Hope in coins

There are times when suddenly you remember the reasons why you love somebody. You have never really forgotten, of course: but sometimes they do something and it throws it into such sharp belief that you could reach out a hand and touch it.

"Oh my God!" my dad shouted last night. I was on the computer, discovering that job hunting in Japan is no easier than job hunting in England. I span round in time to see dad jump off the sofa and punch the air.

"Eh?" I said.

"Oh my God!" he shouted again, and stared at something in his hand. "We're rich! Holly, we're only fucking rich!"

This, in itself, was not enough to cause alarm. We're always teetering on the brinks of 'rich', according to dad. That's why very few of us in my family have a pension. 

Dad, grinning like a small child with a new puppy, grabbed the newspaper and thrust it in my face. 

"Look!" he cried, jabbing his finger at an article. "It says there's been an error at the Royal Mint, and they've printed off 20p pieces without dates - and they're all worth £50 each!" His tail wagged so hard I was worried he was going to fall over. "And look!" he exclaimed, shoving an open hand in my face. "The very first 20p I look at - it's worth a fortune!" He gave me a pat on the head, and then raced upstairs to collect his coin jar. "The very first one in my pocket!" he screamed from upstairs. "We could have hundreds!"

Once he'd disappeared, I picked up the paper and had a quick read. Upstairs, I could hear dad shaking his life savings out of the jar and shouting "all of them!! All of them Holly!"

I took a deep breath, and then I walked up the stairs slowly.

"Dad," I said as carefully as I could. "It says these valuable coins have no date on them."

"I know!" dad grinned at me, pointing at a little pile of 20p pieces on the floor. "What were the chances?"

"Dad," I said even more carefully. "Turn them over."

Dad's smile faltered a little bit, and he looked at me like I'd just run over his rabbit with my push-bike.

He turned one of the 20p pieces over and stared at it for a few seconds.

"Oh," he said flatly. "That's got a date on the other side." He picked up another one, and looked at that too. "This one has too," he announced sadly. "Bollocks."

I walked over, put my hand on his shoulder, assured him that we'd be rich enough soon, and then went back into the living room and locked myself in so that he couldn't hear me laughing.

Only my dad, at the age of 53, would believe - so quickly, so genuinely, so instinctively - that luck and fate had favoured him so astronomically. Only my dad keeps a jar full of 20p pieces by the side of his bed. 

When I came back out of the living room - face straight again - I promptly had to go back in again so that I could finish the job off. Because dad was still sitting on the stairs, looking through all the 20p pieces, one by one, just to check. And that, I think, says everything.

The essence

If I wasn't already moving to the other side of the world, this week would be a good time to do it. On Thursday, The Best Job In The World documentary airs on BBC1, at primetime, and both Sarah and I - the two 'competing' (and thus losing) female UK candidates - are sitting in separate bedrooms and rocking backwards and forwards, terrified. I know this, because I checked.

Smelly, Sarah texted me yesterday (a lot of people call me this. I hope it's because it sounds like my surname, and not because I don't wash enough). It's hit the Radio Times. One of us is in trouble for being obnoxious already.

I messaged back immediately with something I'm not going to repeat here because I'll get in trouble with my mum.

It says, Sarah answered, "as one of the female candidates discovers she didn't make the final, she glumly cheers herself. And that says it all." I think that was me, she added.

I stared at my phone, shaking slightly, and then I went to the toilet to vomit. It wasn't Sarah who 'cheered herself': it was me. On a boat in Bristol, I remember shouting dryly "here's to me!" before drunkly raising a glass at the camera: attempting to acknowledge what a loser I was, and actually only making myself seem even more of one. (In the meantime, of course, Ben had not only gone through, but had unselfishly claimed that he had "done it for love". True love, apparently - the kind that exonerates you from accusations of egotism - costs over £70,000 these days.) 

The problem is: I've already seen a chunk of the documentary. I see all of it on Wednesday, but I've already seen enough to know that I'm going to be running scared for the rest of my time in the UK. Despite spending the entire five week process telling the camera how little I wanted fame or notoriety, how uncomfortable the whole thing made me and how lovely everyone else was (Doug, Sarah and Sam, for instance, are now extremely close friends), the BBC have edited it down to three minutes of me hungrily fame-seeking, bitching about Hayley-the-Australian (very ineloquently: I believe I make a high pitched noise like a child, and a slapping motion with my hand), and being unceremoniously dumped by Producer Boy on TalkSport FM. My hair is ginger (goddamn hairdresser from hell), my face is shiny and spotty (new moisturiser), and my appalling clothes are falling apart and have paint all over them. I bitch, I fail to open doors properly (not metaphorically: there's a shot of me struggling at the entrance of a radio station for a good 15 seconds), I am rarely out of my pyjamas and I look like a sulky, boring cow because they kept ordering me to walk across bridges looking 'thoughtful' so I just frowned and glared instead.

In short, by 9.30pm on Thursday, I'm going to want to throw the sofa cushions at myself. God only knows what the rest of the UK is going to want to do. 

The thing is: I have to put things in perspective. I told my doctor last week that I am having minor panic attacks quite frequently at the moment, and - when he asked why - I mentioned the documentary. "I think it's quite normal to panic about having your life exposed on national telly," he pointed out calmly. "I'd be more worried about you if you weren't reaching for a paper bag now and then, to be frank. It would show a lack of normal sensitivity." Nobody has died, nobody will die (apart from my ex-hairdresser), and no harm is done: I didn't have a life before the documentary aired, so there's not a lot it can do to ruin whatever I've got left. 

But I still don't want it to happen. I don't want to see myself portrayed as something other than what I am; but much, much less do I want to see myself portrayed as exactly what I am. And that's what scares me the most, I think. Because who's to say that the bitching, stupid, minging, arrogant, ginger version of Holly Smale isn't the Holly Smale that the rest of the world sees anyway? Who's to say that the few minutes where I let myself down aren't what I'm defined by: aren't what I deserve to be judged by? Because - ultimately - it doesn't matter how nice I was for the rest of the time, or how humble: the documentary hasn't put anything there that wasn't there already. All my worst qualities - my strident opinions, my arrogance, my coldness, my intensity, my vanity, my cattiness - are all there: all the BBC has done is reduce me down to them. Which I can't blame them for. I'd have done exactly the same thing if I was in the editing suite as well.

