For Gwennie
Love
La-La
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
WHY it took SO LONG for to get DOLORES SCREWED
5 Movies That Really WILL Make You Laugh
50 ways to say ‘JE SUIS HEUREUX’
5 Reasons Why Being 50 Is Better Than Being 49
The original SCREW YOU DOLORES
5 Reasons Why Being 50 Is Better Than Being 49 (Part 2)
It’s not quite in the JEANS
5 Other Feel-Good Slogans
Letter from PARIS, PART ONE
You’re lucky I’m only ‘SCREWING’ you, DOLORES
5 Other Magnificently Useful Expressions
Happiness has nothing to do MICKEY MOUSE
5 Things I Learned From Being Fired
KNOCK KNOCK WHO’S THERE?
Working in a COAL MINE going down, down
No funny chapter heading for this. SERIOUSLY.
10 Best Weepies
Letter from MADRID
5 Things To Do If You Need Cheering Up
IT DOES WHAT????
Happiness Is Never Putting Off …
I’LL BE THERE FOR YOU
It’s a group that forms to talk about those things — you know the ones; they’re made of paper and have words written on them
CALLING ‘BITTER’ PARTY OF ONE
Letter from MILAN
5 Drinks Guaranteed To Make You Happy
Champagne for DUMMIES
Two FABULOUS THINGS — no, three — happened during my first stay in Champagne
There is no AWESOME
5 Things That Actually Are Awesome
Letter from PARIS, PART TWO
A hairclip, a country for old men and a question of hygiene. Oh and Hugh Jackman
Skip this if you don’t want to know the plus side of not having kids
My 5 Favourite Babies
Letter from PARIS, PART THREE
5 Reasons Why Being 50 is Better Than Being 49
It’s hard to talk about travelling a lot without sounding like a skite. So sorry about that …
5 Places Where You Might Be Happier Than Others
And Just For Interest’s Sake, 5 Places Where You Might Be Less Happy
Just a SPOONFUL of self-help makes the MEDICINE go down
While I have your attention can I just bring up a small matter of house keeping
Oh my GOLLY GOODNESS most GRACIOUS me
These boots were made for dancing at an ALL-MADONNA GAY DISCO
The secret to a long and HAPPY MARRIAGE? DON’T ASK ME
Matches might be made in HEAVEN but divorces are made on the SP104 near TARANTO
Me, I blame Tinkerbelle and Bunny
Letter from PARIS, ONE YEAR LATER
MERCI BEAUCOUP TOUT LE MONDE
Also by Sarah-Kate Lynch
About the Author
Copyright
WHY it took SO LONG for to get DOLORES SCREWED
In 1997 I wrote my first book, which was about always being on a diet but never being thin.
Initially, I wanted to call it Screw You Dolores after a story that summed up the attitude I was keen to promote, but my publisher at the time said it was too rude; that little old ladies might be too embarrassed to ask for it, or booksellers might want to hide it in a brown paper bag — like they do with Hustler magazine or unripe avocados. As a result, my first book ended up being called Stuff It: A Wicked Approach to Dieting.
You will notice that my eleventh book is called Screw You Dolores. It’s sort of about knowing when to do what someone tells you to do, and knowing when they should shove it up their jacksie.
Doesn’t sound like much of an approach to happiness? Well, you don’t need to tell them to shove it up their jacksie — it’s the knowing that you do in the first place that counts.
This quiet confidence in yourself, in who you are and what you want to do, is in my opinion what just might help you find the key to happiness.
Or one of the keys.
Or the daisy-chain to which one of the keys is attached.
Or the — no, it IS the key.
Obviously I wasn’t quite sure what went where and in whose jacksie back in the Stuff It days, but I’m a bit more clued-up now.
That’s not to say I’m permanently quietly confident. I’m not. Very few people are. And they’re probably nerds, anyway, doing complicated things with algorithms and biogenetics on their way to pick up their Nobel Peace Prizes, and not even going shopping or emptying the mini-bar while they’re there.
And no one is happy all the time, either. Even Dolly Parton says people who are happy all the time are shallow, and Dolly has a very deep understanding of shallow.
Happiness, like most things, is a matter of expectation.
You know that feeling you get when you pick a ‘comedy’ off the shelf at the DVD store and get it home to watch it, only to find out it’s a drama where everyone starves to death in a really cold place where there’s a noisy war going on outside in the dark, and Brad Pitt — who is the reason you got the DVD out — isn’t even in it because he produced it instead of starring in it?
You get that feeling because you were looking for something that would make you laugh and you didn’t find it. Some days you might be looking for a movie where everyone starves to death in a really cold place where there’s a noisy war going on outside in the dark, and so you’ll feel pretty chipper by the end of it.
Same with happiness: sometimes what we’re seeking is a great big enormous thing that’s with us 24/7 as the birds tweet around our heads and the angels sprinkle moon dust in our hair of gold, etc, etc.
