Image by Frank Horvat

Google the words Spare Rib and, amongst the barbecue recipes, you’ll find details of an iconic feminist publication that’s about to be taken out of mothballs.  The online magazine, promising ‘life, not lifestyle’ is set to be the antidote to the vacuous pout of Grazia and at its helm will be Charlotte Raven, the disaffected journalist  forever saddled with the unfortunate moniker of being Julie Birchill’s lesbian lover.

The first edition of Spare Rib came out in June 1972 when On the Buses was considered entertainment and I was just a twinkle in my mother’s womb.   Founded by Rosie Boycott and Marsha Rowe, the publication was banned for sale in WH Smiths and caused no end of furore for its frank sexual content and uncompromising attitude to gender politics. So shocked were the establishment that Rowe herself received a letter from the Home Office requesting that she left the country forthwith.  These days you need to be Abu Qatada to get mail this radical.

The Spare Rib launch party will feature ‘costumed penitents’ (among them the ubiquitous George Galloway), serving up cocktails and performing pointless and repetitive tasks, like sweeping up and worrying about work/life balance.  This ‘turning of the patriarchal tables’ is a one night only, high energy event which, we’re told, will finally bury the myth that feminists can’t dance.  Whatever the Third Wave of Feminism might be, it isn’t niche and it definitely doesn’t do lentils.

But do we really need Spare Rib?  We’re not Afghanistan, or Saudi Arabia.  We can drive cars and ride bicycles, vote and be educated.  We can walk around unchaperoned without the need to wear a shroud as if we are the living dead.   Doesn’t it all feel a bit angry, now we have equality?  After all, women, if they have the courage and tenacity, now have as many choices as men and can live exactly as they choose without fear of ridicule or reprisal.

You wouldn’t think so if you followed @EverydaySexism on Twitter.  The Everyday Sexism project was set up to ‘catalogue instances of sexism experienced by women on a day to day basis’.  Anyone who has been subjected to discrimination at work or found themselves on the receiving end of the kind of unsavoury remark that made them want to go home and exfoliate – yes, that’s you, Ms Female with a Pulse – you are encouraged to tweet your tawdry experiences here.  Nothing is too major or too seemingly trivial because Everyday Sexism is all about exposing the niggling undercurrent of chauvinism to which we have all become anaesthetised.  From the opportunistic leering of the workman to the glib remarks of the narcissistic boyfriend hell bent on denting your self-esteem, Everyday Sexism is a murky cave you can shout into and listen to the echo coming back, all from people who’ve had experiences just like yours.

I signed up to it for approximately three days.  The deluge of depressing 140 digit revelations that poured into my twitter feed like so much effluent made me want to don a wimple and plot the downfall of the male race.  And speaking as the daughter of a man whose idea of female liberation was having a flask of coffee put by his bed each night, so my stepmother didn’t have to get up at 5 am to switch the kettle on, I thought I was impervious to the dark arts of the misogynist.

If the 23,500 tweets to date don’t convince you that we’ve still got a long way to go, the hate mail received by Everyday Sexism founder, Laura Bates, might.  Since the project’s conception only one year ago, threats of violence, rape and even death have filtered into her inbox with alarming regularity.  Add to this the fact that we still live in a world where phenomenally successful women feel the need to pander to their husband’s egos (Beyonce’s current ‘Mrs Carter’ tour really makes me want to throw my hands up) and you wonder if it isn’t time for a new mouthpiece for feminism.

Our newsagents’ shelves desperately need to offer a real alternative to the mainstream triumvirate of celebrities, cupcakes and childcare, but let it be something that is witty and fearless and entirely devoid of cliché.  MP’s serving Bloody Marys in Bunny Girl outfits might not say equality, but it’s not timid and it makes for good satire.  Haters are going to hate, but I hope the newly revamped Spare Rib becomes the kind of All Girls’ Club I can get on board with.  One that punches its own weight, knows how to let its hair down and is inclusive to everyone.  Even men.

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Image of Givenchy hat by Frank Horvat 1958

True to British form, I was all over the BBC Class Calculator this week and was horrified to discover I am an ‘Emergent Service Worker’.  What could possibly be drearier?  The definition of the term emergent is to ‘rise above a surrounding medium, especially a fluid’.  The word service puts me in mind of pasty-faced maids in mob caps or the act of cleaning public conveniences.  So far, so delightful, but what does it all mean, because I haven’t done servile since 1978.