So - as with everything else in life - it's a learning curve. Never let the BBC in your home. Never mouth off about another candidate or date in public, no matter how horrible she has been behind your back (for the record: she inferred that I was sleeping my way into the media, but she did it off camera) or how hot he is, and how humiliated he has made you. When a door says 'push,' don't try and pull it. Wear a proper bra, and clothes that don't make the builders laugh at you. Don't cry on film, or announce that 'nobody ever asks you out' (this is not true: I don't even know why I said it). Never allow your hairdresser to 'warm your hair up', because they'll make it orange. And try - try - to be the best version of yourself you can be. 

Because, when the essence of you has been boiled down, you should - if you're a decent, worthwhile, good person - be able to watch it on television without being sick afterwards. 

Minutes

It's an unavoidable truth that you take yourself with you wherever you go.

I am currently working as a temporary secretary in an HR department: a job that requires fast fingers, a professional level of subservience and glasses perched on the end of my nose. I'm there purely to type the minutes; to sit in the corner of the room and record what is being said during meetings, and then to quietly clean up the mess I've made of the notes and hand them over before scurrying back to my desk with my hand across my face so that nobody knows what I really look like. Which I did, admirably, for the first week or two: mainly because I wasn't even remotely interested in what was happening. It's easy to be professional when the topic of conversation is policies and legislation and the condition of the toilets. 

In the past week or so, however, I've been asked to record disciplinaries; to sit, quietly, and type up exactly what has been said. And I've found it fascinating. It is, essentially, real life stories: tales of jealousy, heartbreak, anger, revenge, hurt, all played out in a tiny little meeting room with too much air conditioning and dust on the blinds. It's like pocket Shakespeare, and I've not been able to stay quiet in the slightest. I've specifically asked to be put in the 'other side' of the hearing, even if it means missing my lunch break; I've stayed late so that I can record what the other person says; I'm asking questions that I have no real business asking; I'm giving my opinions when nobody has actually asked for them. Yesterday I was the only person to sit through two sides of one disciplinary (a 'his' and 'hers' of anger and hurt and downright childishness), and - when she had been fired and cried and I had very nearly cried all over my computer - I glared at him for the entire two hours and promptly told the manager during the adjournment exactly what I thought of the little git who had caused all the problems in the first place. Luckily, this particular manager found my fierce stance quite amusing, but there's no doubt at all that - with a different, less lenient boss - I may have ended up back in the employment office (with the girl I had been so vehemently defending, quite possibly).

I wish I could write details about these cases - I'm absolutely aching to - but conscience and contract dictate that I can't. The point is, however, that no matter how shut off I always try to make myself when I'm temping, I'm still me. I can't escape myself. I can't hear half of a story: I can't not get emotionally involved. I didn't speak to anyone for at least two hours after the girl got fired because I was so angry and upset, and my chin was wobbling uncontrollably when a gentleman stopped talking half way through a sentence so that his voice didn't break. I try to concentrate on the job, but I can't stop myself caring. And I can't stop myself jumping in with an opinion as soon as there is a gap in the conversation large enough, or trying to defend what I think is right even when it could get me in trouble.

"Japan?" my best friend said a few days ago. "Huh. Cool." And then she looked at me. "Are you running away again?"

"Nope," I said. "Not this time." 

She stared at me for a few seconds over the shoe rack in Primark: concerned and fiddling with a price tag.

"You can't leave yourself behind, you know that right?" she said eventually.

"I know," I said. And then I grinned at her, because I love that she knows me so well, and I love that she loves me enough to tell me. I picked up a shoe. "But I think I might be getting to the stage where I don't want to anymore." 

The bits of me I spend half of my life trying to escape from, I've realised, are never going to go away. I can't do anything about it: whatever country I'm in, whatever office I'm in, whoever I'm with, I can't run away from myself. But - maybe it's age, maybe it's tiredness, maybe it's drugs - I'm not sure I mind anymore. Whatever it is that makes me me will stay the same wherever I am, and whatever I do, and whatever role I put myself in, and that - for better or for worse - isn't such a scary thought after all. I can't escape my own minutes, because they're all laid out behind me and in front of me, even if I can't see them. Maybe all I can really do is keep writing them down.

Stepping

What's the opposite of Sod's Law? Because whatever it is, I've landed smack-dab in the middle of it.

I've not written this blog for over a week now. It's the longest I've ever gone without writing it (unless you count the time before I started it, and even then it still existed: it was an embryo in my brain that I just didn't know was there yet). I wish I could give a good reason - a disaster, perhaps, or a long, exotic holiday somewhere without computers - but the truth is that my world is never without computers, rarely filled with disaster, and infrequently particularly exotic. The simple fact is: I was sad. And when I'm sad - when I'm truly, truly sad - I am lost, and I can't write. Whatever it is in me that needs so desperately to write every day (like the part of me that needs so desperately to drink water when it's hot) goes numb, and there's nothing I can do: words just don't fit together. It's been a while since that has happened so entirely, but there it was: The Write Girl couldn't write a single thing.

Why was I sad? I'd reached an inevitable crossroads. Everything had suddenly stopped moving. I'd had my heart broken, was very sick (the two are often interlinked: as my mum says "when you're miserable you get poorly, Holly, so I wish you'd either stop playing silly beggars with boys or start taking vitamin C regularly"), I hated my job - it's cack - and I'd just finished my novel and sent it off. What was - I thought - supposed to be a congratulatory moment (a mental high five) turned out to be a huge anticlimax, and I posted the manuscript and went home to have a little cry because no fireworks had gone off at all when I dropped it in the post slot. 

