Dear Mums

Congratulations! Your children have no insecurities about the way they look.  They never grumble about freckles, and you’ve clearly brought them up to be self-assured without being vain.

Please tell me how you do it. Perhaps an article on the subject would help all of us, as since I wrote the piece several mums -  of boys -  interestingly enough, have confessed that their boys say very similar things.  Your children never say little things like that, obviously.  You’ve brought them up not to do so. Good on you.

Maybe you followed that tip posted by a reader on the Times Online site - tell your kids that if they complain about the way they look, you’ll slap them so hard they’ll look even worse.  No, you wouldn’t do that, that would be violent, bullying, mean.  And you’re none of those things, oh no no no no no, that would definitely be cause for the naughty-step.

But seriously,  you’re in a good place to write such an article. (I can’t, I’ve only got half a brain cell - Polly Vernon’s got the other half).  I’m sure as parents you take good care to set certain examples.  We all try, of course, but you…well, you’d never set too much store by the way someone else looks, would you? Or point out when a woman looks like a man (”nickschick”).  You set other great examples too - you’d never bitch about others behind their backs (”GiveItUp”), and you speak out about what makes you angry - even if you have to hide your names to do so.

You know for a second, I thought this was coming from a mean-spirited place but then I thought, don’t be silly, these are MUMS, they’d never say a thing like that, after all, it’s from their discussions we learned an expression that will be enriching all our lives now, to say nothing of how it will help our own childrens’ verbal repertoire when they hear us saying it as we read the Sunday papers this weekend:  “What’s in The Bitch Comes out in the Pup!” .  Thank you for that one.

And who knows, maybe a good laugh at another child’s name - Armand - (he is French by the way, it’s one of the oldest, least fancy names you could choose, but let’s not let the facts get in the way of a good joke, huh?!) is actually a good way to show kids not to try and be too… oh you know, FOREIGN.  We wouldn’t want that, would we.

Best of all,  I’m sure you’re all reaching into your pockets even as I write and sending money off to Smile Train to show that you don’t need a silly article like mine to help out children in need, do you?  Because you’d all love to help out, I know you would.  There are ads in every single Sunday paper, week after week, and I’m sure every time you see them they’ve pulled on your heart strings, just as they did mine. Or… shame on me for thinking such a thing, but…I have to ask... did you just flick on right past…?

thank you for setting me straight.

love Kathleen

PS: Bully, take the piss, ridicule my life, however much you want. Tell me I’m a lousy journalist, hate me it you like.  (I’d rather you didn’t ridicule my child, but if you’re hell-bent on hurting my feelings, here’s a clue: that’s the way to do it).

But if you take one thing from this article and one thing only: please remember,  there’s a small girl out there who won’t have a hair-lip anymore… that’s what this was about.

But lately I’ve been thinking it might be time to bring a bit of plain old niceness back.  First there was an interview  - months ago now, but it did stay in my mind - with Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair.  Asked by Polly Vernon what his advice would be to anyone starting out on a career in journalism, or magazines, he said,

“BE NICE”.

His point was that there are too many people out there who would cut your throat rather than see you do well, but that this somewhat 80s approach doesn’t really get you anywhere.  People can see through it, and at the end of the day they’d rather have someone around who was less prone to stab them in the back. Someone with good manners, a sincere smile, the ability to see the positive in life.  A half-cup full sort of person.

Then at the weekend, Shane Watson in her column in Style wrote about how desperate we are -  as a nation - to see others fail in life. It’s almost as if we want the marriages of the rich and famous to fail, so bitter are we about our own failings, so desperate to pull others down to … what level, exactly?  ”Gwyneth and Chris - nothing to go on as yet, but you know, it’s about that time, so watch this space,”  she jokes, calling on us all to “knock the negativity on the head”.

In the same magazine, I wrote a piece about a trip to Laos, with my son in tow, the intention to visit one of the Smile Train outposts and see the great work they do there performing surgeries on children with cleft palates.  Most of the reactions were favourable, but two people wrote to complain about an assortment of things, including my carbon footprint - why didn’t I just visit a UK cleft palate child?  (Answer; in the UK we have the NHS, the whole point of the article was to encourage donations for Smile Train so that kids who aren’t so lucky to have that operation for free, have the same start in life that our kids do).

Is this something peculiar to being British?   It does seem to be an offshoot of our otherwise rather fabulous sense of humour, this ability to cut people down so quickly with a witty one-liner, a sardonic tale of someone who fell flat on their face.  I’ve done it myself; and obviously been on the receiving end many times. And when I’ve visited the US I’m always overwhelmed by the way how in conversations people seem to want to ride with an idea, take you at face value, instead of looking for fault in everything.

