I continue to prod feverishly at the buttons.
“Thanks, I’m fine,” I tell him, even though it’s abundantly clear I’m really not.
By sheer bad luck I seem to have ended up on the hill climb setting. On level 18. Out of 20.
Bloody hell this is hard work. I suspect I may have gone a shade of puce.
I am being watched. I can tell. I look up and the guy next to me is grinning at me in the mirror. He’s quite cute. Actually he’s very cute – in a sweaty kind of way.
Now, is it not bad enough that I have been dragged to the gym against my will, in a pair of shorts that are practically cutting my nether regions in half and been left to the mercy of a machine I have absolutely no idea how to use, without being subjected to the scrutiny of a frankly rather gorgeous guy too?
I am quite possibly in danger of hyperventilating on my level 18 hill climb when cute guys leans over and gently taps my screen, bringing it down to a more manageable level 10 (okay, 4).
“Thanks,” I pant.
How utterly humiliating.
Cute guy has gone and I have clocked up a pretty unimpressive 0.8 miles (okay 0.4 – my only excuse being the cute guy – I was distracted) when Katie comes bounding over 20 minutes later. Where does she get her energy?
I quickly cover the screen with my towel.
“How are you doing?” she asks.
“Yeah, great,” I lie.
“Shall we have a go on the treadmill?” she asks, though I don’t think I actually have a choice.
“Sounds fabulous,” I say, hitting ‘cancel workout’ before she can see the pitiful distance I have cycled.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
On my second day at Potty Wotty Doodah, I am astonishingly given responsibility for operating an oven that reaches temperatures of over 900 degrees and in six short hours I am asked by several naive youngsters to draw a cow and a pig on a seesaw, a giraffe and a hippopotamus playing leapfrog, and two spiders holding hands, amongst other things. On a good note I break only one tile and one saucer. I get home, utterly frazzled, to find a note on the fridge.
B, we’ve popped to see a man about a band. Can you turn the oven on at 6pm. Ta. K&M x
Unlike me, Katie is a veritable Gordon Ramsay in the kitchen. She can make anything out of anything. Literally. While I am on television demonstrating precisely why Can’t Cook Won’t Cook was so named, Katie will be on Ready Steady Cook preparing a four-course banquet from a single tomato, a tin of custard and a packet of salted peanuts.
Between us, Matt and I have negotiated what we consider to be a terrific deal. Katie cooks. He washes. I dry. And for the days she can’t be bothered we’ll get a takeaway. They live a three-minute walk from two Chineses, an Italian, a curry house and a fish and chip shop (yes, we’ve actually timed it).
They are also a four-stop tube ride from the offices of a zillion magazines, which will come in very handy when the flood of invitations to meet their editors lands on the doormat. Which it inevitably will.
It just hasn’t yet, that’s all.
Bollocks.
I have written to no less than twenty seven different magazines so far, begging for a job and so far I have heard absolutely nothing. Not a jot. Zip. Nada.
Okay, so I know I have no journalism qualifications to speak of, and absolutely no knowledge of the magazine industry whatsoever, but apart from that I’m an ideal candidate for a job on a magazine.
I read them, after all. All the time. And I watched Ugly Betty. And I’ve seen How To Lose a Man in 10 Days at least five times. And I learned a great deal from Lois Lane when she worked alongside Clark Kent on the Daily Planet.
And frankly, considering the CV I sent out, I would have expected them to be beating down Katie and Matt’s front door to hire me by now.
Of course, it did require the teensiest bit of embellishment and exaggeration. But who doesn’t do that these days?
Okay, so I have sold pens for a living, and, correct me if I’m wrong, but writers use pens, do they not? But I guessed that this alone was not going to be quite enough to get me a job.
All it takes is a little imagination and creativity (key characteristics of a good writer, you might say).
So…
1) I was the editor of my secondary school newspaper.
