Size 0. I was short and hippy – and not in the cool Nicole Richie way.
“It’s easy to be a woman and lose weight because all you have to do is not eat,” a date told me once. In theory, he was correct. In practice, it’s harder than it looks. Once, I fasted for a day, and by 5 pm, I was such a hangry goblin that I could have jumped on someone’s shoulders and ripped their head off like the vampire in Twilight. I realised if I were to continue this fasting method, I would end up being skinny but lonely…because I would have murdered everyone.
And so, I would watch the Victoria’s Secret fashion shows and grab my hip fat, twisting it, wishing I could tear it off. On nights out, I would use every suck in clothing I could find and wobble in heels in an attempt to trick the world into thinking I was a tall Scandinavian model. I painted my body in biscuit-smelling-sheet-staining-St Tropez, disguising any dips in the skin. And I would crop photos before I uploaded them on Facebook – my friends and I standing in a group without our legs. It may seem obsessive, but that’s what you are when you’re a teenage girl. Throw in a trend like Size 0, and it all becomes a little sad.
So, as much as I groan about gym-uary, I appreciate the body-positive era. The emphasis is on health and strength…. rather than how many bones we can count. I like that Victoria’s Secret returned last year, and the Angels varied in shape. I like that Hermione showed me ways she’s pulled weights rather than telling me how many calories she had eaten that day. I’m glad the Size 0 days are gone.
– Or are they?
“Good evening, and welcome to the 82nd Golden Globes—Ozempic’s biggest night,” joked Nikki Glaser, the host of this year’s Golden Globes.
Ozempic was initially designed to treat diabetes but is now being used as a weight loss drug by Hollywood stars, Influencers, and anyone who can afford it. In the last year, we have seen celebrities shrink before our eyes. Ariana Grande, an icon to Gen Z, sparked concern when she turned up at the ‘Wicked’ premiere with a visibly thinner frame. Fashion experts have commented on the rise of extremely thin models. In their spring/summer ‘25 size inclusivity report, Vogue Business commented, “We are facing a worrying return to using skinny models.”
Trends recycle. In my lifetime alone, I’ve seen baggy jeans, crop tops, and bushy eyebrows come and go and come again. But I really do hope, for the sake of teenage girls absorbing the world right now, that the Size 0 trend is not making its comeback.
As for me, I’ll be on my mat, alone in my living room, trying to locate my core with help from my Californian Peloton friend.
(Thank Sian for the logins).
BLOG SOUNDTRACKS
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HOW TO GET GUTS WITHOUT ALCOHOL
🎧AUDIO QUACK 🎧
Skip Introduction | 1:30.
On New Year’s Eve last year, I was in a bar in Balham, swapping New Year’s resolutions with a random man. I told him that mine was to do karaoke. The man was shocked—it was as if I had told him I had never tried Marmite.
“How have you existed for over thirty years and have never tried karaoke?” he said, exasperated.
His reaction made me determined to achieve my goal.
But it’s now 2025… and I have yet to try karaoke. And there is no excuse – I had the perfect opportunity at a cosy sing-along piano bar.
A mother in her late fifties with a bob haircut was with her daughter, husband and daughter’s friends when she chose Rizzo’s solo from Grease. ‘There Are Worse Things I Can Do.‘
A young doctor requested “Somewhere Only We Know” by Keane but surprised the bar by changing the lyrics to a pro-vaccine song. The perplexed pianist played the familiar tune as the man sang the lyrics off his phone. “You can get it if you contact infected blood…or certain other bodily fluids…” He ended the song with, “go and get your vaccine….”
I was sitting at a high-top table, skimming the list of songs available. I had fantasised about what my karaoke debut would be like.
I always liked the idea of singing Black Velvet. I saw myself casually wandering around the bar, perhaps rubbing the hair of some unexpected man. Possibly hop onto a table as my gravelly, leathery voice filled the room.
I spent most of the evening in this dream state until the pianist announced it was time for the last requests. My belly fluttered. It was now or never. Yet, I couldn’t bring myself to raise my hand. I realised that if I was ever going to achieve my goal, I either needed singing lessons…. or alcohol.
Unfortunately, my 2018 New Year’s resolution was getting in the way of my bravery. I was 26 when I decided to do Dry January, and I haven’t had a drink since.
I suppose I should encourage my friends who are choosing to dry out this month with my sobriety wisdom. I should say something like, “The clear mind is a free mind, my child…” whilst wearing a robe, holding a stick and standing on a rock.
But I tell you now, it’s not one big kebab-free-rose-garden. In my seven years off the booze, I have found the lack of courage to do karaoke is just one of the downsides of not drinking.