We think that when this huge happiness arrives it will overwhelm every minute of every day and make us thin and pretty, and untroubled by nagging doubts or looming disaster or farty husbands or holey tights. But sometimes happiness doesn’t move in, it just visits, and the trick is to ply it with cups of tea and little cakes with lashings of icing so that maybe it will stick around a bit longer.
Happiness might not be winning Lotto or having George Clooney finally realise you are the woman of his dreams. It might be smaller — like two squares of perfect dark chocolate, or a stranger saying something kind when you’re having an otherwise shite day.
It’s still happiness.
And from little acorns, giant pohutukawa trees do grow.
At least I think that’s how it works — but bear in mind that everything I know about horticulture I learned from Mr McGregor in Peter Rabbit.
SCREW YOU DOLORES?
YES, THE COMMA IS SILENT. AND SOMETIMES IT’S BETTER IF THE
SCREW YOU DOLORES
IS SILENT, TOO.
1. Life of Brian
‘I am Brian, and so is my wife!’
2. The original Arthur with Dudley Moore (definitely not the Russell Brand one)
‘Sometimes I just think funny things.’
3. Tootsie
‘That is one NUTTY hospital.’
4. Bridesmaids
‘It’s coming out of me like lava!’
5. So I Married an Axe Murderer
‘Give your mother a kiss or I’ll kick your teeth in.’
*6. Little Miss Sunshine
‘I’d like to dedicate this to my grandpa, who showed me these moves.’
**7. The Hangover
‘Whose f*cking baby is that?’
* When I say 5 things, I actually mean 6 ** Or 7
50 ways to say ‘JE SUIS HEUREUX’
What do I know about happiness? This is a very good question, especially as I suffer from Bitchy Resting Face so I hardly ever actually look happy.
Bitchy Resting Face, in case you’re not aware, is a sy
ndrome that someone made up as a joke only to find out that 10 per cent of the world actually suffers from it. It’s what happens naturally to your expression when you’re not deliberately arranging it in mild surprise, say, or quiet contemplation, or unbridled joy, or deep concentration. If you relax for a moment and your face automatically re-arranges itself into a scowl, then you, my friend, also suffer from Bitchy Resting Face. My face automatically re-arranges itself into that of an axe murderer, especially from the side, so I have to try extra hard to never relax because nobody likes an axe murderer.
Anyway, getting back to happiness, my observation is that it comes naturally to very few, and even then they might be foxing, or have secret piña colada addictions, or be quietly decoupaging torn-up images of their ex-partners onto the handle of a tomahawk all the better to chop off their heads. Once you realise this, you start to feel better about yourself. Yay! It’s not that happiness is a competition but if it was, you wouldn’t want to be a loser, because nobody likes losers except their mothers, and sometimes even they run away and start a new life in Turangi.
The good news is there’s nothing anyone else has that you don’t have, too, when it comes to happiness. You just have to go out looking for it, as opposed to sitting around waiting for it on the off-chance that it pops in, the way you do with Rob Lowe, the good-hair fairies, and the Portable Liposuction Device salesman.
Anyway, while I don’t pretend to be an expert on happiness, I do believe that I know a little more about it than some. Why I believe that I’ll get to later, because if I tell you now the book will be over and you’ll be mad because you spent $40 on something that lasted only 20 pages.
What? You didn’t spend $40? This is such a BARGAIN. Go, you!
So, I’d been wandering the globe searching for happiness for a couple of decades, and then, when I reached 50, there it was, just as Jesus said, hanging like a big glittery disco ball right in front of my very eyes. (At least I think it was Jesus who said that. Or Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Or The Fat Guy With The Beard From The Hangover Movies.)
OK, maybe it wasn’t quite like that, but the truth is that for me turning 50 was a huge step forward on the happiness front. Who knew there was more to ageing than young whippersnappers not showing any respect, and having bad knees?
But at 50 I finally felt the relief of being who I was instead of the disappointment of not being someone else, and therein lies the secret to quite a lot of happiness.
In your twenties you’re trying to figure out who you are. In your thirties you’re trying to make that happen. In your forties you’re figuring out what went wrong. And when you hit 50? Well, hello! Here you are and this is it, and you tried everything else and how fabulous, finally, to be able to accept yourself the way you are and move along, nothing to see here, folks, business as usual.
Unlike some, I was looking forward to my fiftieth birthday for years in advance. My thirties had been tumultuous, and my forties a little bit tragic — I was keen to be shot of them. Plus, I love a birthday, especially a milestone.
Luckily for me I have a BFF born only a couple of weeks before me: Gwennie, who lives in Sydney, and with whom I have long shared our special birthday celebrations. In our twenties we decided to make a weekend of it, in our thirties the weekend turned into a week, in our forties it was a month … and when it came to turning jointly 100, we each vowed to devote the entire year to celebrating our age.
I decided that for my year I would have a party with her in Sydney and then a party in Paris. Yes, Paris.
I also decided that I would not work very hard the year of my fiftieth, and I would not work on anything in particular, book-wise, giving me time to think over the previous decades and contemplate the next ones. And since I was already going to be having a party in Paris, I decided that I may as well do the contemplation there, too.