Roughly translated, this category comprises of people who can knock about with dukes or dustmen, don’t have a mortgage and are quite partial to a bit of Alan Bennett.  Which is interesting because I was at an Alan Bennett play last night and he succeeded in defining class far better than any BBC commissioned sociologist ever could.  According to our gentle and retiring national treasure, it’s something to do with social awkwardness.  It’s about embarrassment and what you’re embarrassed about, which makes sense when you think about it.  Broadly speaking, working class people are embarrassed if they don’t have the right trainers, middle class people are embarrassed if they don’t have the right career and upper class people are embarrassed about absolutely nothing.  Not even Prince Philip on a public tour of Uganda.

The trouble with this particular survey is it’s really all about property. Like you, I went back in and clicked on the option for owning my own gaff just to see if I couldn’t socially mobilise myself and before Nicky Haslam could say ‘How Common!’, I was propelled four rungs up the ladder to ‘Established Middle Class’.  Just one notch down from ‘Elite’, if you please.

Not that ‘Established Middle Class’ doesn’t give me the vapors, conjuring up as it does,  visions of my school friends’ mothers I’d sooner forget.  Secret afternoon drinkers in headscarves, reeking of palomino ponies and looking down their nose at me as they puffed on a cheroot.  Or worse, the kind that held Tupperware parties and were comfortable with being given ‘housekeeping money’ because when I was growing up being middle class meant something quite different.  Olive oil was something you got from the chemist to unblock the wax in your ears and if you left your child in a pub garden with a bottle of coke and a packet of crisps for company and it was all PERFECTLY OK.

So, what if you don’t fit comfortably into any particular category?  What if, like me, you have been a sometime council house dweller, privately educated woman who knows how to get out of the back of a Bentley, but isn’t adverse to a pork pie?  Do you think satellite dishes are an abomination?  Do you roll your eyes whenever you hear someone in Waitrose saying, ‘No Joshua, that’s Mummy’s Boden catalogue, now eat your Yakult’?  More importantly, do you disapprove of them packing their sobbing child off to boarding school at the age of seven, but could quite handle their private box at the Opera House? This readers, puts you into the best category of them all.   You are an exotic.  You wear the invisible cloak of a good education and although you can hold your own in a room full of bankers and socialites, ultimately you’d rather blow it out for some subversive cabaret and a hip flask of Armagnac.

As ever, Alan Bennett gets it right.  ‘I’ve never been very good at belonging’.

* Untold Tales by Alan Bennett is currently playing at the Duchess Theatre and is rather good.

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Not that I’m knocking the event itself – it’s heartening and fun – but let me put my hand up on this one.  I may possess the Celtic colouring and the name of its oldest clan, but for the other 364 days of the year, I feel about as Irish as a little plastic leprechaun perched atop its little plastic toadstool.  I’m third generation Irish, and what this means, readers, is if you cut me, I don’t exactly bleed Barry’s Tea.

I’ve never really bought into the whimsical view of Ireland.  Yes, it’s beautiful.  Yes, Taytos are the greatest crisps known to man, but Jaysus there’s a lot of things about the place that get on my tits.  Let’s list them now, shall we?  There’s Bono for a start.  Then we’ve got the Corrs, Michael Flatley’s hair, Gay Byrne’s face, people spontaneously blowing on a frigging penny whistle when you’re trying to have a quiet drink, anyone saying ‘fair play to him’ in a Dublin accent (I’m looking at you, Westlife), not to mention the weather, the religion, the booze-sozzled delusion and the existence of red lemonade. Sorry, but when it comes to Ireland, my position is clear. The smell of peat fires, I love.  The smell of burning martyrs, I can live without.

If I had any Irish traits, it would be these.  One:  I eat really fast.  Two:  I can’t wait for the other person to stop talking, so I can start talking. The fear that my food will be taken away from me is clearly etched onto my DNA like a potato print.  I’ve never got this ‘save the best bit until last’ nonsense.  NO, eejits!  Eat it now.  Before you get the hunger.   And when it comes to the ability to talk and flatter, me and the Blarney Stone might have gone a bit further than just first base.