The thing about a dream is that it's a direction. Once it's over, it's easy to find yourself spinning in a circle and not really knowing which way to look. I've never wanted anything other than to be a writer and see the world: having written, and with nothing left to do but wait, I was lost. I've never felt so thoroughly that I had nowhere to go, and nothing to do. I'm not happy here - I have never felt at home in the UK - and the thought of returning to my old life (PR and bars and commutes and drinking so much coffee in the morning that you vomit in the toilets at lunchtime) made me want to get back into bed. Which I did: getting out only to go back to my crappy old temping job, whimper in the loos, and slink back into it again wearing pyjamas that I hadn't washed all week.

And then - just like that - the world turned on its head, and everything became shiny again.

My unicorn was the first thing to come back to me. He said he still adored me, and it would take more than a couple of erratic hissy fits to scare him away. Which was very sweet, even if entirely and utterly unbelievable: I'll test him on that the next time I feel like being bonkers.

Then my dad suggested that I go back to my original idea of teaching in Japan, and try that out for a year. Get a bit of space, learn a new language, get some money together and then go and travel. I'm not a 'career girl': I never have been. If I can't write for a living, then I don't actually give a crap what I do, so it's not like there's a career ladder I'm slipping down by seeing the world for a bit. Thus, after a long discussion ("Will you be leaving the house?" "Yes." "Great.") he's lending me money, I've booked my teaching course and I'm flying out in August. Never mind the fact that all I can say is 'Good afternoon' in Japanese: it is often afternoon, and I'm tall and blonde. It's not like the locals will run out of things to say to me (they'll say to me - in Japanese - "gosh, aren't you tall and blonde," I'd imagine). 

And then - this evening - I got an email from an agent. I wasn't even looking for an email: I'd vaguely checked my post for the little brown envelopes I sent out, and then - realising I was being premature because I only sent anything out 3 working days ago - felt rather silly and watched The Simpsons instead. 3 working days is enough, though: apparently. It's not Missed Connections, though. It's not my baby novel: the one I've spent a year honing and honing and loving and torturing myself over. Nope: it's three chapters of an idea I whacked out over Christmas, which I thought was kind of fun and then promptly forgot about. Last week, I figured that - as I was in the post office with stamped addressed envelopes anyway - I might as well send out The Metamorphosis of Harriet Manners as well. And it's Harriet they love. Which I'm unfeasibly, air-punchingly delighted about, but I can't help but roll my eyes a tiny bit at the irony of it. I could have done that without leaving my job and getting into debt and living in my dad's spare room for a year.

Anywho. I'm not punching any gift horses in the chops, so I'm rolling with all of it. I've got my Japan travel book next to my bed (strangely my brain refuses to compute any word that is not English: it simply pushes it back out again), I'm trying to work out in my head just how many shoes I need in one year (two: I don't wear them very often), and I've sent an email back to the lovely agent to say that I haven't actually finished Harriet, but that I wrote 50,000 words of it in 3 weeks so I can probably finish it pretty quickly. If they want it. Which they might not. But ey: 'tiz still better for the ego than a finger up the nose.

Every time I get sad, and every time I get lost, something comes to make me feel foolish for ever feeling that nothing could be wonderful again. And - okay - you could say that I make my own fate (I sent the manuscripts out, I booked my Japan tickets), but it's bigger than that. As I tell myself each morning, just before I burn my toast: take each step you make bravely, and they will all lead somewhere.

But I've got to be honest. I'm not religious in the slightest, but - no matter how big or how brave my steps are - I just can't believe that there isn't something else out there - something invisible, something huge - secretly holding my hand. 

Rum 'n' lollies

I've had a rough week. Actually, as weeks go, I've had the Bugger of all of them. I've been very sick, I've broken my own heart, I've been fired, and I've had a big spot on my cheek that just will not go away no matter how much toothpaste I put on it. Plus I've stopped smoking for good, so I've been entirely unapproachable: dad asked me if I wanted fish and chips a few days ago, and I pretty much snapped his neck with one hand.

At the end of a week from Hell, therefore, I did the only thing you can do when the house of cards comes tumbling down: I drank more rum than I should have been allowed to drink (and then ate pickled artichoke hearts out of a jar), ate more Knobbly Bobblies than I should have been allowed to eat, sat in a park until my shoulders went bright red (again: when will I learn that I am not a tanner?) and attempted to make sense of my life with a few long-suffering friends. We didn't get very far ("you're a tit: again," was all I managed to achieve), but it didn't really matter: what mattered was that I had people around me who were prepared to spend hours and hours trying to make me laugh, until they finally managed it. (Well: them and the most ridiculous item of clothing I have ever seen: an office shirt that transforms, half way, into a g-string knicker which then clips up under the crotch. My friend and I had to leave the shop because I almost collapsed with laughter in the handbag aisle.)

The strange thing about blogs (some of them, anyway: mine included) is that they're incredibly navel-gazing. The nature of them means that daily minutiae and outpourings that probably should be locked away next to your bed - with a hair across the top so that you can check nobody has read it - suddenly become public, and you are essentially exposing your tedious misery to the entire world. And by God do you expose it. I've had some really sweet emails this week from readers telling me to 'keep my chin up', and they have been both incredibly uplifting and ridiculously humiliating: the fact that I have demonstrated my sadness so clearly that strangers are worried about me is actually very embarrassing. And it's not very British, to be honest. We're supposed to be all reserve and stiff upper lip: not whining online because you're having a bit of a crappy old time of it.

I'm going to do my best to bounce back, and show a little strength. To stop whining, and start accepting the consequences of my actions with my chin up. And I'm going to do my best to make this blog a little less self-indulgent (making my life a little less self-indulgent would probably help that). On the grand scale of things, I am a lucky, lucky girl: and the fact that the majority of my own pain comes from my own hand (I am unbearably self-destructive) should be reassuring, because at least it means that I can do something about it.

So I'm starting again. It's a sunny day, and I need a sunny perspective to go with it. And, if it all goes wrong, at least I know where to find a bottle of rum, a Knobbly Bobbly and friends that know how to make me laugh. And a shirt that will never, ever untuck from my trousers.

