Bernadette Strachan

STOCKHOLM Very jolly, the Swedes. Never thought I’d write that sentence. I thought my trip to Stockholm would be a two day long Bergman film, but it was a delight. Stayed in a hotel owned by Benny from Abba. Yes, really. It was 5 star funky opulence and comfort, yet cost less than I’ve paid for chain-hotel misery in this country. The Swedes are very well dressed, very cool, but friendly and natural. I felt right at home. Not because I’m well dressed, you understand, despite the new trousers I was sporting, but because everybody spoke to Matthew and I as if they’d known us for years. I saw no WAG-style nightmare young women at all, although there were herds of 80’s kids. The night before, at home in Kingston, we’d passed countless girls dressed for an orgy somewhere much warmer than Kingston, and it was nice to be surrounded by women with actual clothes on, as opposed to strips of lycra. I’m a convert to the Nordic way of life, but this always happens. I come back from Rome on an imaginary vespa, and when I get back from Ireland I cry sentimental tears over anybody whose surname begins with O’.

PRINCE Niamh, my 5 year old, is a Prince devotee. Especially 'Get Off' and 'Kiss'. Although she confuses him with Michael Jackson. Her love of the latter led to me trying to explain plastic surgery in terms she would understand. He asks the doctors to change his face around I stammered.

TELLY Hoovering up the Easter leftovers before the post-Easter diet meant that I was enjoying a cream tea for dinner as I settled down to watch the first instalment of Hell’s Kitchen. I learned so much. I learned that Linda Evans’ lips are not nice (they seem to have been turned inside out by a bored plastic surgeon). I learned that Grant Bovey (husband of Anthea Turner, God help us) refers to himself in the third person. And I learned that Marco Pierre White is the most ponderous, self obsessed sod I’ve ever come across. The simplest question gets a Yoda-esque, carefully enunciated response. ‘Where,’ you might ask, ‘do you keep the cheese, Marco?’ He would reply, ‘Ah my friend. If it is cheese you seek, why do you ask? If I were to tell you, what would that make you?’ (He often includes one of these mantrap little questions, to which there is no correct answer, only kitchen-y death. Quite fun watching Adrian Edmondson struggle with how to answer ‘Did you season it?’ about a beef sandwich.) I hope fire never breaks out in Hell’s Kitchen because Marco is incapable of shouting ‘FIRE!’ he would have to drawl ‘When heat meets chip oil, my friend, something is bound to happen.’

BOOKS Just finished The Genius and The Goddess by Godfrey Meyers, a book that examines the professional and emotional partnership between Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe. There are snippets in here that Mr Miller left out of his mighty memoir Timebends, and much new, scurrilous stuff on Marilyn. (The bald assertion that she was a prostitute seems unsupported by any source.) Such a beauty, such a pain in the ass. Sorry, arse. I always catch vocabulary from reading.

EASTER I baked a cake, a gooey chocolate one which is my default cake. There were chicks on it, not real ones, that would be silly. Dressing the table for a big lunch I started off stylish and chic, then mouthed oh sod it and strewed the whole thing with rabbits, chocolate eggs, fluffy chicks emerging from plastic eggs, the lot. We had not one but two easter egg hunts. We know how to live, don’t we?

WRITING  After a week off (Stockholm, then Easter visitors) I’ve forgotten how to do it? Any tips, anyone?

NIAMH A five year old is great fun. Most of the time. The time that you aren’t debating with them who’s in charge (clue: it’s not them), or forcing them in to hated tights, or explaining why it’s not a good idea to carry the dog by its nipples. (Insert link to your fave pic of Mavis under ‘the dog’)Occasionally they render you speechless. I wish I could recreate for you the look on my husband’s face when, over a pub lunch last Sunday, Niamh announced “I haven’t slept with thousands of men”. After some gentle investigating (you have to pitch it just right so they don’t realise they’re being interrogated or they clam up like WWII POW’s) we ascertained that this was a line from her favourite film, Mama Mia. So thank you Meryl Streep.
 
FEET My feet are happy. Smooth and soft and silky, they are ready for sandals. Before my luxury pedicure in Soho, my feet were like the feet of Satan himself. After an oxygen mask(?) and some cling film and the attentions of a nice lady, they are fit to be seen. I was with two girlfriends, one of whom is about to be married, so pretty feet was our gift to her. After the whole foot thing, we drank loads of champagne in a hotel bar, saw Shilpa Shetty, and went home. Louise, one of my co-pedicurees, admitted she’d asked the therapist what she was using to get rid of the hard skin and was told “a cheese grater”.
 
THE APPRENTICE An hour of bliss, some of it watched through my fingers. I love The Apprentice, although it should be retitled ‘How Not To Succeed in Business’. The people who apply, scattering deathless quotes thither and yon (“Let’s work until we bleed”) have no idea. Some of them are lawyers. Some of them are teachers. I wouldn’t let any one of them cross the road to buy me a bottle of milk. Why do the women wear such nasty mannish suits, with ill fitting blouses underneath? It’s either that or berets and nattily knotted scarves. Surely there’s a middle way, Apprentice Ladies? A jewel coloured fitted cardi a la Nigella? And Sralan doesn’t suit thin. I preferred him with a little double chin under that carefully tended stubble. I’m waiting for the personalities to unfurl this year, but already I don’t like the Geordie bloke, who’s spitting surly criticisms. (I’ll probably end up rooting for him. That’s the way The Apprentice goes.)
 
EGG BOX-RELATED GUILT Today Niamh needed to bring an egg box to school to decorate. I bought a box of six especially. I forgot to put the egg box in her bag. And now I am suffering the agonies of the damned. I can’t deal with these blips rationally  where Niamh is concerned: I am fast forwarding from this egg box scenario to a life spent in squats taking drugs and arguing with a man called something like Shady Pete.

KNITTING A tiny little v-neck, navy blue and soft, is taking shape on my needles. It’s for Jack, who’s brand new.
 
MY EDITOR Jo edits my books. She’s petite and dark and quite quiet, and kind of fascinating. She came to lunch the other Sunday, and we all stood out in the garden with drinks in our hands. She squinted in through the window of my study, saw ‘RESEARCH’ in capital letters on my whiteboard, then clocked ‘pig disease’ beneath it. Jo voiced some concern for the next book, reminding me that I am supposed to be writing romantic comedies.
 
TODDLER-DULTS Grown men dressed like toddlers – eh? They’re everywhere, particularly fast food outlets. Big six footers with feet like canoes, clad head to toe in soft and fluffy sweatshirt material. Baggy top. Baggy trousers. Really baggy trousers, with a  gusset down by the knees. Are they trying to regress? My Dad would never have left the house dressed like a baby. It was suits all the way. Even to garden in. (Although that was an old suit.)
 
EYEBROWS I’m not sure why I’m sharing this, but I have over plucked my eyebrows and I look like 70’s vintage David Bowie, not in a good way.
 
WRITING On the home stretch with book number six. I love my heroine, she’s a little older and more cynical than my other girls. I’ve moved her to the countryside, Somerset to be precise, and I feel energised whenever I visit her there in my mind. As usual, I’ve cast the male leads in my head. The women just blossom, but the men are physically modelled on famous blokes. This time I’m dealing with Billy Nighy and Matthew MacFadyen. A tough job, but somebody’s got to do it.