Truth – it was two sides of A4 and we only ever finished one edition, but it did include some quality material – like the interview with Mrs Hayland, the foreign languages teacher who drove the school minibus under a car-park barrier and took the roof off (it was the first and only time I have ever seen a teacher cry).
Therefore CV entry: Editor of award-winning weekly school publication.
2) At university I wrote the odd story for the student union magazine.
Truth – the stories were rarely (okay, never) about something worthy – like the need for more resources in the campus library, for example – and usually (okay, always) about the drunken exploits of my fellow students – including my mate Lucy who fell off the table she’d been dancing on at the Christmas ball, resulting in a trip to casualty and a nomination for the Pisshead of the Year award.
CV entry: Regular contributor to the highly influential University Life Magazine.
And let’s not forget 3) the week’s work experience at my parents’ local newspaper during the summer holidays before my final year at university.
Truth – the only thing I actually had published was a three-paragraph piece for Pets Corner about a hamster called Travis who was looking for a new home. We found him a home, complete with new hamster girlfriend Morag and a fun ferris wheel on which to see out his days.
CV entry: Do you think ‘work experience at the Worthing Gazette covering the exclusive story of a homeless man who found love and a new home and turned his life around’ is stretching the truth a bit?
No, me neither.
Who did I think I was kidding? Not one reply out of twenty seven letters, not to mention several paper cuts on my tongue from all the envelope-licking and a small fortune spent on stamps.
Maybe I’ve made a big mistake. I’m twenty seven. I should be married by now, holding down a steady job and thinking about having kids – not single, dossing down in my best friend’s spare room, watching kids paint pictures of pigs on plates and waiting for highly-paid editors of hugely successful magazines to take pity and offer me a job.
Damn. I have made a monumental mistake haven’t I? I’ve given up a perfectly good job, not to mention a perfectly good boyfriend, moved two hundred and fifty miles from the place I have called home for the last nine years, moved in to play gooseberry with my best friend and her husband-to-be and taken a job serving coffee and supervising pot-painting children. And for what? To discover I don’t even possess the skills required to get me a job on Cross Stitching with Mother.
I had no idea there were quite so many magazines out there. Two thousand, nine hundred and thirty-six to be precise. It says so on the Internet. Surely one of them must want to hire me? Cosmopolitan – yes I’ve heard of that. And Company. And Marie Claire. And even Take A Break. But Concrete Monthly? What the hell is that all about? Apart from concrete, obviously.
I thought I might fare better with the magazines that only sell seven copies a year (between them, that is), than the Hellos and the Vogues of this world, which sell seven million zillion. So I’ve applied to a few. I mean, if I can’t get a job on the likes of Fruit & Veg or Mobile Knowhow, then there’s something very wrong. I may not be able to cook, but I do know my carrots from my cauliflowers and my text messaging speed is up there with the best.
But like I said – absolutely nothing. Not one single reply.
I turn the oven on and scribble a message on the bottom of Katie’s note telling her I’ll be home around 8.30pm and head for the tube.
I’ve signed up for a writing class. It’s every Tuesday night for six weeks, from 6.30pm till 8pm – starting tonight. It could set me up for life. Or it could be the worst £120 quid I ev
er spent.
It’s at a secondary school in Balham, just one stop on the train from Katie and Matt’s, or four stops if I go straight from the cafe.
I follow the directions to the school and head for the reception, where I have to sign in and have my bag checked. Times have changed. It’s not apples, bananas and pickled onion Monster Munch that students carry in their bags these days – it’s flick knives and packets of drugs.
As soon as he has established that the saucer in my bag is not a lethal weapon but a pottery sample from my new place of work, the security guard reluctantly lets me go, with directions to Room 11B.
Room 11B is small. It has just four double desks, one desktop computer on a stand in the corner, a desk for the teacher at the front and what looks like a very old blackboard. This is clearly a classroom where time has stood still.