"You're Fired"

said Heartbeat FM.

"Okay," said me.

Shortest blog post I've ever written.

PS

I would just like to make the point that - should I ever meet an actual unicorn, rather than the metaphorical variety - I would not burn it. I don't want to be accused of cruelty to mythical creatures. I'm pretty much vegetarian, you know.

The Last Unicorn

When you're scared of something, there are three options. You can run away from it; you can hide; or you can run towards it, screaming. Or - if you're really really scared - you can run towards it, screaming, and then you can catch it and swing it round your head and maybe pop it on a bonfire and burn it and burn it until there's nothing left to be scared of anymore, because it is well and truly dead.

A few days ago, I said that I was scared of unicorns. Of love, and of unicorns, and of anything that threatens to spike you through the middle. It was a big declaration, it was elaborate, and it was stupidly over the top. When that was dramatically and emotionally announced - and I knew he would read my blog - I promptly took myself off and dramatically and emotionally announced my feelings to the person I claimed I was 'falling for'. When that was done, I announced myself a few more times. And - when he didn't really flinch - I upped it a notch. Then I upped it another notch. Finally, when he was still relatively unfazed, I whacked the crazy on full volume, dialled up the angst and the emotion until I could barely hear my own rantings, and blasted love and anger and unreasonable demands at him until he made a squeaking noise and skipped - whimpering - into the distance. (I believe he is currently still there: peeking over a tree stump and wondering what the hell has just emotionally assaulted him.) 

As soon as he was gone, of course, I retreated back into myself: heartbroken, exhausted and wondering why the bastard legged it. I was furious: was this, I thought, what happened when you declared your love for a man? Couldn't they handle a little bit of emotional inconsistency now and then? It didn't occur to me, of course, that I had done it on purpose: that the overblown declarations, and the bizarre, unpredictable behaviour, and the ridiculous demands, had all been done on purpose. It didn't occur to me, that is, until I sat down and I realised that - under the heartbreak, under the exhaustion - I was relieved. Because, simply, there is nothing left to be scared of anymore. All the emotions that had frightened me - all of the vulnerability, all of the need, all of the potential for hurt and for loss and for rejection - were tied up in him, and by blasting declarations at him at full volume - louder than they actually are, very possibly - I knew he would run and he would take it all with him. And the louder I blasted them, the crazier I got, the more I demanded, the faster he would run. Until I'd got that damn unicorn and I'd popped it on the fire, screaming, and I'd burnt it until it couldn't hurt me anymore.

And now I'm safe. I'm miserable, and I'm lonely, and I miss him, but I'm safe. And I'm not proud of it, but there you go. I wore my heart on my sleeve for 'daws to peck at, and then I got the 'daw by the throat and I throttled him for it.

You see, I've just realised that there's a fourth option. If you're frightened of something, you can hold your ground. You can put your hand out, and you can try to stroke it; you don't have to run away, and you don't have to run towards. You can just be there to greet it, gently, and make friends with it, and maybe - given time (and when do I ever give things time?) - it won't be as scary. You don't have to make as much noise as you can just to prove that you're brave. 

Which is an excellent realisation, but a little too late for this one, obviously. He's still behind his tree trunk, and he now thinks I'm bonkers. But if - please God - I'm ever lucky enough to find another animal with a spike coming out of its head (a rhino, perhaps), maybe by then I'll know how to handle it. 

Sick

Too sick to write. Never happens. Flu. Not pig flu, just regular flu, I think. Am still dying. Possibly. Possibly not, but feels like may be. Nose about to fall off.

Will update when no longer shuffling off mortal coil. Mortal coil currently sucks.

Pepper spray

Mum is furious with me.

"I cannot believe you just told the world that you're going to be cycling down a disused railway track first thing in the morning," she snapped this morning. 

"The world?" I said. "How many people do you think read my blog?"

"That's not the point," she said, raising her voice ('don't you raise your voice to me' is one of her favourite expressions, but apparently it doesn't work two ways). "It's who reads it, not just how many. There could be weirdos out there. It's dangerous. I'm not happy. I'm not happy at all."

"Mum," I pointed out. "They're announcing it on radio. Thousands of people across Hertfordshire will know where I'm going, and at what time. And I still don't care. What are they going to do? Chase me down a path with their flies open?"

"It's not funny," mum wailed. "It's not funny at all, Holly."

"Dad'll be at the beginning, and he'll be at the end," I sighed, feeling - yet again - like a kid. Never mind the fact that I went around the world on my own aged 18: apparently a 4 mile bike ride in my home town is fraught with danger.

"Have you got pepper spray?" mum demanded.

"Of course I don't. Who has pepper spray?"

"Then take a can of deodorant and spray that in their eyes instead."

"Won't do anything: not since they took all the alcohol out," I pointed out. "It doesn't even stop you sweating. But okay. I'll weapon myself up."

"Good," mum said. "Unless," she added more hopefully, "you get fired this morning? Then you won't have to do it at all."

So there we go. A sacking or death, apparently: they are my options. That, or turning my phone off after writing this blog.

Arse kicking

"Hatfield?" my dad said when I told him of my new plans. "What the bloody hell do you want to cycle around Hatfield for?" (Hatfield doesn't have italics, incidentally: it only does when my dad says it.)

"I dunno." I shrugged. "Seemed like a good idea a few hours ago."

"Bloody terrible idea," he said. "From start to finish. You'll get killed, for starters."

"I'm not that clumsy," I retorted with dignity. "I know how to avoid buses you know." (I don't, but it doesn't do for dad to be too right too often: he gets all smug.)

"I'm not talking about the buses," dad said darkly. "So why don't you go somewhere nicer?"

"In Welwyn Garden City? Like where? Round and round the lakes?"

"You could go on the old railway line, you know. That runs all the way to Luton. It's historic, it's a pretty ride, and you'll go through the woods and stuff."

I stared at dad for a few seconds, and I could see the smugness beginning already.