But in this world of blarney, these remain the truisms:

1.  Only a poverty racked nation would invent a little green man who hid a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.

2.  Excessive irish dancing gives you legs that go up and down like tree trunks.

3.   Saying RTE 1 and RTE 2 in a thick northern Irish accent NEVER gets old.

4.  Ireland may have musicality flowing through its veins, but it did also give us Johnny Logan, Bewitched and Dana.

5.  And finally, on the all important subject of Daniel O’Donnell.  Straight men don’t drape pink cashmere sweaters over their shoulders.

Sláinte!

The post Here’s the Craic appeared first on High Heels and Reprobates.

The most glorious thing about Not Going Out in January is you never have to listen to anyone bitching about their annual detox whilst gazing puppy-eyed at your large, warming glass of Shiraz.   As a game plan, the self-imposed detox baffles me.  Hey, I’ve got an idea and it’s an absolute belter.  Let’s wait for the coldest, darkest, most miserable, cash-strapped month of year and make it even worse by depriving ourselves of booze, fatty food and any other vice that gets us through the dismal day.  Then we’re all going to go circuit training until we turn blue.  Sound good?   Please.  Someone pass me the Ben and Jerry’s and a pair of big socks and let’s get stuck into my Dallas box set.

By February, of course, I’m getting twitchy.  The imp of mischief is back on my shoulder and its saying get out of those hideous jogging bottoms you bone idle mare and let’s go and watch some cabaret.  This year has been jump started by an invitation to the London Cabaret Awards at the glory hole that is the Royal Vauxhall Tavern.  Hilariously, I am a VIP – or so it said on the email – which means that now I’m staying in, all that going out has finally paid off.  My handbag for the evening will be long-time cabaret side kick Mr C-H, a serious Arts Professional and reluctant Über Gay with a discerning line in flashy jackets.  Fortunate really as we have been informed the dress code is ‘showbiz’.

Cabaret isn’t what it was five years ago.  Or rather the audience has changed so dramatically, that some of material has been watered down when what it should be is pitch black and a bit snarly.   Personally, I don’t want to see cabaret in a ritzy venue.  I don’t want to go to the Café de Paris, pay £11 for a gin and tonic and rub shoulders with the civilians who’ve just caught on.  That’s why I love the Royal Vauxhall Tavern and the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club because nothing says cabaret like a drag queen bust up on a sticky dance floor.  It might be campy and frou-frou on top, but if it rolls over you can see its dark underbelly.  Plus you can get a glass of wine for £3.75.  This, in my book, constitutes a good night out, but then I am an East End gal.

The last time I was at the RVT if I recall, the floor was very sticky indeed.  Fancy Chance was bursting inflated condoms with a large pin whilst dressed as a female Pontiff.  This readers, is what low brow satire is all about.  The hapless acts that came afterwards and skidded around stage on the lube she left behind was far funnier, but frankly you had to be there.

High Heels and Reprobates will be at the London Cabaret Awards on 13 February.  There will be sequins, there may be feathers….

The post The Art of Not Going Out appeared first on High Heels and Reprobates.

Darlink, this year I plan to smoke more and wear bigger diamonds.

I don’t care what anyone says, the world is divided into two halves.  Those who love New Year and those who’d rather stay home with their thumb in a pot noodle watching Jools Holland do Honky Tonk. And yes, for long time subscribers, I have used that line before.   Exactly three years ago to be precise when, unbeknownst to me I was about to sample the most turgid New Year’s Eve of my life in the throbbing party metropolis that is Oxford.  Groups of academics standing around on parquet flooring with Fox FM on very low in the background anyone?  Frankly, for my favourite night of the year, Jools and the Noodles would have been a boon.

To misquote our dear Monarch, 2012 is not a year I will look back on with undiluted pleasure. Mostly it’s been an exercise in shedding toxic waste and, as I have already moved several mountain ranges in the past twelve months, 2013 will be marked by resolutions that are WAFER THIN.  I aim to wear bras and knickers that match, moisturise my neck daily before it turns turkey and buy a new lampshade for the flat.  And that readers, runs the depth of my commitment to self-improvement.   I do not desire abs you could cut your hand on or a pelvic floor like a bulldog clip. I do not want to push my boundaries (Hey! Try tumour surgery), sky dive in a gimp suit for charidee or embrace new sodding cultures.  Besides, I have already found exactly the culture I’m looking for in this delightful little pocket of East London.  And who wouldn’t want to live in an area where teenage girls set light to night buses when the driver doesn’t let them on, innit.