I have watched bad-ass women in films come home from a day at a crime scene, kick off their heels, and pour themselves a massive glass of wine on their marble island. That’s cool. I want to be her. But then I remembered I can’t be as cool as her…. because I don’t drink.
The trickiest part of sober living though, is not in your kitchen when you want to be Gillian Anderson, but on nights out when you have to explain why you’re a full-time party-pooper.
Alcohol is one of the greatest tools for socialising. What’s a wedding without champagne? What’s a rugby match without Camden Hells? What’s a date night without a Malbec?
I have found the alcohol-free drinks quite handy in this department. If you hold something resembling champagne or beer, you at least look like you’re part of the event. If you still don’t feel like you’re fitting in though, I recommend dancing badly. Being brutally honest with everyone. Maybe cry at one point for no reason.
People will soon forget that you’re sober.
If you’re curious to know what the alcohol-free drinks taste like, Well, some taste like Fruit Shoots, whilst others are pretty accurate. But even if the taste is there, alcohol-free drinks cannot offer you that courage which pushes you onto a karaoke stage or even more minor things, like walking into a party all by yourself.
We’ve all been there. A gathering in a room above a pub. Some people you know, most you don’t. You shuffle in and hover next to a group. A man is dryly explaining his job as a zoo accountant.
You ask a stupid question like, “If the finances are in trouble, what is the first animal to go?”
And he replies with a straight face. “The zebras.”
The awkwardness continues. Someone says something you don’t quite hear. The small talk is fake. The laughs are exaggerated. It’s all so uncomfortable. It’s no wonder we gulp down our first alcoholic drink at the speed of light.
I remember how my first gin would go in a flash. It was there. It was gone. Magic. I saw alcohol as fuel for my social engine. Without it, I simply couldn’t…. go.
But after experiencing every social situation sober, I have accepted that the initial minutes are always going to be a little stiff. It’s like the first few steps of a run or the first sentence of a chapter – It just takes time to warm up.
An hour into the pub gathering, the zoo accountant is doing his best impression of a lion. (He roars in your face). So, you give him your best impression of an armadillo. (Collapse on the floor and roll). He still thinks your beer has alcohol in it.
I love AI. It made me wonder if perhaps the same strategy applies to karaoke.
It must always start awkwardly. You nervously step onto the stage and grip the mic like you’re trying to squeeze a fish to death. The pianist begins to play the heavy chords. You glance at the faces staring at you. They’re confused. What a strange song.
The first few lines come out quiet and shaky. “Missi…ssippi in the middle of a dry spell…” But by the time you get to the chorus, you are warmed up. You are on a table, belting. “Black velvet with that slow southern style!!!” You are a rock star. You are Alannah herself. Except your voice is not a leathery, sexy sound; it’s flat and broken. But it doesn’t matter because everyone thinks you’re absolutely wasted.
And so, this 2025, like unused annual leave, I am transferring my New Year’s resolution across. This will be the year I finally do karaoke.
If you are drying out this January I highly recommend reading
This Naked Mind: Control Alcohol by Annie Grace. I found it super helpful when giving up booze.
The Quack is also available on all popular podcast apps.
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A CHRISTMAS TREE FOR ONE.
🎧 AUDIO QUACK. (If you despise reading) 🎧
Skip introduction: 1:38. Also available on all popular podcast apps.
In December 1880, Queen Charlotte, the German wife of George III, put up a Yew tree in the Queen’s Lodge in Windsor for a Christmas party.
“Charlotte, why is there a tree inside the house?” George III yelled.
“It’s something we do back in Germany. I thought, perhaps, it would be nice to introduce it to England.”
George III rolled his eyes. “Are you barking mad? The Englishman won’t allow trees in their homes!”
Forty years later, Queen Victoria’s husband, Albert, announced he would bring his home country tradition to England by having a fir tree in the house for Christmas. He had been quite bored recently and, therefore, quite irritating to Queen Victoria, so she was happy he had something to do.
“What a wonderful idea, Albert!” she said.
And every year after that, it was Albert’s job to set up the tree. In 1848, an illustration of the royal tree was printed in the press, and soon, every Englishman had a tree in their home at Christmas.
Most people can remember at least one decoration that hung on the tree in the home they grew up in. Our tree was in the living room, dressed with purple baubles and gold reindeers. I remember the sweet pine scent that would overwhelm the room. And the way the branches got in the way of the telly for anyone sitting on the far left of the sofa.
I haven’t bothered with a real Christmas tree in the last few years. Trees are for families, couples and kids. Not for thirty-somethings, living on their own.
It seemed bleak to have a proper Christmas tree for my pleasure only. I had this image of it glowing in the corner as I watched The Office with my baked potato on my lap. Maybe it would get so bad that I would grow attached to its presence in the room and say goodnight to it.