I know I should listen to the great majority of positive people out there, whose reactions to the piece were so encouraging,  (especially from the Smile Train coordinator in Thailand)  but really, can the rest of the misery-mongers just lighten up?  Isn’t life tough enough as it is without wishing for other peoples marriages to break up, or looking for the cracks everywhere, or worrying about a carbon footprint when frankly the exposure the charity receives will hopefully outweigh the damage?

Hey.. it’s a beautiful blue sky out there, the swans were playful on the Serpentine this morning, it’s the 1st March and Spring, hopefully is here finally.  I’m going to make an effort to say.. er.. NICE things to everyone.  I’m not sure I’ll get very far, maybe the temptation to be sarcastic will be too much to bear, but I’m trying, okay?

Plastic surgery has a glamorous, yet possibly not that altruistic image - as we tend to focus on celebrity nose-jobs, that’s hardly surprising.  But what I’ve found over the years is that most of the world’s top surgeons are keen to give a little back.

I had a lot of favourable feedback from the article, but better than any feedback is the promise of donations to Smile Train.  So please, if you can, and it’s hard to ask for more when there are so many natural disasters demanding our attention at the moment, do consider Smile Train if you’re in the position to make a donation, and help a little kid to smile.  Literally.

A Prophet is really worth seeing. At times it feels like a brutal gangster film, but it’s also beautifully shot, not heavy-handed at all;  a sensitive portrayal of a man’s loss of innocence in order to survive, and of his journey towards a gradual affinity with his Arab roots, when before he belonged to no particular culture.

Fairly early on in the film, the hero Malik, (brilliantly played by French-Algerian Taha Rahim)  a slightly awkward, gentle character,   is asked to engage in a sex act with a fellow prisoner in return for some hash.  He refuses, but later is coerced into killing the man in return for protection from a rival gang, the leader of which has a disconcerting resemblance to Anthony Worrall Thompson.  Here’s a clip and an excellent review on the Guardian’s website.

On the way home in the car we were talking about the film.

“Do you think it’s really like that in prison?”  asked my husband.  ”I mean, if I went to prison, it would be terrible.  They’d all pick on me.”

“You mean, for sex?” I laughed.  ”Don’t be daft! You’re 47! Why would they pick on you when they can have some hot 22 year old?”

He was indignant.  ”But I’m still attractive!”

“Of course you are.. but given the choice..”

“So you’re saying, I’m not attractive enough to be buggered in prison…Well, that’s just great isn’t it.  I’m not even that attractive… I can’t believe you don’t think I’m that attractive.. Now that really takes the biscuit…”

I love it that we can always find something to argue about.

If you’ve read Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation, or Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals, you won’t find many surprises - except perhaps that Food Inc, also produced and partly presented by Eric Schlosser himself,  is visually very beautiful to look at in spite of its bleak subject matter. The film packs all the punches you might expect as you see how chickens are mass-produced in conditions that bring tears to your eyes, not just out of pity for the chickens but also for the “farmers” who take on huge business loans yet earn paltry (see how I avoided making a poultry pun there?) amounts of money; you hear about Monsanto’s brutal “ownership” of the soybean crop; you see impoverished Mexicans struggling to spend as little as possible on food so they can save for diabetes medication - the irony here of course being that diabetes is partly caused by the cheap food they eat.

I gave up eating meat and fish at the end of last summer.  If you can still find a copy of Harper’s Bazaar (the one with Julianne Moore on the cover), I wrote an article about how hard it is to give up meat when you quite like the odd steak, and more to the point, you don’t like that many vegetables.

There are so many reasons  - health, cruelty to animals - why it makes sense to eat less meat, but the argument which may well prove to be the most persuasive in the long run, is the UN’s statistics pointing to the harm caused to the environment, explained succinctly recently on Gwyneth Paltrow’s website by Sir Paul McCartney.

Giving up meat has definitely changed my life.  On Saturday night I attempted to make some vegan burgers from a recipe I found on the bestselling author Jane Green’s website.  (She is a good source for some great veggie recipes incidentally, well worth checking out!)  Feeling the pressure a bit - the beetroot and carrot hummous recipe I’d taken from a veggie cookbook received a huge thumbs down from my kids the night before - I liked the fact that this recipe called for mushrooms, lots of them, minced to smithereens in a food blender.  My son hates mushrooms.  Crushed to molecular proportions, he wouldn’t notice a thing.  (Evil laugh here, please).

One slight problem, we didn’t have a blender. We had a Smoothie mixer which a cosmetics company had once sent me to promote their juicy coloured lip glosses; we had a French herb chopper with a cracked plastic bowl; and one of those plunger things you plonk into the saucepan to make soups in a hurry, then spend hours wiping off the splashes of tomato all over the kitchen afterwards.

After several tries and a mound of plastic bowls and jugs piling up in the sink, I did what every self-respecting woman in her right mind would do: I had a tantrum.

“I can’t believe we’ve been married for 350 years and we still don’t have a Magimix! What kind of a marriage is this?!”

