Screw You Dolores

by Sarah-Kate Lynch

  The lessons I tried to teach myself in the year I turned 50 took a while to seep in, and they’re seeping still. But I’m definitely getting closer.

  And when the opportunity to get halfway to Paris cropped up, even though I’d been there only 12 months before, I grasped it. The Ginger was well and truly over the Year of Me by then. He couldn’t stomach another minute, so he told me to do as I pleased so long as he didn’t have to carry the bags.

  And so I organised a two-week solo stay in the City of Light, renting the most adorable, albeit tiny, apartment on the Left Bank, schlepping by métro from Charles de Gaulle airport to the St Michel stop on my tod, lugging my bags down cobbles and up stairs, shopping for essentials, getting settled in.

  During my days I organised behind-the-scenes tours of Notre Dame, the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower. I visited the Parisian sewers, the catacombs, the pet cemetery, the Museum of Medical Insanity, the smoking museum, the hunting and fishing museum — any other quirky museum I could lay my hands on. I did a cheese tour, a wine tour and a pastry tour. I walked up and down the banks of the Seine, cycled through the streets, spent early mornings on the bridge heaving with lovelocks, visited the Holocaust monument beside it, became a regular at the St Regis café across another little bridge from it.

  In the evenings I would catch up with friends who were staying across the river, and we would sit at one gorgeous little bistro or another and natter, then I would jump on a bike and ride home.

  I spent a few days on my own, another two with my darling friend from Dublin. I walked, I biked, I ran (no, I didn’t), I laughed, I spoke bad French.

  But most of all, I enjoyed.

  I enjoyed every single minute.

  Even the ones when British Airways lost my bag.

  Even the ones when I had a blister on my toe, and had to go to the post office three times because I kept forgetting what I was posting.

  Even the ones where I sat on my own in the St Regis café, and despite having gone there for 12 days in a row — sometimes twice — not one single French wait-f**ker acknowledged me.

  Even the ones when I missed the Ginger and broke my fingernails doing up the zip on my suitcase.

  Even the ones that I’ve only just had, where I’ve been sitting here thinking that I really want to stay in Paris forever, but have to get the Eurostar to London to make my flight home.

  I have enjoyed it all.

  I haven’t worried about how I will write not one, not two, but three books in the next wee while, and I haven’t worried about who might or might not read them, let alone who might or might not pay for them.

  I haven’t even worried about the fromage-and-rosé belt that has formed about my midriff, because I feel I have earned it. That’s French fromage and French rosé that is making all my waistbands so tight. This is quality muffin-top, this is.

  If the Year of Me was about working out what happiness was and trying to find it, the Year of Me Plus One has been about sitting back and letting it happen.

  How I look forward to the Year of Me Plus Two. And The Many Others To Come. To think that you can get happier as you get older. Finally, a reason to age!

  We all know the getting wiser bit is bollocks, and getting richer seems to happen to other people, but no one I know — well, not well enough to sponge off them for eternity anyway. But getting happier? Now that could actually make the wrinkles, the forgetting things, the bad eyes, the stiff hips and the aching shoulders all worthwhile.

  Our bodies can let us down and disappoint us horribly, as can our friends and families. Even our pets. And don’t get me started on what’s on television these days. But for my money, if you can accept that sh*t will happen, but hopefully most of it will be good sh*t, you’re on the road to your very own personal happiness. Or in the car on the road. Or in the garage about to get in the car. Or in the bathroom on your way to the garage. Oh, whatever!

  You get my drift. Or at least a whiff of it. So good luck with the Year of You And The Many Others To Come.

  Of course, if you don’t get the drift and think instead that I’m just a skitey old know-nothing b*tch (the face, the face), then I really am truly sorry that you wasted your time — and, hopefully, your money — on this book.

  But also, can I please say, only once, and in a lovely, kind voice, the sort that Snow White probably had, if she were a real person:

  And I mean that in the nicest possible way.