I would switch off its lights. “Good night, tree.” And leave the dark, silent room.
This year, I had a change of heart. I would get myself a proper Christmas tree, even if it was only for me.
On Sunday, I went to the Covered Market in Oxford, the home of the oldest piece of ham in the world. (It’s proudly displayed in a butcher’s window). In the centre of the market, below the floating White Rabbit, is the best florist in town, ‘The Garden of Oxford’.
Their Christmas trees were lined up, starting graciously tall and ending short and stout. I needed to carry the tree back home, so as elegant as the tall ones were, realistically, I would have to go for the plumper option. I lifted the shortest one to see if I was strong enough to carry it. Just about.
As I inspected its branches, a couple in their fifties came striding over. The man in a buttoned-up Barbour jacket went to the grandest tree of the bunch.
“How about this one, Cupcake?” he said to his partner.
The lady, or ‘Cupcake’, scanned the tree as if doing some mental photoshopping.
“Mmm. Maybe this one?” she said, gesturing to a tree at least three inches shorter.
The man inspected Cupcake’s tree, his tree, and then Cupcake’s face. This wasn’t a discussion.
“Yeah, alright then,” he muttered. He dragged the tree out and brought it into the shop.
While all this was happening, I hovered by my tree like a creep, unsure if we were allowed to take it into the shop or if we were expected to wait for someone to serve us. Thankfully, Barbour Jacket and Cupcake answered my question. I pulled out my chosen tree, like King Arthur, retrieving the sword from the stone. The flower shop girl cocooned it in a white net, and the journey home began.
If you want to attract attention to yourself, I highly recommend walking around with a tree. I felt like Father Christmas, spreading joy throughout the town. One elderly woman wrapped in a green scarf on her mobility scooter scooted past with a smile and said, “How Christmassy.”
Nobody needs apps. They just need to walk around with strange objects.
By the time I got to my apartment, I was ready to ‘de-tree.’ It seemed to have gained weight on the walk. Either that or my feeble arms were failing me. The needles kept pricking me too. Why did we pick the sharpest tree there was for this tradition?
I took one big breath before tackling the three flights of stairs, then dramatically piled into my flat and fell onto the sofa, where I watched an episode of The Office as I recovered from the excursion.
The art direction of the tree was influenced by the hints of orange in my rug. I probably should have played some Wham or put on The Holiday whilst I decorated it, but Jim and Pam had just got together, so…..
My holiday craftwork isn’t outstanding, so the tree didn’t take long to decorate. Like my Halloween pumpkins, it was pretty… basic. The lights were a little wonky, and the baubles hung without real thought. There was one final thing to do, and that was to put the angel on top. I didn’t have an angel. I had something better. I had Mr. Darcy.
One of the best things about having your own tree is that you can decorate it exactly how you like without being questioned. (Even if that tree ornament is a felt version of Mr. Darcy from Etsy).
“Why is a tiny man in a suit hanging off our tree?”
“It’s not just any man, Steven, it’s Mr. Darcy.”
“Was he like, one of the three kings or something?”
But there was no Steven, so this conversation did not take place, and Mr. Darcy stayed on the tree without question.
Later that evening, I settled on my sofa. Baked potato on my lap. The Office on the telly. It could have been any old evening, except now I have a glowing tree in the corner – all thanks to Queen Charlotte.
BLOG SOUNDTRACK
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‘TIS THE SEASON TO FACE THE MUSIC.
🎧 Audio Quack 🎧
CBA to read? Let me read it for you. Skip Introduction 3:05
When I was a kid in the 90s, there were two ways to mark the countdown to Christmas. The first was the humble chocolate advent calendar. The second was the Coca-Cola ‘Holidays are Coming’ TV advert.
The countdown has changed a bit since then. For one thing, it starts earlier. In late November, the John Lewis advert premiers on our TV and dominates the office chat the following day. “The Fox? Yeah. When it’s jumping. Bawling.”
December arrives, and you open the first door of your not-so-humble advent calendar. Gone are the days of the teeny-tiny chocolate. Brew Dog and Molton Brown are just two of the many brands offering ‘luxury calendars.’ Now, you can countdown to the birth of Jesus with a can of Punk IPA or a teeny bottle of pink peppercorn body butter.
Recently, another tradition has been added. In the first week of December, our Spotify becomes wrapped.
This is when the Swedish music streaming service Spotify presents you with a vibrant, animated PowerPoint presentation about your music habits throughout the year. And this could feel invasive and unnecessary, but we’re too intrigued to care. Tell me, Spotify, who am I?