"That," I sighed tiredly, "is a bloody brilliant idea."

"Course it is," he snapped. "That's because I'm bloody brilliant, I am."

So plans - as per all my plans - have been promptly revised. As lovely as the congested roads around Hatfield are at that time of the morning (do I have to say that? I'm worried that somebody from Hatfield will read this and then try and shoot me if I say they're as ugly as hell - even though they are, in fact, possibly even uglier), the romance of an old railway line has won me over. I've geeked up on all my history facts (built in 1860, closed down in 1965: grandma used to ride on it through the woods, with leaves brushing the windows and my aunty in her lap), I've got my camera all charged up and I shall spend tomorrow night trying to fix my bike's puncture. I'm now actually ridiculously excited. It's not exercise that bothers me, you see. It's the ugliness and the pointlessness of most of it. Put me somewhere pretty and historic, and I'll go purple and sweaty very happily.

"And," dad pointed out as we examined the bike which has what looks like a small armchair attached to the frame, "it'll be a nice comfy ride, because you made me put that big old bloody seat on it. When I ride it, all the lads call me all sorts you know."

"It's for speed," I said pointedly, frowning at him.

"Speed and fat bums," he said, and then he went inside before I could call mum and tell her that he called me fat again.

So there's another reason for a woods-based adventure. Trees don't knock you into ditches, they don't run you off the road, and they sure as hell don't tell you that you've got a podgy bottom.

Not even goldfish

Love-life issues aside (they're too interesting to get into at the moment: it would take over my blog), tomorrow I find out whether or not I am through to the next round of Hertbeat Apprentice, and on Tuesday - at some time between 6 and 9am - I have to do something on air to celebrate National Bike Week (apparently bikes get their own week too, these days. When I was working in PR, it was a well known fact that there are at least three allocated concepts/brands for every day in the year: it's the most obvious way to try and get free promotion).

6 and 9am. It's not a time I'm used to, to be honest. I've been out of solid work for nearly a year now, and so the hours of 6am until 9am in the morning have become a distant memory: much like not seeing a '-' sign before my bank balance. That's issue number one. Issue number two is that I'm working at 9am that day, so whatever I plan to do is going to have to fall in the earlier slots. Issue number three is that I am ridiculously unfit, and issue number four is: every time I get on a bike, I manage to fall off it. 

It doesn't bode well. If I get to Tuesday - and am not 'sacked' for my desperate bribery jam-tart attempts - I fear that lying in the middle of the road and being hit by the number 36 bus might hamper my employment opportunities, whether on radio or not. And it's what will happen: mark my words. After ten minutes of huffing and puffing and swearing up a hill, the blood will rush to my head (probably when I'm sitting on a bench with my face clamped between my knees) and I'll end up lying with my face against the tarmac. Which is - I suppose - entertaining for listeners, even if it means that Raleigh won't be sponsoring my travel efforts at any stage in the near future.

So, I've decided that if I'm going to humiliate myself (again), I might as well do it properly (again). I'm going to do a lap of Hatfield before work, which is roughly 7 miles. It takes 40 minutes, apparently, so I'll start at 6.00am and just hope - desperately - that I'm finished by the time my typing shift starts at 9. And I'll chat to the radio at intervals throughout: if I can breathe, obviously.

Holly, my friend emailed me on Friday evening. What's this radio thing? What the hell are you doing this time?? Are you turning into one of those little old ladies who enters every competition and crossword puzzle in the newspapers in the hope of winning something?

I growled at the screen, made a face he couldn't see and then typed back:

Cheeky sod. All the things I'm going for you have to win on the back of ability, you know.

There was a half an hour gap, and then my friend sent:

And what's the next task?

Biking around Hatfield, I wrote sulkily.

Mmm, yeah. Can see your point, he replied. Lots of skill needed for that one.

Sod off, I replied, but point acknowledged. 

You're turning into Bridget Jones, you know that? he said. But with smaller knickers.

Mmm, I replied, thinking: not much, mate. Not much.

I simply don't care anymore. I never won a raffle when I was a kid: not a goldfish, not a teddy bear, not a chipped porcelain plate donated by the vicar's wife. Nada. I won nothing. So even if one day I end up with a branded t-shirt from all of my endeavours, I think I'll be pretty chuffed with myself. There are different kinds of winning, after all.

Unicorns

When I was six, I wrote a poem for my mum's birthday. It was all about a unicorn, that danced - yes, danced - in a ferny glen (and God can only guess where I got the word 'glen' from at the age of six), where dragons slept and mortal men lay round a cave of treasures gold ('Alas! But they had been so bold/ To step where fairies dance at night...'). It went down very well - I believe my mother cried - and today it serves to remind me of three important things: 1. that mothers like anything you give them, 2. that poems - like songs - are a wonderfully cheap gift for any occasion (and can be recycled with no effort: see Elton John and Candle in The Wind), and 3. six year olds who write poems about ferny glens don't tend to have many friends.

I didn't sit down this evening to write a blog about unicorns, however. I didn't sit down to write a blog about my mum (or any other member of my much maligned family, for once). I didn't sit down to write about Elton John, and I didn't sit down to write about poetry.

I sat down to write about love. 

And I couldn't do it; I never can. The closer I get to the topic, the harder the writing is, and the more embarrassed I become. When I was six, I sat down to compose a poem that would tell my mum how much I loved her, and what I ended up with was an eight line ditty about a horse with a spike coming out of its head. I sat down to tell her happy birthday, and - instead - I told her about goblins who apparently induced group comas. Instead of focusing on how I felt, I focused on something that wasn't - and never could be - real, simply because the closer things get to the heart of you, the deeper the splinter is, and the harder it is to pull it out.

The truth is that love scares me. It scares me like nothing else does; and the feeling I get when I'm even close to it - the feeling of inadequacy, of vulnerability, of raw fear, of knowing that the only weapon I really have against the world (writing) is defunct because it can never really cover it, not really - makes me want to write about unicorns forever simply because they're not real, and they don't scare me, and I can go some way to catching them. Which love will never let me do: not properly. My words - my tweezers - just aren't strong enough, and the love breaks off somewhere in me: stuck and hurting and making it difficult to walk properly. 

