It's not fair!!

Last night, while sitting in a PTA meeting at school, I got a text from my lovely cousin. Opening it surreptitiously under the table, I was instantly transported about three hundred miles (and about the same number of years) away from catering arrangements for the summer fair by this picture. It's the view from the beach in Western Scotland where we all spent endless childhood holidays together, and in her message she said she was there for a friends wedding on the beach, and was at that very moment watching the sunset and drinking whisky. I almost expired with envy right then, before we'd even reached Any Other Business. (I wonder if that would have appeared in the minutes? Mrs India Grey turns a funny shade of green and falls off her chair, muttering incoherently about where it all went wrong...)

It was a pretty bad day all round for the Green Eyed Monster, since earlier on the postman had delivered to me a copy of Viking Warrior, Unwilling Wife sent by the wonderful Michelle Styles, and featuring just the hottest cover guy in existence. I mean, seriously pulse-quickening, with untidy, bed-tousled hair and a perfect profile. See?

Not a beige polyester shirt or shaving rash in sight. Who do you have to buy chocolate for to get covers like this?

In addition to my acute envy-itis, at the moment I am also suffering from a severe case of Short Attention Span. This is an uncomfortable condition whose symptoms include a pressing need to browse ebay for obscure items, a sudden obsession with filing my nails and applying handcream, and an irresistible compulsion to run downstairs every four and a half minutes to check email and see whether anyone’s added any new clips of Alex from the Apprentice to Youtube (Oh yes! They have!) Its main side effect is painfully slow progress on the book. It’s a comfort to know that Natasha Oakley is similarly afflicted, but if anyone knows of a cure (preferably involving an afternoon nap and a bar of Toblerone, or something nice like that) please let us know. Otherwise I might inadvertently find myself heading up the M6 for Scotland...

Radio Gaga and a birthday surprise...

I almost forgot! (top tip of the day: always make a note of promises you make when awash with champagne...) It's my turn to provide the present for the little pink dancing guy at the PHS! I decided to be practical-- after all, doing all that dancing, he's going to need a lot of music, so I'm sending him a pink i-pod. I'm going to download some tunes by Pink onto it too...
Happy Birthday little pink heart!

Anyway, in other news, Radio 4's programme on A Hundred Years of Mills & Boon was rather a mixed bag, which I suppose was inevitable and understandable, given that it's aim was probably to present some sort of balance. The inclusion of the finger-wagging, lemon-sucking 'Director of Women's Studies' was yawn-makingly predictable, as were her opinions of the genre. They were so astonishingly misguided that thinking about where to start answering them makes me want to lie down under the desk with a bottle of cooking sherry. Luckily Trish Wylie is made of stronger, cleverer stuff, as are Kate Walker and Natasha Oakley. Go and check out what they have to say about it!


I don't really want to dwell on the negative because there were some really good parts of the programme-- the contribution by Richmond editors Tessa Shapcott, Jo Carr and Meg Sleighthome for a start, Sharon Kendrick's robust dismissal of some tired old cliches, and some of the details about the history of the company (like the fact PG Wodehouse used to write for them!) were all great. So it's silly to get so disproportionately irritated by Celia Brayfield's (herself a writer of women's fiction) contribution which was breath-takingly spiteful to readers-- many of whom I suspect cross over between Mills & Boon and her books. Her considered opinion is that HMB books are written in 'tired' and 'hackneyed language', and that the editors have to go through manuscripts removing the cliches; 'But you can always see the holes where they've cut them out.'

Gosh.

Always, eh Celia?

She must read a lot of them to have noticed that. Which is odd considering she then went on to say that they're 'the lowest common denominator of reading, for people who can only just about read.' It makes you wonder why she wastes her oh-so-valuable time on them. And yet she must because, I mean, nobody would be stupid enough to judge and publicly denounce something they hadn't read would they?

(Celia also calls them 'mediocre'. I bet she'd give her eye teeth for some of Penny Jordan's 'mediocre' sales. 84 million books worldwide. Ouch. That must bite.)

Thankfully Fay Weldon came along just in the nick of time and hit the nail on the head (what a shame Celia Brayfield wasn't standing in the way). Her comment 'I will fight to the death for readers to read what they want' reminded me of Virginia Woolf''s argument in 'A Room of One's Own' in which she denounces exactly Celia Brayfield's obnoxious brand of literary snobbishness

This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women....
So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair on the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve is the most abject treachery...

All in all the programme delivered few surprises, but there was one notable one. Julian Boon's voice. Mmmm... deep, mellow, delicious, and oddly out of place at 11.30 in the morning. I wonder if the powers that be would agree to him doing the 'Book at Bedtime' slot... reading a Mills & Boon, of course....