  MERCI BEAUCOUP TOUT LE MONDE

  No book is written without a lot of people helping the poor starving author redecorate her garret or similar, and Screw You Dolores is no exception.

  First, I would like to thank the Ginger for doing the cooking and cleaning and all that domestic rubbish that remains such a giant pain in my *rse. These fingers were made to fly across keyboards, not scrub out latrines or whatever else it is that needs to happen to keep one’s home from getting a D from the Health Department.

  Also, extra brownie points go to this faithful manservant for never reading anything I write, thereby failing to take offence. You’re a good sport, Pops, I’ve always said it. (Not that you would know if I haven’t.)

  Oh, and I really should say something about how the Ginger really truly, for the most part enthusiastically, supported the Year of Me. My new post-50 rule of saying ‘Why not?’ to every opportunity eventually turned my two months in Paris into four-and-a-half months in Paris, London, Turkey, Spain, Milan, Berlin, and London again. Now that is a pretty good way to escape a New Zealand winter. And he only banged on about ‘fiscal drag’ maybe half a dozen times. Thirty, max. Phooey to fiscal drag, I say. You’re only 50 once. Although I may try it again a few times, because it was so much fun the first time around.

  Secondly, I want to thank my friend and Woman’s Day editor, Sido Kitchin. It was Sido’s idea that I be travel editor, and a bl**dy good one at that. Sido goes down in history as the most supportive person I’ve ever worked for, and although I’m a princess I still notice these things, and even occasionally get down off my candy-coloured unicorn to express extreme gratitude. Actually, it was Sido who suggested I write a book about being 50. I’d had the idea for Screw You Dolores, but it was a little bit rudderless until, at one of my many poolside post-birthday functions, Sido looked up from reading the fabulous Bossypants by Tina Fey and said, ‘SK, you could do this.’

  I haven’t tried to — only because when it came to writing about all my famous Hollywood friends I found I only had Hugh Jackman and he doesn’t know I exist (if he’s still alive) — but I love the fact that she thinks I could.

  Thirdly, I would like to thank everyone who contributed to the Year of Me, including my mother for having me in the first place, all who came to the 100th in Sydney, to the holiday afterwards on the New South Wales coast, the fabulous crowd who came to Brasserie Bofinger in Paris, to Yetti for making a special trip from Dublin, and to Mike Kavanagh, who shared his time at the world’s most glorious London penthouse with Yours Truly and her trusted manservant, making 2012 truly the Summer of Love.

  I’d also like to thank my sisters and brothers for being Lynches, Therese for sharing her lovely mother with me, Susan Wood and John Campbell for happily being included (I never asked Don McKinnon), Elizabeth Gilbert for being bold, Nick Sparks for being honest, Josh Hartnett despite the Robbie incident, and anyone else who has been helpful but I’ve forgotten to mention.

  And last but not least, I want to thank the team at Random House New Zealand, including Karen Ferns, the wonderfully calm and collected Nicola Legat, the lovely animal-loving editor Kate Stone, the talented Megan van Staden, who went above and beyond the call of duty with the design, clever Kimberley Davis, and the incomparable Jennifer Balle — may we be ‘travelling companions’ forever.

  Also by Sarah-Kate Lynch

  Finding Tom Connor

  A jilted bride escapes New Zealand and follows a wild-goose chase to the twisted Irish town of Ballymahoe, where what’s she’s looking for and what she finds turn
out to be two very different prospects.

  Blessed Are

  Two ageing Irish cheese-makers try to matchmake a new generation of dairy producers, to continue their magical farm where cows are milked to The Sound of Music by pregnant unmarried vegetarians.

  By Bread Alone

  A heartbroken baker living in a fairy-tale tower on the English coast hankers after the one she left behind — a saucy boulanger with whom she rolled in the flour in happier times.