In May of next year, High Heels will be four years old.  As someone who can barely commit to a gerbil, I’m quietly astonished I’ve been doing this for so long.  Thanks so much to everyone who follows my antics and for all your kind words this year.  I am sharpening up my pen for your entertainment.  As for my esteemed guests for the New Year’s Soiree at High Heels Towers tonight; lychee bellinis, smoked salmon canapés and Eartha Kitt awaits. Jools Annual Hootenanny, however, does not.   I can’t get a signal for BBC without a coat hanger.  True story.

Wishing everyone a sparkly New Year! xx

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Image by Mario Testino

Ms High Heels, urban flâneur and attender of the opening of a fridge door, is back in the arena of the gainfully employed.  Monday morning saw me fully woded up for rush hour battle, ram raided by pushchairs and ears assaulted by the tinny sound of someone else’s R&B.   No really, I’ve missed that whole face squashed against the door thing whilst trying to locate the horoscopes in Metro.  What a smorgasbord of joy!  The lattes you can’t afford but can’t live without; the lunch break you don’t get; not enough time to dick around on Pinterest or read The Daily Mash.  But then that’s the trouble with working.  It does rather eat into one’s day.

After a brief sabbatical, I am now back in the saddle and am delighted to report I will be organising a Hollywood Glamour Fundraising Gala at a certain Art Deco hotel in Mayfair.   A movie star and his supermodel girlfriend once famously bathed in champagne here and, although I won’t be divulging any details about the event itself, this one might even be gracing the pages of that most baffling of publications, Tatler.

Now I don’t know about you, readers, but I’ve never really got Tatler.   As someone who couldn’t give a fig about social statements, Bystander is as bewildering to me as trigonometry, but my god isn’t it a hoot watching posh people party?   Counting the chins of Fizzy Daventry-Farquar as she arm wrestles Julian Fellowes to the last canapé; seeing the Duke of York holding his gut in whilst his Social X-ray companion grips him with her tawny claw.  Then there are the playful husband and wife shots out there on the dance floor.  It says we’re young, we’re rich and we’ll go anywhere for a wiggle to Abba and a free Jo Malone scented candle; absolute tarts for it.

The best thing about Tatler is of course, The List.  A Who’s Who of crowned heads, rock star offspring and the odd exotic thrown in, these people really know their way round an artichoke.  You can even do a search for someone to see how they rank.  A sort of googling for toffs, if you will, with added opportunities to bolster their position by tweeting their illuminating profiles.  Who knew Peaches Honeyblossom Michelle Angela Vanessa Geldof loved a fish finger sandwich?  Or that Prince Harry’s latest squeeze was fazed by nothing and liked smiling (indispensable attributes when half the planet has seen your boyfriend wearing nothing but a friendship bracelet and a Las Vegas hooker)  And as for Bryan Ferry, well……he appears to have an awful lot of children out on the town right now.

Tatler helpfully supplies their time-pressed readers with visual motifs to indicate, at a glance, if each entrant is among other things, minted (wallet), shaggable (lipstick), marriage material (wedding band) or more connected than Jay Gatsby (address book). This is the one stop shop for the social bounty hunter with an array of well-thumbed guides offering you a million and one ways to spend ‘your hard-won after-tax income’ (do feel free to place your fingers delicately down your throat at this juncture).  Because once you’ve dropped your kids off for someone else to bring up (Schools Guide), you can get your chakras rebalanced (Spa Guide) and hubby can practice shooting small birds in a pair of plus fours (Hunting and Fishing Guide).  Kick off your 2013 with the lowdown on nipular protocol, as Tatler asks:  Are Nipples the New Cleavage?

This is the gift that just keeps on giving…..

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Image by Irving Penn

It can be a crazy old life in London.  Sometimes you just need a moment out of the melee to regroup and reconnect. To this end, I’ve been on the hunt for the perfect meditation class to rebalance my chakras.  Last night, in honour of Diwali, I popped out to a trendy alternative therapy joint in Islington in search of my own inner light.