Judging by the one remaining empty seat, I must be the last to arrive. I sit down next to a middle-aged woman with greying hair and the palest pink lipstick. She’s come prepared. In front of her on the desk she has a dictionary, a thesaurus, a combined dictionary and thesaurus and three other reference books. She can barely see over the top of them. She also has a pretty purple pencil case with a cartoon kitten on the front. She probably made a special visit to WH Smith to pick it out. I pull my one reporter’s spiral notepad and pen out of my bag (no, I didn’t steal them from Penand Inc, I bought them with my own money – all £1.28 of it) and put them on the desk. She smiles at me. I think she feels sorry for me.
“I’m Audrey,” she says.
“Becky,” I tell her, returning the smile, twizzling my pen in my hands.
And then, before I have the chance to get to know my new classmate any better, our teacher arrives.
“Hello class,” she booms, from the back of the room, before putting a bundle of magazines under her arm and her keys between her lips so that she has a hand free to close the door. She has several bags over her shoulders, which she hoists up before they slip off, and then marches determinedly to the front of the room, arriving just as the magazines are about to slip from under her arm.
“My name is Sheila,” she says, catching them and putting them on the edge of the desk. “And for the next six weeks I will be teaching you how to write for magazines.”
She’s wearing a tweed skirt and a matching waistcoat over a long-sleeved floral blouse, and she has mad wiry hair that looks like it needs a good brush. She’s in her fifties, I’d say. She definitely looks like a teacher. But I can’t imagine for the life of me that she’s ever written for anything more exotic than Crossword Puzzles Monthly or Readers Digest. Maybe Woman’s Weekly at an absolute push…
Apparently I’m wrong. Apparently she’s had articles published in the Telegraph magazine, the Daily Mail weekend supplement and Woman’s Own. When I hear this I decide to sit up straight and give her my full attention. You never know – I could learn a thing or two.
We are learning the basics today – The Writer’s Tools.
“So. Can anyone tell me what you need to be a writer?” Sheila asks the class, when we have all introduced ourselves and given a brief explanation of what we hope to achieve from the class. (Bearing in mind I have never written anything for a magazine before I am realistic – “I’m Becky,” I told my fellow students. “I hope to write for Vogue!”)
As I had expected, her question is met with silence. She peers at us all. One by one. Over the top of her half-moon glasses.
She reminds me of my English teacher, Mrs Conagie. She was more than a little eccentric. She used to talk about a pet spider called Cyril that she kept in a jam jar at home and fed dead flies and small pieces of bacon rind. Some people thought it was just a story, but she was certainly mad enough. She would peer at us just like Sheila is peering at us right now, waiting to hear what excuse we were going to come up with for not handing in our homework. I will never forget the day my friend Libby – well known for her creativity (the goldfish jumped out of his bowl onto it and all the ink ran; I was writing so fast my pen spontaneously combusted and set it on fire) – decided to opt for the truth and told her she had not written her essay on Macbeth simply because she ‘couldn’t be bothered’.
“The shopping list is not as extensive as you might think,” Sheila announces, just as I’m about to suggest ‘a pen and a piece of paper?’ She perches on the edge of one of the front desks and folds her arms dramatically, as if she has just revealed a state secret.
“You need a desk,” she says. “But contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t have to be an antique leather-topped desk, with matching chair…”
Right, because that’s exactly what I was about to ask.
I did tell you about my room at Katie’s didn’t I? Do the words ‘cat’ and ‘swing’ ring any bells? Where exactly does Sheila think I’m going to put a desk?
“It doesn’t even have to be a desk at all,” she continues. “What is important is that you have some sort of surface on which to write.”
I do a quick mental tour of Katie and Matt’s flat. They don’t have a dining room table, the kitchen work top is covered in cooking gadgets, and the coffee table in the living room is where we put our wine glasses, so that’s definitely out.
The ironing board?
I decide not to make this suggestion out loud. Sheila might think I’m not being serious. Which would be a little embarrassing, since I really am.