  Eating With the Angels

  A New York food critic finds a spanner in her works when she wakes up without a sense of taste and has to rediscover all the delicious things in life from scratch.

  The House of Peine

  Three estranged sisters inherit a crumbling champagne house, and have to bottle their differences to protect the precious family elixir for future generations.

  On Top of Everything

  A distracted wife believes bad things usually happen in threes until she gets six of them in a row — but it’s written in the tea leaves that good things can come in clusters as well.

  Dolci di Love

  A workaholic Manhattanite discovers her husband has a secret family in Tuscany and goes to find them, but instead gets caught up in a web of interfering widowed Italian matchmakers.

  The Wedding Bees

  A mysterious southerner arrives in New York with nothing but a hive of bees and an insistence on good manners, and sets about improving the lives of everyone in her orbit.

  Heavenly Hirani’s School of Laughing Yoga

  Annie Jordan never wanted to go to India: there were too many poor people and the wrong sorts of smells. But when she ends up there anyway, to her great surprise it’s not the beggars that cling to her, it’s the lessons in life — courtesy of Heavenly Hirani and her beachside laughing yoga.

  ‘You’ve got to be f**king joking me!’

  John Campbell

  ‘Actually, I don’t even remember Sarah-Kate Lynch.’

  Susan Wood

  ‘I always wondered why I had to get my arm amputated.’

  Hugh Jackman

  ‘It wasn’t me who, like, f**ked up that Robbie Williams doll.’

  Josh Hartnett

  ‘Is Sarah-Kate Lynch the one who keeps popping in asking for a cup of sugar?’

  Sir Don McKinnon

  ‘On the other hand, some people can manage the harem pant, but they probably still shouldn’t.’

  Gandhi

  ‘Screw You Dolores is the best book I have ever read, and I think everyone who likes my own books should buy at least two copies.’

  Nicholas Sparks

  ‘Her head is almost exactly the right size.’

  Elle McPherson

  ‘Portable Liposuction Device salesman? He sounds like a scary guy.’

  The Ginger

  About the Author

  Sarah-Kate Lynch is a novelist and columnist and has worked as a journalist, radio presenter, television producer, magazine editor, typist and once, for a very short while, as a waitress. She has published eight hugely popular novels plus a nonfiction book about dieting, and is currently Travel Editor of New Zealand Woman’s Day, a dreadful job that you should not even think about trying to nick off her or she will hurt you. I mean really hurt you.

  Critic Margie Thomson has attributed the international success of Sarah-Kate’s fiction to her ‘distinctive voice at the quality end of the popular-fiction genre’ and Margie Thomson is not even related to Sarah-Kate.

  The author lives with her husband and her dog, except when she is somewhere else, which is a pretty good system. See more at www.sarah-katelynch.com or follow her (quite slowly and not very far) on Twitter and Facebook.

  For more information about our titles please visit

  www.randomhouse.co.nz

  Copyright

  A RANDOM HOUSE BOOK published by Random House New Zealand

  18 Poland Road, Glenfield, Auckland, New Zealand

  For more information about our titles go to www.randomhouse.co.nz

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand

  Random House New Zealand is part of the Random House Group

  New York London Sydney Auckland Delhi Johannesburg

  First published 2014

  © 2014 Sarah-Kate Lynch

  The moral rights of the author have been asserted

  ISBN 978 1 77553 645 1

  eISBN 978 1 77553 646 8

  This book is copyright. Except for the purposes of fair reviewing no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is a miracle given excessive use of exaggeration, a flair for fiction and a memory that’s patchy, at best.

  Photo opposite: The author (short poodle perm) with her BFF (short Farrah flick-back).

  Design and illustration: Megan van Staden Photograph of Hugh Jackman on page 375: Eva Renaldi

  Printed in New Zealand by Printlink

  This publication is printed on paper pulp sourced from sustainably grown and managed forests, using Elemental Chlorine Free (ECF) bleaching, and printed with 100% vegetable-based inks.