Sunshine

There’s something a little different happening this week.

I’m tickled vermilion to report that I’ve been nominated for the Sunshine Blogger Award, an award given within the blogger community to a writer who another writer feels brings positivity and good cheer. A huge thanks to my fellow London Irish emigrant, the fierce and funny Sharon Joslyn from Pigeon Post

– do check her out, she’s terrific – who has very kindly nominated me. Particularly nice to receive this sunny award as we trudge from November into December!

The rules are that I am to display the Awards logo (never a hardship to show sunflowers, and particularly not this month); answer the 11 questions Sharon has set me; nominate 11 other bloggers, whom you can find at the end of this post; and ask them – should they choose to accept this purely voluntary mission – to answer 11 questions of my own devising. This feels like a lot of questions, and it seems that you readers are going to be learning a lot about me, so how about I take this opportunity to suggest we all might learn something about each other along the way? If anyone feels a response sparked by one or more of the questions on either list, please do enter it in the comments section so we can all read it. Let’s all have some fun with this!

Meanwhile, I’m loving Sharon’s questions, which are original, provocative, and occasionally … shall we say surprising? … so here goes …

1. What would your death-row meal be? (And none of your “Oh I don’t reckon I’d have much of an appetite” nonsense.)

How tragic is it that I’ve already decided on this? We have a French chef friend called Philippe who makes an impossibly mouth-watering andouillette sausage, rich and tripe-laden and comforting, that goes down the most gorgeous treat with dauphinoise potatoes and a side of steamed dark green vegetables. Since there’s no point in worrying about a hangover, I’d add in a couple of bone-dry martinis before and some excellent Cabernet Franc with – I don’t usually splash out on fine wine as Mr. Los Angeles doesn’t drink, but I think this counts as a special occasion, doesn’t it? – and for dessert something moussey and spongy like tiramisu, with a couple of Compartés chocolate truffles on the side: that should send me off with a smile on my face.

2. What crime have you genuinely considered committing (even fleetingly), and what stops/stopped you?

As the descendant of Irish rebels and a person who grew up Catholic in England, I’ve always recognized the moral law as having higher authority than any created by the state. (On the other hand, I personally would have thought that St. Thomas More’s moral duty would have involved staying alive to provide for his wife and family rather than refusing to sign the King’s Oath of Succession, but it was his conscience, not mine). When I was young, it was commonly known that there were nice middle class women of late middle age who would teeter around department stores stealing items they could easily have afforded to buy; I didn’t consciously understand at the time that this was a cry of pain, but for some reason I always thought that it might well be something I might end up doing. But it doesn’t seem to be a thing these days, I’m supposing because women are happier now than those poor souls were back then. And for the record, it’s not something that I am now remotely tempted to do.

3. If you were reincarnated, who - or what - would you come back as, and why?

That’s a no-brainer – a domestic cat. You do what you want when you want, you know how to find the coolest place in the summer and the warmest in the winter, and spend most of your day lolling there doing precisely nothing while everybody who passes coos endearments and massages you with hands that are bigger than your head. You get fed, you get watered, if you happen not to like the people you’re living with you have no hesitation in walking away to find some people you like better, and it’s been my observation that when the end of your life comes, and your owners are most flatteringly sobbing inconsolably because they can’t imagine a world without you, you’re actually quite content to go. Sign me up.

4. If your pet could talk, what would be the very first thing they’d say to you (and in what tone)?

Now, this is a very good question. Our previous cat would have been shouting hosannas of praise to us: she adored us and would follow us around the house, meowing lovingly and dropping gifts of socks and robe ties (yes, really) wherever we settled. Our current cat is a very different creature: a regal beauty, who does appear to like us – she makes it crystal clear that she would be nowhere to be found if she didn’t – but who is nevertheless haughtily sparing with actual signs of affection; if either of us does manage to score a touch of love, we become quite pathetically excited and rush to the other to report our triumph in tones of wonder and delight. We spend some time speculating on what might be going on inside that feline mind of hers, and have already decided that if she had a human voice she’d be singing Madeline Kahn’s song from Blazing Saddles, I’m Tired of Being Admired.