At the end of the presentation, they offer virtual cards with your five top songs and artists and how many minutes you’ve spent listening to music that year. Some friends happily share their cards on social media, while others keep theirs very quiet.
This is understandable. The music we listen to gives an insight into who we really are. When we want someone to like us, we tend to use the get-out card of, “I listen to a bit of everything.” But our Spotify Wrapped unveils this lie. You didn’t tell me that you were a fan of Take That, Stephen.
Since the dawn of puberty, I have used music to make friends or to try and make someone fall in love with me. (There was a slightly awkward Green Day phase).
I was a classic teenager, constantly blasting music into my ears. Before the iPod came out, I would carry a CD wallet and Walkman everywhere. My parents would comment that I was being antisocial, but I didn’t see it that way.
Bloc Party’s new album, A Weekend in the City, was one of the only things I could talk to boys about. In the classroom, I would often be attached to my friend Meg via a white wire. She had one bud in, I had the other, and she’d show me her latest favourite song. The lyrics were her MSN name for that week.
“Things you say they sound so fake. And make me drink until I ache.“
(10 points if you know the band and the song).
Every school had a LimeWire kid who would burn illegal CDs. That was me. I specifically remember making a CD with Don’t Phunk With My Heart by Black Eyed Peas for one of the older girls. She had cornered me in the hall after assembly and asked me to do it. I was just happy she knew my name.
Liking the right bands was also essential. In my day, everyone was into indie-rock – the craft beer of music genres. The Subways, The Kooks, The Libertines…and these were the bands I told people I listened to. I was less inclined to reveal that I also listened to Avril Lavigne and McFly. And I was aggressively against anyone putting my iPod on shuffle at parties, just in case my full music taste was exposed. But there were times I let it slip….
I was 15 when I had a Christmas house party. My crush was in my room, and things were going great…until he spotted the red album in my CD rack. He made a slight snort sound.
“Why do you have the Ting Ting’s?”
I had to think quickly.
“Oh. My auntie got it for my birthday. Super cringe.”
I’m relieved Spotify Wrapped was not around in my school days because my delicate ego would have been smashed to pieces. Even this year, as a grown-up, I find myself wincing at my Wrapped statistics.
It’s no surprise that Taylor Swift was my most listened-to artist this year. Fine. But I didn’t realise how much I listened to her.
I spent 10,000 minutes listening to Tay Tay this year. I was in the 0.5% of listeners. OH, GOD. I cringed harder than when my crush discovered my Ting Tings album. It got worse. Taylor Swift appeared on my screen in her sparkling leotard. Oh no. She had been dragged away from her busy schedule to film a video message to thank me, a 33-year-old woman, for being one of her top listeners. Even she looked a little uncomfortable doing it, like the prom queen thanking the creep for voting for her.
(Yes, I know she wasn’t actually talking to me…before anyone calls this out).
My top song was I Can Do It With a Broken Heart. It’s a catchy song. It was so catchy that I listened to it 161 times, apparently
🎶 All the pieces of me shattered as the crowd was chanting “More”
I was grinning like I’m winning, I was hitting my marks
‘Cause I can do it with a broken heart (one, two, three, four) 🎶
My second favourite song was THANK HEAVENS, not one of Taylor’s. It was Maggie Rogers. I hadn’t taken much notice of Maggie until I heard ‘So Sick of Dreaming’. …and then I listened to it again and again and again and again….
🎶Oh, ’cause I’m (ooh-whoa)
So sick of dreamin’
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah 🎶
I became so obsessed that I dragged Sausage to Maggie’s gig in Madison Square Garden in October. Sausage didn’t know who she was, and at one point, I looked over and saw her trying to Shazam the song that Maggie was singing live.
Just after Maggie sang ‘Alaska’, Sausage yelled in my ear. “When’s she going to sing that Alaska song?”
It gave me flashbacks to when I went with Hermione and Amy to see Taylor Swift’s Era’s concert.
“What era is this?”
“FOLKLORE!”
They only had large T-shirts left, so now I have a Maggie dress. I thought my friends had problems. Why don’t they know the eras of Taylor? Or the songs of Maggie? But then Spotify Wrapped came out. And it revealed that I had spent 88,647 minutes listening to music this year. That is two months of my life not talking to people.
So, maybe it’s me who has the problem.
🎄 QUACK’S TOP 5 XMAS SONGS 🎄
LAST CHRISTMAS – WHAM
I WISH IT COULD BE CHRISTMAS EVERYDAY – WIZZARD
FAIRYTALE OF NEW YORK – THE POGUES
WALKING IN THE AIR – ALED JONES
HOW DO YOU FLY? – JAMIE CULLUM
BLOG SOUNDTRACK
THE QUACK 