Tonight I wanted to write about love because I think I am falling for somebody (I know this, because I am terrified, and I can't think of a lot else, and his initials are on my pencil case). But every time I sit down to try and write about it - or to try and tell him - I can't. The unicorn pops up again. I am utterly inadequate, suddenly, and I can write about anything - I can write about jam tarts; I can write about dancing; I can wax lyrical about stars and sparkles and rainbows and so forth - but I cannot say how I actually feel, and I cannot admit my weakness, or my fear, publicly. I can't blog about it: I'm too embarrassed. I can't tell my friends about it: I'm too shy. I cannot confess that I'm exposed: both emotionally, and in my writing. Not without freezing, or losing all of my words entirely, or feeling as if my writing is broken and I have nothing of any value to offer him anymore.

The problem is that boys aren't so big on unicorns. Ferny glens are not that impressive, and I'm not sure a rhyming fairy circle has ever made a man cry (apart from maybe Tolkien, and possibly Keats: he always struck me as the wussy type). My attempts to dodge the topic, therefore, are becoming more and more inadequate, and - even more importantly - the older I get, and the more rigid my fear of love and my inability to write about it grows, the more dangerous it becomes. The closer I get to buying a cat and a bedsit and a blanket that smells of car.

So I sat down tonight to write about love, and - 21 years later, 21 years wiser - I wrote about unicorns again. I wrote about something imaginary, instead of taking a deep breath and trying to deal with real life, and real emotions, instead.

But - if I can get this far - there's nothing to say that I'm not on my way to being able to write about it properly, or confront it properly. Because they're not so different, unicorns and love: not really. They're both pretty from a distance, and they can both spike you through the middle if you get too close. And they're both pretty magical, as long as you can make yourself believe in them.

Dancing in the dark

Sometimes life feels like a school dance. It's all over the place - legs and arms akimbo - and then, suddenly, click: it snaps into shape for a few seconds, and everything looks right.

I've just been offered three or four weeks of work. Enough to get me almost completely out of debt. And enough to keep my mind off the manuscript, which goes out this evening. Which means that, this time next month, I'll be debtless, free, and ready to start again. One weekend of freedom, and then a ladder out of debt and - perhaps - to a little self-respect again.

In a few seconds - probably - the dance will suddenly stop making sense. One of the dancers will fall over; a skirt will get ripped; the electrics will go; the star on the end of my wand will inexplicably come off during the final and smack another dancer in the face (this has happened before). 

But, right now, it all makes sense. Which - after so long, dancing in the dark - is a bloody good feeling.

Bruised shins

I have just woken up with a stonking hangover. Not a little, fuzzy-tongued hangover. Not a vague, furry-headed hangover. No; a big, whopping, cannot-move-out-of-bed-and-am-writing-on-laptop-because-suspect-may-be-sick-if-try-to-turn-on-main-computer hangover. The birds - one of which, I realised at three am this morning when I woke up to drink three pints of water, sounds like an iPod scrolling (click click click click click) - have never been jauntier. I swear to you: the perkiest birds in the country have flown to Welwyn Garden this morning and perched themselves outside my window. Along with light. Lots of light. Waiting for me to open my curtains so that it can rush straight into my head and make me cry. Which isn't going to happen, because these curtains are staying shut today.

I have never loved a hangover more.

One of the decisions I made about four weeks ago - when I tried to take money out of my overdraft and the computer said no - was that until I found employment, I wouldn't let myself go out, socially. There was just no way I could possibly justify getting more and more into debt just for the sake of some fun; it would be incredibly irresponsible. And I've stuck to it. For four weeks, I've not left the house. I've written, I've gardened, I've dressed up like a wally and I've decorated the main bedroom, but I've not had a drink. And I've not seen friends. 

Yesterday, however, I finished my novel. Finished, finished it. There's nothing else I can do with it, now: it is done. Now all I have to do is start shovelling it into envelopes and playing the long rejection-game (I knew my love-life had trained me for something). So, to celebrate, I went to see one of my very best friends - one of the friends that makes me laugh hardest - and I drank four pints of cider in a very nice little pub by the Thames. I laughed until my face hurt. And then I wobbled home, ate a pizza, burnt my lip, fell into a chair and bruised my leg, had a giggly phone-call with a boy who makes me giggle, and passed out with no clothes on. I had, in short, the kind of night a 27 year old is supposed to have more often than once in four weeks. And it felt bloody marvellous.

So - frankly - the birds can sing as much as they want, today, and the light can shine as bright as it likes. Nothing is taking the (slightly queasy) grin off my face this morning. Because this hangover, I earned. 

What boys have

A friend just emailed me. This morning, she had a pivotal conversation with her two year old son.

"Tom's boobs," he stated over breakfast, pointing at her chest (Freud would have a field day). 

"No," Julie corrected him. "Mummy's boobs. Girls have boobs, Tom."

"Girls have boobs," he repeated seriously. 

"So if girls have boobs," my friend asked, "what do boys have?"

"Bikes," Tom answered.

A pretty succinct appraisal of the gender divide, I'd say. 

Jammy

Well: it went swimmingly. Tarts were grabbed off my plate by hungry commuters, my feathers stayed intact, I was cheered by a group of builders, and a little old lady came up - slightly concerned - took a Jammy Dodger and then said sweetly: "are you the Queen of Tarts, dear?" To which I very nearly said yes. 

I took lots of photos, but none for this blog, I'm afraid. I'm The Write Girl: it's all in the imagination. Otherwise I'd be The Photo Girl and I'd probably get more visitors.

The lesson, however, has been learnt. Nothing is as scary as it seems, as long as you take it on with a grin. In fact: I think I cheered up quite a few grumpy people this morning. My grandma's strawberry tarts (with home-made jam, she reminded me) certainly did. One visitor actually tried to take two, and I had to politely tell them to get some manners.