The couple who run the class seem like nice, well-meaning and slightly unhinged people so let’s just call them Jonathan and Michelle.  Jonathan is young and puppyish and is wearing a top knot.  Michelle is blonde and pretty and looks a bit stressed, which is unfortunate for a meditation teacher.  I’m sitting next to a man who looks like a fakir and was probably levitating above his kaftan long before these two were gnawing on a Farley’s Rusk.  The rest of the class is mostly women, apart from Eric Clapton’s doppelganger in the corner, who’s got a neater beard and sounds a bit stoned.  Normally, when I do these classes they’re run by Buddhists and so far this set up seems fairly similar……until the word is uttered that strikes fear and dread into any discerning heart.

Jonathan invites us to do some sharing.

Now let me clarify something here.  High Heels does not engage in sharing.  She may share after a skipped dinner and four espresso martinis.  She may share if she’s known you for at least five years, but apart from that, her overwhelming preference is to keep it zipped.  I am unclear when this dreaded activity is going to take place, but it appears to be on the menu at some point in the evening.  Bombshell delivered, we move onto a bit of cursory meditating or ‘sitting’ as Jonathan and Michelle call it.  This is challenging when you’re competing with the whoops from the Zumba class next door, but valiantly I attempt to ‘drop into my body’.

It’s not working.

Once I’m ‘back in the room’ (did I ever actually leave?) we’re all asked to close our eyes and hold out our hands.  Fabulous!  I can get on board with a guessing game.  My palm is then crossed with something very small and spongy.  My first thought is mmmm Jelly Tot.   Me want to eat.  But no, this is a spiritual journey that I’m about to embark upon and it’s important not to judge.  Jonathan encourages us to explore the item with our fingertips, examining its contours, textures and ridges.  You know, really get inside it; ask yourself questions as if you were an alien and this was your first time on Planet Earth.  Hey, it’s OK, I’m thinking.  I’ve been to drama school; I can roll with this shit.  I’ve rocked around on a tightly sprung floor pretending I’m wearing a nappy and sung my name out in ‘colours’ with co-ordinated hand movements and soft knees.  I’m impervious to embarrassment.

I check mystery object for powdery sugar and find no traces.  I give it a little stretch to see if it breaks.  Blimey, it’s a bit tough this Jelly Tot.  Has it been in the bottom of Michelle’s handbag since Easter or am I completely pissing in the wind and it’s, in fact, a leather pouffé in miniature or some kind of fairy’s bean bag?  This physical exploration goes on for rather a long time until finally Jonathan invites us to place the item up to our ear to see what sound it makes.  I give it a bit of a tentative roll and discover, to my delight, that this thing is talking to me.  The Jelly Tot is actually talking to me and it’s saying something squidgy.  My mind is blown.

As if this isn’t enough of a thrill for a Monday night, we then get to bring it to our lips to experience what it feels like there.  Am I about to be poisoned by a strange cult and shipped off for a life of debauchery in foreign lands?  We can only hope.  I run it across my mouth, only I’m smelling liquorice on my fingers, so now I’m super confused on the confectionery front.  Come on Jonathan, let me bite this sucker, you little tease.  I need to know what this damn thing is.  Please let me sink my porcelain veneers into it.

Turns out ITS A FUCKING RAISIN.

This readers, can only be a metaphor for life.   You go out there brightly hoping for a fun- packed, sugar-coated treat and someone serves you up a shrivelled grape that’s disappointing in a scone.

The sign of a truly entertaining meditation class is when they use props.  If, like last night, the end of your ‘extended sitting’ is signalled by the receptionist giving the floor a good going over with the hoover, you know you’ve struck transcendental gold.

OOOMMMMMMMM

The post If the Spirit Moves You appeared first on High Heels and Reprobates.

Image by Helmut Newton. Now this is totally undignified.

Next year marks a momentous event here in the HH&R social calendar.  Ms High Heels turns forty.  I know, I know, it hardly seems possible.  All that Clarins and bathing in asses’ milk and still nothing can save me from being elevated into the senior circle of the Girl About Town blogger.  What happens in this strange land?  What do its natives do for kicks?  Do they hit the West End in a great gaggle, wearing spangly boob tubes and braying for young blood?  Do they stay home and get involved with knitted goods?  Or worse, do they find that it’s all been pithily said before and probably by them?