5. What’s the pettiest hill you’re absolutely willing to die on?

I think that actually dying would be a pretty strong statement to make. I’m privately appallingly picky about grammar, and feel a dagger to my soul every time someone splits an infinitive or says “between you and I”; but because I’m not a fervent fan of being chased down by townsfolk with pitchforks, I’ve learned to keep this to myself, so I apparently wouldn’t go so far as to sacrifice my life for it. Since we’re now in the holiday season, I will say that I have never, ever condoned the American habit of serving mashed potatoes instead of roast with turkey, because to me, turkey needs some texture to pair with, not a purée. If someone wants to bring mashed potatoes of their own to my turkey table I figure that’s between them and their benighted palate; but now that I think about it, I’ve never known anyone to do so, possibly because my roast potatoes (since you ask, Michael Caine’s recipe, which you can find on the internet, but leaving out the rosemary, sage and garlic because all the noble potato really needs to shine is respectful handling and a dusting of kosher salt) are, frankly, somewhat spectacular.

6.If you could replace your hands with kitchen utensils for a day, which ones would you choose?

What a thoroughly bizarre question! I can’t think of a single thing I would rather have at the ends of my wrists than the current ten digits which allow me to access my food and drink, turn the pages of my book, and scratch my nose without risking putting out an eye. If I really had to, I suppose I’d have kitchen tongs for one and probably a corkscrew for the other because I have a feeling I’d be hitting the wine pretty hard in order to survive the day. Sharon, what sort of mind do you have that you would even imagine such a thing?

7. What’s the most unhinged thing you’ve ever done in the name of love, lust, or mild infatuation?

Oh, how long do you have? I was the most outstanding idiot about love for an embarrassingly long time, would do anything for anyone at any time and ask for nothing back, and then be both outraged and astonished when nothing was what I got. Far too late in my life, I wised up and made a conscious decision that the next time I gave my heart, it would be to someone who would appreciate it; about five minutes later, there was a knock on my door and there stood Mr. Los Angeles, beaming broadly, with my name written squarely across his manly chest. I was somewhat annoyed by this, as I’d been looking forward to a period of quiet time alone with my newfound self-esteem; but there he was, so what was I going to do?

8. You’re given a time machine with one return trip. What hyper-specific (and pointless) moment in history are you going to witness?

In the first ever incarnation of Doctor Who (yes, I am that old), the Doctor unveiled to his companions a time-traveling television that would allow the viewer to observe any moment of history that he or she chose. The Doctor’s granddaughter Susan, a pert young Carnaby Street-clad fashion plate from the future, chose to see the moptop Beatles, following which she remarked, hilariously, that she “hadn’t known they played classical music.” (So much for the visionary instincts of the 1960s London establishment). One of the Doctor’s more grown-up companions chose to turn the channel to the late sixteenth century to marvel as William Shakespeare, his poetic brow smitten with divine inspiration, sat down to write Hamlet. I’d take a less lofty riff on this and go to 1860s Concord, Massachusetts, to watch a thoroughly grumpy Louisa May Alcott slam herself down at her desk to set to work on Little Women, a book she never wanted to write at all but had been talked into by her publisher with the promise that if she were to cough up a storybook for girls, he would then publish one of her father’s … let’s call them less immediately accessible … philosophical works. Louisa was reportedly in high ill humor when she wrote the book: it seems to have turned out OK anyway, but I’d like to have seen her expression while she was writing.

9. What was your most troublesome pet growing up, and why was it a hamster?

It was by no means the strangest feature of my childhood that our family never owned a hamster, but we didn’t, and having read some of the stories on Sharon’s comments page (warning: they’re not for the faint-hearted), I’m now relieved. We had a series of tom cats, whom my mother refused to neuter on the grounds that it would be “unkind” (yes, I know, let’s not go there), with the result that they would periodically disappear for weeks at a time, to limp home at last with tails mangled and ears hanging off, or sometimes not return at all. There was one, called Smoky, who had a serious personality problem. He was all black and would lurk unseen in the darkest corners of the house so that when one of us children skipped innocently by, he could reach out a vicious claw to shred whatever flesh was available. We were terrified of him!