She presses on.
“And you need a computer.”
Well I’m okay in that department, thanks to my friends at Penand Inc.
“We’ve all heard the idyllic stories of writers who still write in longhand or on an old typewriter,” she says. “But if you can possibly afford one, a computer really is worth the investment. And it will save you a lot of time.”
Also on the shopping list are a notepad and pen, and The Writers & Artists’ Year Book. It’s the media writer’s Bible, apparently, and a must-have for anyone hoping to get published.
I make a note of it in my pad, and feel just a tiny bit smug when Audrey asks if she could possibly borrow a piece of paper. It seems she missed the notebook section at Borders. I suspect she didn’t actually mean borrow – I don’t imagine she’ll be bringing me a brand new piece of paper to replace it next week.
And finally – a dictionary, a thesaurus, and a book of quotations – which just happens to be one of Audrey’s other reference books. So now it’s her turn to look smug.
When the class is finished we head to the pub to get acquainted.
On first impressions, they are a nice crowd.
Cathy has just started a new job which involves a lot of report-writing, so she wants to brush up on her skills and this was the only writing class she could find that fitted in with her yoga night, her Czechoslovakian for beginners and her jewellery-making class.
Bev has never written a thing in her life. She’s an accountant for a big fizzy drinks manufacturer in West London. But she fancies having a go at writing a book. She thought she’d be better off starting small – I guess a 1000-word feature has got to be easier than a 100,000 word novel.
Jo has just started work as a trainee writer on a supermarket magazine. It’s her first job since leaving university and she feels totally out of her depth. Her boss doesn’t know she’s here.
Stephanie is a primary school teacher. She had a letter published in Marie Claire last month and now she thinks she’d quite like to be a writer.
Tara and Georgina work together and fancied taking a class. They chose this one because Spanish for beginners was full. They tend to laugh a lot, and didn’t appear to be writing anything down tonight. I suspect Sheila might end up separating them next week.
As for Audrey, I haven’t a clue. She didn’t actually say anything. She just kept one hand on her reference books and the other on her wine glass, until her husband came to pick her up.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I am sitting with my hand wrapped around a glass of wine, the rest of the bottle betw
een my legs, and the ‘situations vacant’ pages open on the table in front of me when Katie and Matt walk through the door on Thursday evening.
“Nobody wants me,” I announce dramatically as Matt goes into their bedroom to change and Katie throws herself down next to me on the sofa, takes the glass from my hand and has a swig.
Today is not a good day. Today I got my first rejection. First of many, no doubt.
“Correction,” she says, scanning the letter she has just prised out of my other hand. “Frankly Fossil Fuels don’t want you, which is frankly hardly the shame of the century. Would you really want to work for them? And more to the point, have you ever even heard of them?”
“Well, no, but that’s not the point.”
“Of course it’s the point. You’ve given up a lot to do this, B. You deserve a job on a magazine you actually like – or one you’ve heard of at the very least.”
“Maybe. But how am I supposed to do that? I’ve written to practically every magazine that you find on the racks at W H Smith – and a lot that you don’t too – and none of them want me.”
“One magazine. One magazine doesn’t want you. That’s the only letter you’ve had back. You’ve got to be patient.”
After dinner Katie enlists my help with wedding invitation-assembling. She is making them herself. Each one is made up of a cream-coloured card casing over a sheet of translucent paper printed with the invitation details, tied together with a thin strip of gold ribbon.
Personally I think she spent far too much of her childhood watching Art Attack and Blue Peter, and not nearly enough time watching The Wombles and Worzel Gummidge. It wouldn’t have surprised me if she’d decided to make the invites out of toilet rolls, and empty washing up liquid bottles.
As you would expect, owing to my complete lack of artistic talent, Katie has assumed the role of Artistic Director, while I am General Dogsbody, whose job it is to pass the glue sticks, paper and ribbon when instructed.
The Little Shop of Afternoon Delights Page 136