Now all I have to do is look forward to the next challenge.

Silly tarts

I've just learnt an important - if blindingly obvious - lesson.

You know how fancy dress parties are fun? The key to the fun, apparently, is the party bit. Not the fancy dress bit.

I just tried on my outfit - red sticky-up-round-the-neck-thing (ruffle?), heart-covered strippogram dress, long black cardigan (mine), long black leggings (mine), long black underskirt (mine) and crown (not mine) - and had to sit down on my bed for a few seconds because I was hyperventilating with fear. Pure, unadulterated fear: the kind I used to get when I was very small and I saw a large dog. 

To enjoy fancy dress (it suddenly became blindingly clear), it has to be dark, you have to be drunk, and you have to be with a large group of friends who also look like idiots. You should not be on your own, sober and in broad daylight in front of a group of commuters; some of which, quite possibly, you went to school with. It should not be before breakfast. And you should not be broadcasting this across the county.

I'm not even sure Queen of Hearts works, actually. 

"Isn't it going to confuse people?" the gentleman at Hertbeat FM said when I rang to update them. "You know, seeing as there's also a Heart FM, and that's spelt with an a?"

I stared at my phone, and then I stared at the (say it: say it) maribou trimmed skirt on the back seat of the car. 

Bugger, I thought.

"No," I said as bravely as I could. "I'll have logos. And I'll explain."

"Mmm," he said, and then I rung off just before I started sobbing into the steering wheel.

You know what? I'm going to do it. I'm going to take one of the deepest breaths I've ever taken and do it. Every time I think I've confronted all of my fears, another one always pops its little head up to try me. National telly? Done. Travelling the world on my own? Done. Asking a boy out and being told to sod off? Done. Dressing up like a total dickhead in public? Not done. And - if you asked me which of the above was the scariest - this is it. By far. I'd rather land on my own in a far-flung city at 2am (done) and get mugged within ten minutes (done), and then have to sleep under a pier (done), before ringing my mum and dad in tears (done done done done) than do this.

Which means, I think, that it has considerable value. Because if I do this, I can do anything.

PS: Dad keeps eating all my jam tarts. If I don't do it tomorrow, I won't have anything to do it with.

Tomorrow

My split-personality will have to be in full force tomorrow, because my day is going to be as split as possible.

At 7am, I shall be at my local train station, rigged up like The Queen of He(a)rts, handing out jam tarts that my grandma is currently baking, with little Hertbeat flags and stickers, encouraging commuters to listen to Hertbeat FM. I shall, with no doubt at all, look like a total tool, and I'll be lucky if I get away without being lynched. I shall then take my kit to another train station, where I shall do it again.

I will then go home, get changed into non-cartoon gear, and take my book manuscript to an agent. Following which, I'm meeting up with one of my best friends to get horribly, horribly drunk. Although not too drunk, because I have to return the costume to the fancy dress shop on Thursday morning.

"What with the Best Job thing, and now this," I said to my dad on the way to pick up the feather-trimmed costume (I don't remember the Queen of Hearts wearing feathers, but apparently she does), "I'm going to look like a fame hungry twinkie, aren't I."

"Yup," dad said. "Absolutely obsessed with it."

"Do you think anyone will know I don't actually want fame?"

"Nope. Not even for a second." Dad paused. "You're wearing leggings with that thing, right?" he said. "Because you look like a stripogram."

"I'm wearing a full length skirt underneath it," I assured him. "And a wig. Nobody will know it's me."

"Mmm," dad said. "They know your name at the radio station, right?"

There was a silence.

"They do," I confirmed. "Bugger."

So that's it. Shy Holly is going to have to be pushed into her box tomorrow, because otherwise I'm going to be so terrified I probably won't leave the house. I knew that chasing dreams was hard work, but I didn't know it would be so bloody scary.

Neighbours

Having failed to move me into the back garden, dad is now focusing his energies on attempting to shift me in the opposite direction.

"House opposite has been sold," he said pointedly today during The Simpsons break (never, never will a conversation be started during the show itself, and most of our deepest dialogues take exactly two and a half minutes). 

"Oh," I said. I don't really care about the real estate market, to be honest: if I did, I probably wouldn't be living at home with my father.

"Yep," dad continued. "To a man. 25 years old."

I looked at him in surprise, and dad pretended to watch an advert about toilet roll. There was a silence.

"Single, apparently," he added. "Single, home owner, living just across the road. I was chatting with Anne about it."

(Anne is our next door neighbour. We have never talked. There's no reason to.)

"Oh," I said coolly.

There was another pause.

"Yep. Quite impressive, single guy: quite attractive too, I've heard."

And then my dad turned and winked at me.

"Dad," I asked him after a few stunned seconds. "Do you have a crush on our new neighbour?"

"No!" dad shouted, predictably upset that I had accused him of gayness. "I'm thinking about you," he added in a slightly more controlled voice. 

"This isn't the Waltons, you know," I said. "You don't have to try and make me marry anybody within a fifty metre radius."

"Humph," I'm pretty sure I heard him mutter as he went to put the kettle on. "I reckon we're going to have to spread the net a little further than that if we're going to have any luck."

In a normal family, trying to set your daughter up with the 'new guy across the street' before you've even met him would be weird enough. From my dad, however, this is even more worrying. This is a man who - until I was 21 - walked out of a room if I said the word 'boyfriend'. A man who referred to my partner of three years as 'that guy'; who still purses his lips when I go out on dates, and who categorically informed me when I had my heart broken last year that 'romance was for girls'. Any mention of grandchildren - despite the fact that I am 28 this year - brings him out in hives, and he then rocks into the distance, scratching and muttering 'too soon, too soon'.

And now here he is: effectively wrapping me in a pink bow and leaving me at number 19 with my dowry in a parcel round my neck. These days, I think even a road between us seems - to my poor old dad, who just wants a bit of space - like a better option than nothing at all.

"Thanks for the unnecessarily detailed update," I managed when The Simpsons had finished, "but I think I can handle my own love life."