10. If you could instantly master one completely useless skill, what would it be?

I’m not sure that there are skills that are completely useless, are there? I can touch my wrist with my left thumb but not my right, but can’t say I lie awake at night fretting about the inconsistency. Admittedly, it’s for romantic rather than practical reasons that I struggle off and on to learn the Irish language, and I’d love to be better at it; but I wouldn’t dream of describing my ancestral tongue as useless. Ní tír gan teanga, after all. How about whistling? I’ve always wanted to and never been able to, and now that Lyft and Uber have replaced taxi cabs, there’s less practical call for it than ever. So yes, please, teach me to whistle.

11. Which celebrity (alive or dead) would you most trust to delete your browser history - and who would you absolutely NOT trust?

My personal browser history is a most curious place. As a film journalist, I am required to acquire a stalkeresque knowledge of the lives and opinions of any celebrity I interview; meanwhile, my background research on films in this year alone has taken me anywhere from Shakespeare’s marriage (Hamnet), to the rise of Fascism (Nuremberg), to methods of battling vampires (Sinners). And then there’s all my other writing research: I once, at the gentle suggestion of my agent that I might just consider making some, well, money, foolishly sat myself down to write a novel with a commercial hook, alighting, for some reason that now baffles me, on the idea of a woman who falls in love with her husband’s brother. Wishing no disrespect to either of my real life brothers-in-law, this is not a predicament in which I have ever found myself firsthand, so I took to Google in search of a psychological profile, only to find myself swimming in a sea of ever more luridly technicolored incest-leaning porn sites, which are presumably still there. (Not surprisingly, the book failed to take off, although I did become quite fond of the character of the brother-in-law, possibly because he grew to bear an increasing resemblance to Mr. Los Angeles).

As for which celebrity I’d trust, it’s been my observation of celebrities that they are far too busy being famous to pay more than the scantest of attention to the doings of lesser mortals, so I’d be more worried that they’d mess up my computer than about their opinion of me. So I’d probably go to Timothée Chalamet, he being from the generation that would know its way around technology; Jane Austen, I’d be less sure of.

And now for my nominees: eleven excellent writers whom I urge you to seek out whether they follow up on this or not, - I apologize for the weird ways some of them are showing up, I don’t know why it’s happening but they‘re all easy enough to find on substack - because they’re well worth it. They are …

1. Marianne Jennings

1. Daniel Puzzo, Teacher by Trade, Mentor by Mistake

1. Ann Kennedy Smith, Cambridge Ladies’ Dining Society

1. Louise, Bohemian Punk https://substack.com/@bohemianpunk?

2. Lindsey Weidenbach, How to be a Difficult Woman

1. Anne Boyd, Audacious Women, Creative Lives

1. Andy Carter, The Flagging Dad https://substack.com/@andycarter1

2. Maggie Alderson, Style Notes https://substack.com/@maggiealderson

3. Ruth Valentine, Bedbound

1. Anne Wareham, The Not So Bad-Tempered Gardener

1. Matt Brown, The Londonist Time Machine https://substack.com/@mattlondonexplorer

And now for my questions to them …

1. What is the best compliment you’ve ever received and what made it special?

2. What has been your best dream and what your worst? What do you think they reveal about you?

3. Do you like your hair?

4. If you could have the perfect 24 hours, how, where, and with whom would you spend the time?

5. What’s the most disgusting meal you’ve ever eaten?

6. How far back can you trace your family tree?

7. Why were you given your first name, and are you happy with it?

8. What’s your most undersung talent?

9. Who is your hero? Your heroine?

10. Tell us three different places where you’ve lived, and why you lived there.

11. What do you think people say about you when you’re not in the room? What would you like them to say?

And I think we’ll all agree that that’s enough out of me for the time being. Congratulations if you’ve stuck with this so far; I’m excited to see the responses of my fellow nominees, if they choose to take part, on their own blogs, and looking forward to reading anyone else’s in the comments, so please do send them in …