Not being the possessor of a Sky TV package, I haven’t sampled the joys of Girls yet, but already I’m liking the format.  The truth is your twenties are crap and bewildering and then they lead onto your thirties, which is when things get really strange.  Here, you enter the world of target-led achievement.  It sneaks up on you like creeping fog, but by the time you’re thirty five, you’re right in the quagmire.  Promotion, property, pregnancy, maybe a proposal; if you’re not participating then, well….aren’t you just a little bit pitiful?  And is it your imagination, or are some people becoming just a little bit patronising, not to mention personal?

You know you’re in your thirties when the body you inhabit, the thing that blithely carries you about from day to day protecting you from harm and processing hangovers, becomes a subject of open discussion at dinner parties.  The night the first woman (and it’s nearly always a woman) questions its functionality by leaning across a table and loudly uttering the words:  So, do you want to have children?, this is the point at which you truly enter the decade.

But that’s not the only thing that starts becoming invasive.  Next thing you know people are posting up pictures of their uterus on Facebook for your viewing pleasure.   Now this is new, you think.   I’ve never even seen between her toes before and now I’m staring right inside her most private internal organ, as are 378 of her closest friends.  To weird you out even more, you’re actually expected to comment on it like some Peeping Tom in a Gyno ward.  You’re happy for her of course, but what do you say that’s original and fun?  Nice looking kidney bean, but I take it Tanqueray’s off the menu?

For my younger subscribers yet to reach this landmark event, believe me when I tell you it is merely the beginning.   Avatars morph into gurning babies like their true owners have all but disappeared, the photographic gallery entitled ‘Fifty Shades of my Toddler’ starts appearing with alarming regularity, showing the child in every conceivable waking and sleeping mode and alternated thrice weekly for you to endlessly validate with a little thumbs up.  This, readers, is what you’re supposed to be doing now.  Only you’re not sure you really want to, and if you’re too strident about it, you might get accused of being a loveless Miss Hannigan, drinking moonshine from a tin bath in the afternoons and selling off orphans to the highest bidder.

Please don’t be offended, parents.  Your children are adorable and it’s not that I don’t like them.  It’s just I like clothes and holidays and going out more.  Which brings me back to my original point.  What does the forty something Girl About Town blogger do without appearing undignified?

The answer is exactly what the thirty something one does only SO much better.   Plus she can afford to drink in better bars (allegedly).

*********

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Welcome to the time of year when you find yourself pummelled into submission by a variety of openings and happenings you feel you have to attend for Fear of Missing Out.  Hold on tight because FOMO, to use the acronym, will be the thing that propels you along a funnel of activity until you reach the screaming point that is Christmas.  By which time if you see another chocolate covered strawberry you will be forced to set light to your boob tube and retreat to a cave until the January sales.

How I’ve missed it all.

In honour of the upcoming festivities, I have put together the High Heels Guide to surviving the Canapé Season without flinging yourself off a food station. The basic principles may also be applied to Am Dram First Night Parties and anywhere small bits of food are served on trays.

West End Press Nights

The Venue: Waldorf Astoria, Adam Street Club

The Crowd: Actors, Producers, Downtrodden Assistants, Twirlies

The Canapés: You’re joking, right?

The Conversation: who’s got some telly, who’s got Harvey Weinstein’s skiing lodge for Christmas, how many times they’ve cried at work this week, the new pole dancing instructor’s abs at Pineapple.

Oh, what a strange and complex animal this is!  The dynamics going on at this party can keep you entertained for hours.  We have insecure, neurotic people, overworked, on-the-edge people and monstrously competitive people all in one room!  I would say crack open the bubbly, but as this is theatre the budget does only stretch to Chenin Blanc. Likewise, head to the nearest take-away outlet to stock up on carbs post show.  You will not be fed.

The most important thing to remember as your eyes scan the Palm Court for amusement is that the room is full of rival producers and they all despise each other.  They don’t want a party.  What they really, really want is a photo in the Standard of Robert Pattinson clutching a souvenir brochure of their show and proclaiming it theatrical dynamite.  Sadly, what they got was Vanessa Feltz and Lorraine Pascale looking rained out on the Whatsonstage red carpet. Lean back against the opulent pillars and breathe in the resentment.