This came as something of a surprise to my husband, the Ginger, who was not turning 50, and like most men doesn’t care too much for contemplation unless it’s of a car magazine or a porn star.
However, I pretty much told him to shut up and get with the programme because this was the YEAR OF ME not HIM. I was going anyway, I said, for two whole months with a trip to Turkey in the middle, and it would be better if he came too, because then I wouldn’t have to carry all the suitcases or cook the dinners in the little apartment I had rented in Montmartre, and also I wasn’t sure where Turkey was.
Usually the Ginger can talk me out of things like this by coming over all fiscal and talking about mortgages and getting ahead and blah blah blah blah yawn. But you’re only 50 once and, I swear on my breastplate and hotpants, as the date of my fiftieth drew closer I truly felt as if I had acquired a superpower: the power to do what I wanted, no matter what anyone else thought. This is not a power I had when I was younger, so I would have been a dang fool to quash it. And although I am stink at maths and have no sense of direction, I am not a dang fool.
Why not do something just because you have always wanted to, and for once you can’t be bothered writing a pros-and-cons list because you know the cons one will be longer, and the practical side of you will have talked the dreamy side of you out of it before you even get halfway through it?
I mean, really: why not?
Eventually, the Ginger could not answer that question. Maybe it was because I bopped him on the head with the crockpot every time I asked it. Or maybe it was because he eventually worked out that me not weighing up every possibility a thousand times over, then checking it a thousand times more, left time for him to talk about some of his stuff like, you know, um, garage doors and, er, Bunnings.
So he agreed to come to Paris with me for the actual birthday, but declared that if he got offered work back at home he would return to do it. That seemed fair enough. He works in the film industry where jobs can be hard to come by, so I assumed there wouldn’t be any. We partied in Sydney with the BFF, then headed to Paris, arriving on the eve of my big day.
I don’t know what it is about the City of Light, but I always feel so lucky to be there that it puts an extra spring in my step and a smile on my dial. (Yeah, screw you, too, Bitchy Resting Face.)
Not even jetlag and a hat-trick of hangovers upon arrival could keep me from grinning stupidly as we shopped at the corner store for gooey cheeses and queued at the boulangerie for a baguette; all we needed for a simple meal before the next day’s festivities.
The apartment was perfect: a high-ceilinged, wooden-floored, one-bedroomed delight, with a bathroom so small that if you dropped anything you opened the door with your butt bending to pick it up. It sang of Paris and I loved every centimetre.
We woke the next day to rain and chilly temperatures, but I got all the sunshine I needed from a hot coffee and an almond croissant. Calorie-counting on the day you turn 50? I think non.
After much research, a Parisian foodie friend had booked the Ginger and me a table for lunch at Epicure in Hôtel Le Bristol, a triple Michelin-starred restaurant that looked like the perfect place to celebrate.
The décor was divine, the food to die for, and the staff in awe of our ability to clear a cheese board. I got the feeling that a lot of rich people went to Epicure to pick at their food, but our wait-people were genuinely excited — at least I think it was excited, I guess it could have been horrified — to see us clean every single plate.
We started with a glass of vintage champagne and moved on to wine as recommended, per glass, by the sommelier — without even looking at the price. Now that’s a little soupçon of happiness right there. I am usually obsessed with price, but on the day I turned 50 I did not give a rat’s derrière.
After our delicious five-course meal we went first to the Robert Clergerie shoe shop on Avenue Victor Hugo, where they had nothing in my size, and then to the vast shoe department at Galeries Lafayette, where they had a million of everything.
Anyone who has a husband will know how amazing it is to get them to go to one shoe shop without moaning your ears off, let alon
e a second. With the Ginger actually partaking in the process, I bought two pairs. Is that not a perfect day?
I have only a couple of photos, as we were too busy having a wonderful time to pull out the camera, and I simply cannot take pictures on my phone. (It doesn’t make sense — phones are for calling people!) But in the photos I do have, I glow with happiness.
I’m in Paris, full of gorgeous cheese and wearing French platforms, and it took me 50 years to get there, but, Fat Guy With The Beard From The Hangover Movies damn it — get there I did!
I may never as long as I live have another day like that, but what matters is that I had that one. What’s more, I knew when I was having it how special it was and how lucky I was to be having it. That’s worth being 50 for, I thought. That’s worth writing a book about, I thought.
Of course I had sworn off writing at the time, so that was very unlikely to happen.
1. You don’t have to worry about turning 50. You did it already.
2. Um.
3. Let me think.
4. Look over there — a bird!
5. More on this later.
The original SCREW YOU DOLORES
Back in 1989 my cousin Dave and I spent a month travelling across America. We started in New York, drove down to Florida, then across the southern states, stopping only to be wooed by one-legged octogenarians (me), shunned by psycho two-timing Texans (him), and held at gunpoint by drug-crazed Vietnam veterans (both of us).
Screw You Dolores Page 1
