This is a blog entry about boozing, schmoozing and food scoffing. The new theme of my London existence. All in the name of book research of course.
Last Thursday it was the great little charity dinner that Paul and Lizzie took me to Zamcog. I even splashed out and got myself a new LBD for the occasion – which is just as well because wearing black is clearly some kind of unspoken dress code here in London. In Brisbane, cocktail dresses are more a clash of colours – who can wear the brightest tangerine number they can find, that sort of thing. Not here in London. Here it is black, black, black or, err, dark grey. So luckily I fitted right, no neon sign above my head saying "CASH-STRAPPED WRITER".
At one stage I was speaking to a quite older, quite-a-bit shorter man, who was enthralling me with a conversation about his trillion dollar Rolls Royce dealership (or something like that – as soon as he mentioned cars I started drifting off, I have a 6-cylinder Golf after all) when Lizzie’s friend Alexia asked me “So, how long have you two been together for?”. I nearly died of shock. Or laughter. She thought we were together. Which I guess, when you think about Anna Nicole-Smith and thousands of other women the world over who have married for money, is not actually all that unbelievable. But I’m not one of those kind of girls that could marry for money alone, as much as I would love to be. It would certainly fund my novelist fantasies for many years to come.
Due to the state of our resulting hangovers on Friday, we couldn’t bear to drag our sorry arses out of the house. Which is just as well since it was officially declared the Festival of Paul. I had never heard of this important festival before arriving in London, but it seems to be a regular feature on the calendar in Barbican, the main premise being that the night is all about Paul. Specifically, Lizzie and I cooking up a massive feast for Paul, and then Paul being in charge of selecting the night’s movie viewing. Given his preference for Horror, this is always a little worrying for me – I still haven’t recovered from watching Jaws when I was eight. Paul and I have discovered that we have slightly different tastes in quite a few things, particularly TV and movie viewing – he thinks Love Actually is the worst film ever made (hello, Waterworld? Gigli?), but somehow The Family Guy passes his censor as quality TV viewing (satirical, Kath, satirical).
Anyway, hopefully the Festival of Lizzie and Kath will be taking place soon, with Paul tying on the apron. After all, he does look a little similar to Heston Blumenthal I think. Here is a pic of Heston so you can get the idea (Paul himself has to remain anonymous due to book character requirements).Saturday night featured a 40th birthday party for Keith. Now you may well ask “Who is Keith?”, and that would be a very good question. On Saturday night, the question was more about “How do you know Keith?” and I had to keep saying “Actually, I’ve never met him” until he wandered past an hour later with a platter of salmon sandwiches and I managed to wangle myself an introduction. Kate and Keith are good friends of Lizzie and Paul, and have very kindly offered to let me housesit their lovely house in Clapham while they head home to Australia for a few weeks from Wednesday. I think. Keith might change his mind if he remembers me joking about rifling through his underwear drawer. In my defence, I had had a few too many champagnes and it was about 2am – still, I don’t want him thinking I’m some kind of bunny boiler.
Kate is a chef, and has had her kitchen specifically designed so that she can host cooking classes at home. You can see it here on her website Love to Cook. It’s seriously amazing. Although I am a little bit concerned that the house might blow up if I try and heat a Marks & Sparks ready meal in the microwave. I don’t think it sees too much of that type of cuisine.
On the writing front, this week I’ve taken to writing in the British Library – which even though it’s noisier than peak hour at Victoria Station, is strangely proving to be quite a good writing environment. Perhaps it’s knowing that I’m sitting only 100m away from Jane Austen’s writing desk and a copy of one of her diaries that is setting my typing fingers on fire.
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