Now you’ve got the lay of the land, you need to befriend the staff.  And I don’t mean the production staff.  They are also being starved and told they can’t drink much, so are no use to man nor beast. No, you must make a beeline for anyone in a black pinny and charm their socks off.  They are almost certainly looking for an entrée into this strange, dark world and who knows?  A promise to put a word in the right ear might even result in the magical appearance of a bottle of prosecco.  Once you have this, you are king.

The Blockbuster Exhibition Opening

The Venue: V&A, Tate, NPG

The Crowd: Fashionistas, Cultural Movers and Shakers, People who’ve slept with Vivienne Westwood

The Canapés: Foie Gras Parfait & Peach Wine Jelly in shot glasses, Lobster and Artichoke Hearts served on an antique mirrored tile strewn with rose petals and a night light.

The Conversation: The dismantling of DCMS, Tracey Emin’s knickers, certainly NOT the exhibition.

Now we’re talking.  Proper cocktails, proper nosh and some excellent lighting.  Loiter by the door of the kitchens to ensure you get first pick of the spoils.  It is 6.45 pm and you are on your third Jamaican Mule.  Unless you soak this up with a seared scallop and some quails’ eggs, it’s all going to get a bit TV Soap Awards.   No matter how hungry you are, please do NOT double dip.  Swine flu and gingivitis still stalk this world and just because this is the V&A, you are not immune.

Do not get involved in any conversation that hovers more than two degrees above shallow.  Before you know it you will be cornered by someone intent on boring you senseless about Arts Council cuts until you have turned into a pillar of salt grasping a clutch bag.  If you do get trapped, try not to recoil in horror at their champagne breath.  The only way to build immunity to these noxious fumes is to swap to said champagne and drink plenty of it.  The science behind this alludes me but trust me, it works.

Finally – and this is a very important part of the masterclass – never let anyone know the balls of your feet are burning like a volcano.   You bought the shoes, now commit to them.  And don’t even think about Scholls Party Feet.  They don’t work and they’ll only slip out like miniature panty liners on some hallowed, marble floor which is not the talking point you are looking for.

No, readers, it is resilience that is required here.  So, as those invitations start rolling in over the coming weeks, get your stamina on, gargle with some Berocca and embrace the madness. There’s only seventy four quaffing days until Christmas.

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Image from www.favim.com

It’s alright on Esther Ward.   It doesn’t have the velvety quietness of your Premier Inn, but you can’t knock the location; within a spit of the River and right next door to The Shard.  Through the window there’s just the grimy brown brick of a railway bridge, but I still know it’s out there in all its spiky magnificence.   I may be pumped full of drugs and in unchartered waters, but the point is I’m not in poxy Oxford anymore. The thought of this makes me smile, just because I still can.

I feel like I’ve been here for a long time, but actually it’s only been a few hours.  In terms of my compos mentis levels, I am still totally out of it.  Progress so far has been shuffling to the toilet, avoiding mirrors and eating half a ham sandwich by knocking it back with water like I’m swallowing pills.  My saliva, it seems, has migrated.  Will it come back?  I am as bone dry as the Nevada desert.

The ward has been empty most of the day, but at 4 pm the first of the afternoon surgery patients is wheeled in.  I recognise her from the Admissions Lounge this morning where she was meekly following her husband around in a burka.   By the look of her scarring she’s had throat surgery and although her face is free, her head remains covered with a black scarf.   She reminds me a bit of David Bowie’s wife, so I think she must be Somalian.  She is still slipping in and out of conscious and every now and then, she theatrically hawks something up into a kidney shaped bowl.   Next to her is a Chinese lady who’s had spinal surgery.  She’s been told she can’t move for six weeks and administers her own shots of morphine by pressing a button by her bed.   She’s the only person on the ward who has no visitors and she is the most sick.

Ambitiously, I packed a notebook and pen in the hope I could write a few lines, but all I can do is take some fluffy mental notes for later.  Can someone please tell me where they put my head?  Because the one I’m wearing definitely isn’t mine.   I am Ms Potato Head with interchangeable parts and every now and then I feel my skull being squeezed like it’s in a vice.   It’s not painful, but it definitely isn’t pleasant.  Mum reads me bits from the newspaper, but it feels a bit like white noise.  Apparently the TV by the bed needs a £20 voucher to get it working.  Holby City anyone?