There was a small silence, and then dad lifted an eyebrow.

"Can you?" he said in genuine surprise. "Oh. That's good, then."

I'll tell you something, though: if Mr Single HomeOwner and 25 suddenly turns up on our doorstep to return - ooh, I don't know - a lawnmower, or a bowl, or a packet of sugar, my dad's going to have some explaining to do. Frankly, if I move out for a man, I'm moving further than that. 

Beating Herts

My mum is clearly in the wrong profession. Or the right profession, depending on how you view teachers.

"I've had a few ideas about this Hertbeat thing," she said when I eventually answered the phone (if you don't ring three separate times, these days, I can't be bothered to answer. It's amazing how busy I am, considering I don't have paid employment).
"Mmm," I replied dubiously, putting down my newspaper and ice lolly. "Excellent. Hit me with them, then."
"Well," mum said, taking a deep breath, and I knew immediately that I was in for a treat because it was her I've had too much coffee 'well'; her I've marked an essay that doesn't totally suck 'well'; her I've been drinking Pimms at lunch again 'well'. "Do you know why it's called Hertfordshire?" she said excitedly.
"Nope," I said. I thought this was just a conversation starter, but apparently it was a genuine question because mum barked:
"Think about it, Holly. What's a hert?"
"A deer?"
"Right. And what's on the county logo?"
"A deer?"
"Yes, and a ford, which is the river Lee."
"Right," I said.
"So," mum said, and she took another deep breath. "So you need to find somebody who has a little deer which you can take into the town centre on a lead, and then you can serve them dressed as The Queen of Herts, with little paper deer on your dress, with a hert, serving out tarts."
"Tarts?" I said, trying not to laugh.
"Jam tarts. With little deer on them," mum improvised. "And you could take a little ghetto blaster thing, and get it to play the sound of a heartbeat really loudly."
"Well..."
"Ooh!" mum shouted. "And then you could get a toy deer, and bop it around to the music, and that could be a Hert Beat."
I was laughing by this point: a fact that mum managed to ignore with great dignity.
"And," she said: "I know this is a little controversial, but you could get the toy deer, and you could beat it with a stick."
At which point, I abruptly shouted with laughter.
"Like a hert beat, you know?" mum explained in a slightly offended tone. "No? Do you think the RSPCA would be upset?"
"Probably," I said, "and I haven't got the foggiest idea where I'll get a deer on a string from. But awesome," I said when I had calmed down. "Absolutely amazing. I was thinking cakes and a t-shirt, but there are some cracking ideas there, mum."
"Well," mum said proudly: "the last lesson of the day was very boring, so I had some time to brain storm."
"Thanks," I said, meaning it. Not for the ideas - which, frankly, if I actually did would end up with me being dragged off to some kind of special room - but for the support. Mum was always a bit dubious about The Best Job, and I think she's making up for previous reticence with an enthusiasm that slightly endangers the carpet.
"S'alright darling," mum said chirpily. "And if I come up with anything else, I'll let you know. You make my heart beat," she said coyly at the end.
"Too much," I said.
"Thought so," she agreed. "Always one step too far, eh?"
And then she went off to Google Fancy Dress Shops in my local area.

She's got one cracking imagination, my mum. But I'm not letting her near any of my toys.

The Queen of Herts

You want the good news or the bad news? "The irrelevant news," my dad normally plumps for: but I'm not giving you that option, because frankly it's bloody irritating.

The good news is: as of this morning, I am officially a 'Hertbeat FM Apprentice'. This means that I have to compete against five others in my local area for a job I would love (trainee presenter on the breakfast show), and the fact that it should be 36,000 times easier than it was the last time I went for a job I wanted (TBJITW, obviously) is not making me feel any better. Frankly, it doesn't matter a jot if you're up against thousands and thousands of international candidates from around the world or five people from Welwyn Garden City, Hitchin and Stevenage: it's all about what you have to offer, and how good you are. And that hasn't changed, even if the odds are better this time. 

But it's great news anyway. My favourite thing about Best Job (apart from starting this blog) were the radio slots, so it could be an amazing opportunity. And it means that another door is opening, even if it means it might shut again before the week is out. Which leaves me feeling like Alice In Wonderland, but in a good, pre-potion kind of way.

The bad news is: I now have to refer to a job title that spellcheck yet again hates. It keeps trying to change it into Heartbeat, because cunning puns are apparently not built into its functionality server. It's short for Hertfordshire, I keep trying to tell the wiggly red lines: but they're not having any of it, so I'm going to have to push the geek in me to the bottom of my stomach and try to ignore them (although it's like trying to have a good day when you've been given a B on an essay, frankly).

Over the next few weeks, I have to do 'tasks' that are allocated by the Hertbeat FM team (I met them when I went into the studio for Best Job, and they're awesome. Awesome. They also - I might add - apparently read this blog), and every week one of us will be fired.

Which leads me to an irony to top all ironies. Queensland Tourism told me - after the shenanigans were all over - that one of the main reasons I didn't make the final of Best Job was my 'promotional activity'. I was great on media relations but low on creative stunts, apparently, and they had hoped for more. The first task for the Hertbeat FM job is to promote Hertbeat FM locally, in a creative, stunt-y kind of way. Excellent.

The thing is: after an initial freak-out, I suddenly realised that Queensland and Hertbeat were asking two very different things from me: and it was this one I was comfortable with. Queensland wanted me to promote me: myself as Caretaker of Hamilton Island. Hertbeat FM wants me to promote Hertbeat FM. And - while I'd rather shoot myself in the face than tell the public why I, personally, rock - I'm quite happy to tell them why something else does. 

So - knowing that my competition may well try and nick my ideas - I'm laying them out here first. I shall be The Queen of Herts. I'm thinking: cakes with the logo, handed out to commuters in the morning; stickers, given to local shopkeepers; videoing the local people about Hertbeat; dressing up as The Queen of Herts. You name it: I'll be out there, giving it my best shot. 

Not because I've learnt my lesson, you see, but because this time I actually believe in what I'm trying to sell.