ON SUNDAY MY MOTHER IN LAW CALLED ME A COW But I can't really blame her. I'd just told her (unasked) that I've already bought all my Christmas presents. Even I think I'm a cow.
THERE SHOULD BE A WORD FOR IT That feeling you get when you spot somebody in a soap opera wearing a top you have in your wardrobe. There is the thrill of recognition, the Oooh! of your velvety thing from Top Shop being on the TV, then the horrible realisation that you are, in some small way, like Sam Mitchell or Gail Platt. Even worse is to spot Kevin Webster sitting on your sofa on Corrie, but perhaps the most pitiable victim of this syndrome is my friend who had to live through seeing her wallpaper on Hollyoaks. Hollyoaks!
THE WORLD ACCORDING TO MAVIS Just now she barked in her sleep and woke herself up.
THE WRITING PROCESS I doubt that you'll hear Martin Amis admitting this, but I just can't write properly if my hands are unmanicured. As my fingers flit over the keyboard I am distracted if the nails are ragged, and the cuticles are unseemly. Trivial, I know, but if my nails are neat scarlet ovals somehow the prose improves. Or at least flows.
THIS MUCH I KNOW John Travolta has a big face
Telly It's all about Strictly Come Dancing for me from now until Christmas. I won't refer to it too often in case you're allergic to it, but I'll be savouring the 'journeys' of the various slebs with the delight of a connoisseur. So many questions were posed by the teasing taster show which paired up the couples. Will dead eyed Patsy Kensit wake up before the final? Can Ann Widdecombe get down with her bad self? Will Felicity Kendal combust with sexy older ladiness? And is Paul Daniels not a magician at all, but actually a horrid little squirrel? All this and Claudia Winkelman on It Takes two every evening as well.