The Somalian lady in the opposite bed can’t be more than thirty six and has seven children.  They all troop in during visiting time like a sub Saharan Von Trapp family, with the husband – permanently plugged into an iPod – bringing the two sons in first.   The five girls follow on like an afterthought ten minutes later, all in traditional dress.  The children are keen to clamber and are clearly getting on the nurses’ tits, swivelling one of the chairs up so high it threatens to come off its stalk.  There are many occasions when I am relieved not to be a mother.  This is one of them.

By 6.30 pm there are two more new experiences to add to the smorgasbord; intravenous drugs whilst fully conscious and NHS catering.  Both can be described as something of a mixed bag.   My right hand is swollen up and I’m holding it like a paw.  It seems the vein is too fine and the antibiotic is stinging sharply up my arm, so the nurse tells me they’re going to wake me up at 1 am and rig up a drip for the next batch.   This should be a lot more comfortable.  All this and I get to eat florescent pink milk jelly.  Fling wide the gates of paradise.

1 am.  Bloody drip isn’t dripping.  The lovely night nurse is being very patient, but I’ve seen condensation gliding down the walls of caves faster than this antibiotic is moving. She keeps having to take the needle out and flush my veins with saline.  In terms of enjoyment, this is right up there with the time I sprained my ankle outside Macdonalds.

3 am.  The bag is now empty.  Can I go to sleep please?

*******

It’s Wednesday morning and I’ve decided to brave it in the bathroom mirror.  How to describe the look I’m currently sporting?  Remember those turbans that Gloria Swanson used to wear in the 30s?  Well, it’s nothing like that.  It’s lopsided and with my hair flopping all over the place, it looks like a poodle rocker’s bandana with extra padding.   My face, I’m relieved to see, looks much the same, although what is going on beneath the bandage, I have no idea.   I’m sure I can see a red gash down my neck and I feel panicky.  Once again, my packing has failed.  There is no way I can get a T-shirt over this enormous turban and if Mum doesn’t bring me in a buttoned up cardigan, I’m going home bare-breasted in the taxi.

The Registrar arrives at around 10am and tells me the tumour was trapped between two facial nerves; one operating my left eye and the other my mouth.   I merrily move both for him. He says the trauma on my body has been enormous, bigger than an appendectomy, so the fact that I feel like I’ve been run over by a tram is entirely normal. He describes the surgery as ‘talented’ and it’s like I’ve missed out by not being there, like the time I didn’t get to see Al Pacino in the West End.

With the warm up act gone, the Professor arrives about an hour later and even the Matron gets a bit giggly.  There’s a bit more eyebrow waggling after which he confirms I’m an eight out of ten and can now be discharged, but will need to come back in a few weeks for a follow up appointment.   I tell him I think he’s amazing and he looks quite chuffed.  I wonder to myself what it must be like to do an important job.  All I’ve ever done is thrown parties and massaged the odd ego.

Mum arrives with a cardigan and after a lengthy check-out, we get a taxi back east.   Today is the opening ceremony of the Paralympics and I live right near the park.   Our driver, an idiot who hasn’t done his homework, has a fondness for hitting the brake, rendering the entire experience for me like doing the Oblivion ride whilst on mind expanding drugs.   Arriving home, I could kiss the ground.   I manage my first decent meal for 48 hours, although I still don’t have full movement in my mouth.   My mother informs me this is no bad thing.

******

By Day Nine, I am feeling considerably better.   I feel as though my head has now been returned to me and only the numbness remains where the nerves have not knitted together yet.  It’s a weird old feeling, but I’m told it will come back in time.  The needlework by my ear is miraculous – for someone who couldn’t hem a dishcloth, this kind of handiwork impresses me.  I’ve had a lot of time to sit and muse of late and my conclusion is I’m a very lucky girl indeed.   I am back on my manor, I can move my face and I’m still getting free theatre tickets.  So readers, without further ado, I will now raise the curtain on The All New Adventures of High Heels and Reprobates….but be warned.  It might get silly.

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