Real life

Real life | 23 March 2017

‘Mesdames et messieurs, allow me to introduce you to your meals,’ said the waiter. Oh lordy, I thought. Here we go. We were in a country pub near my parents’ home that used to be a little local place where you could get a Sunday roast for reasonable money. But it has been taken over

Real life | 16 March 2017

Someone has given the builder boyfriend an iPhone and things will never be the same. Until now, he has always had a ‘rubbish’ phone and I have always been able to get hold of him. Even though I have a blasted iPhone myself, at least one of us used to have a communications device that

Real life | 9 March 2017

If it takes any longer to find a buyer for my London flat I am going to start coming to the conclusion that it is perfect for me in my old age. Forget moving to a cottage with a vertiginous staircase in the inhospitable countryside, this two-bedroom apartment minutes from the hustle and bustle is

Real life | 2 March 2017

Shoot me if I ever let slip I’ve been mucking out with rubber gloves and a dustpan and brush. As God is my witness, I have just left a stable yard where the clientele were all ‘non-riders’ — women whose only joy in horse-owning was to make the mucking out last as long as possible.

Real life | 23 February 2017

Unexpectedly re-available is a very good phrase. I have often seen it applied to house advertisements and thought how fabulously impertinent it sounds, so I am asking the agents to attach it to the description of my flat now that it is back on the market after a right old hoo-ha with the buyer from

Real life | 16 February 2017

Fine, so I got it completely wrong. It turns out the sale of my flat was not held up by a wiggle in the garden, but by a kink in the kitchen. This kink in the kitchen is far more serious than a wiggle in the garden. I should have realised that, the buyer’s solicitor

Real life | 9 February 2017

The builder boyfriend declared himself very happy with his £65 pee. He insisted it was good value for money because it was reduced from £130 if we paid within 28 days. Some would say that is still extortion, but the BB insisted he was a totally satisfied customer. He was also unfazed by the fact

Real life | 2 February 2017

As if by magic, a sign that I am doing the right thing by moving out of London arrived in the post. And not a moment too soon, for with all the to-ing and fro-ing over arcane anomalies in the floorplan of my flat I had become so heartily sick of the conveyancing process I

Real life | 26 January 2017

The problem holding up my house move turns out to be a wiggle. Have you ever had a wiggle? It sounds jolly enough but, believe me, you don’t want to go there. If you have a wiggle in your garden, you had better be prepared for the worst. I had no idea about this wiggle,

Real life | 19 January 2017

If the buyer asks me any more questions I am going to pull out. I have to put my foot down somewhere or this is going to drag on indefinitely. I went under offer some months ago now and it was thought I might be in my dream cottage for Christmas. Ha! The next prevailing

Real life | 12 January 2017

A few moments after saying the communion rite, the priest looked at his congregation and uttered easily the most disturbing thing I have ever heard said in a church: ‘If anyone wants a gluten-free Eucharist, please queue up on this side.’ The builder boyfriend, already grumpy at being made to go to mass, tittered behind

Real life | 5 January 2017

The most annoying thing about starting a new year is how long it takes for everyone to crank themselves back into action. I knew I wasn’t getting the real picture when I rang the taxman to say I would like to pay in instalments, and the chap on the other end of the line yawned

Real life | 29 December 2016

What a fraught, divisive, infuriating sort of year it’s been. It started with me attempting to go on a blind date and being clocked by a speed camera doing 35 in a 30 in the dark on the way home. And on the way to the speed course, obviously, I pranged my car trying to

Real life | 8 December 2016

‘Right, this is it,’ I said to the builder boyfriend. ‘I am going to knock on the door of next door.’ ‘I don’t know why you are bothering,’ he said. ‘Does it really matter who lives next door? You’re going to be so happy here. This move makes absolute sense for you. Just look around.

Real life | 1 December 2016

‘How was your week?’ I asked my friend as we rode our horses to Bookham Common. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Except the other day I got caught in a yellow box. £65.’ ‘Me too!’ I said. ‘Where was yours?’ ‘Kingston,’ she said. ‘Mine was in Raynes Park,’ I said. ‘£65. Junction of Coombe Lane and Durham

Real life | 24 November 2016

A few weeks after switching my iPhone to the EE network, I noticed a funny thing. It hadn’t rung. I checked my voicemail and found heaps of messages from angry people asking why I wouldn’t answer. Was I sick? Was I avoiding them? Had I finally lost all grip on reality and run away to

Real life | 17 November 2016

The Israeli chef and I have become firm friends since he moved out of my flat. He has his own place now, and is trying to find a job. I take him horse riding at the weekends. On the way down the A3 he asks me all sorts of questions about his new life in

Real life | 10 November 2016

A wonderful email has arrived from Airbnb entitled ‘Discrimination and Belonging — What It Means For You’. Having tried to make sense of it, I feel it can mean only one thing with any certainty. And that is that the Airbnb party is over. The web business started by a whizz kid in his New

Real life | 3 November 2016

For three months after I move to the country, I am told, I am going to be in the most almighty panic. I will ask myself repeatedly what on earth I have done. I will have sleepless nights worrying that I should never have left London. I will wake in a sweat in the early

Real life | 27 October 2016

Coffee shops are becoming impossible. I had been standing in the queue at Caffè Nero on Battersea Rise for nearly half an hour behind a man ordering a round of coffees that were so complex, so detailed and intricate, so different from each other, so bespoke and unique, that it would have been quicker to