30 minutes and one short car ride later, the chrome MAgimix came to live with us. Happily ever after.  Except there was no space for it in the kitchen.  Two hours later, 5000 bottles of oriental sauce and several out of date jars of oregano and an armoury of kitchen knives were moved (without any of them being thrown) and finally the Magimix had a home.

The mushroom and pecan burgers were a hit.

See how giving up meat can be life-changing?

Because when the kids get home from school, and it’s cold and too dark to play in the snow, we shall be making a Galette des Rois, a traditional French cake with a tiny ceramic figure hidden inside, to celebrate Epiphany, the day when the three wise men came to see the baby Jesus in the manger, for all you ignoramuses out there.

And for this simple pleasure we have my friends at the I Prefer Paris website to thank…or more specifically Richard Nahem, who’s a New Yorker in Paris.  Sign up now, even if you never go to Paris, because their witty restaurant reviews, news of what’s up for grabs in the sales, or art show openings, will make you FEEL like you’re in Paris, even when you’re not.  (Someone once said that the more you live your life in fantasy the smaller your life is in reality.  RUBBISH!  Keep fantasising, that’s what I say - and look, you’re in Paris!)

So, mes amis, let’s get busy in the kitchen today! Click on here for the recipe, it LOOKS really easy - a bit of puff pastry and some marzipan right?  Although quite how we make the ceramic ornament in the middle is another thing, but I’m sure there’s a figurine knocking about on our cluttered mantelpiece, a little marie antoinette or a shepherdess or a look-mummy pottery ashtray from nursery-school days.  Improvise, right?  I’ll let you know how we get on tomorrow…

And here I am, back at my “school”, my desk, with a 1001 new year’s resolutions to attend to.

This year the website will be re-vamped, there might even be a website within a website… I’m going to write a screenplay, and embark on a follow-up to the first novel, Fave Value, now that the new novel, Two Weeks in Malibu is nearly done and dusted.

And the rest?  Well we’ll see! But there is the question of the excess blubber the two weeks off in the land of tartiflette and fondue has given me… The running starts tomorrow…

brrr.. it’s cold outside!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Yesterday I found myself in Euston Station in a sort of Christmas delirium.  I went to Paperchase to buy a few last-minute Christmas cards.  They were really first-minute Christmas cards, the first I’d bought this festive season.  There was a knitted Santa with Ho Ho Ho on it… good for a rapper, perhaps?  But feeling a little overwhelmed by conspicuous consumption,  I wanted the Real McKoy, the full-on Nativity, angels, baby Jesus.. and guess what, they didn’t have it.

I’m used to a certain amount of ecumenical equality.  My kids’ school is French, and they sensibly ignore all religions, treat them with an equal amount of disdain.  But that’s the French.  I don’t want to sound like Alf Garnett, but aren’t we still officially a Christian country?

I thought about my Jewish friend Jen, how it must feel like this for her all the time, being unable to buy Hanukkah cards.  Or my former nanny, Yammouna, who is Muslim.  Does she feel marginalised, not being able to buy cards for Eid, except in specialist shops?  I’m not even that religious, but guess what, Christmas is the one time I do reflect on my Christian upbringing, otherwise, what’s it all about?  Sausage rolls from Iceland?

Clearly in the mood to talk with strangers, (bracing myself for another train journey) I asked the manager, who told me that yes, they do sell Hanukkah cards, and in fact, they also sell Eid cards.

But for some reason… well, unless you’re lucky enough to find a Madonna and Child in the “art” section, no, there are no religious cards in the store.

“Not even a baby Jesus in a manger?”

“No.”

“Three Wise men?”

“Er… no,” she said.  ”You can write and complain if you want.”

She helpfully wrote the address down on a piece of paper.

After going to Poundland today I bought some fantastic cards at Graham & Green. The Three Kings, by Paul Hey, 43p from the price of £5.95 for 5 goes to the British Heart Foundation, Marie Curie Cancer Foundation, Mind, NSPCC and Shelter.

I’ll be sending one to the people at Paperchase.

And then I’ll move to Tunbridge Wells.

Yours, disgustedly…

Alf Garnett.

Posted via email from kathleenbaird-murray’s posterous

The faculty at UWIC (University of Wales Institute of Cardiff) invited me to give a talk to their English and Creative Writing Students. I had studied for six months there in 1993, a post-grad NCTJ course in journalism, and they liked to invite their old pupils back occasionally.

I have fond memories of my time at UWIC. For a start I spent a lot of it drunk. My voice was a gravelly, hungover, Marlene Dietrich without the German accent. I did some of my best interviews while I was there: Gil Scott Heron, MC Solaar, Jamiroquai. And my top newspaper story of all time, for the South Wales Echo, working undercover as a Bluecoat in a holiday camp. Yes, I sung MJ’s “Blame it on the Boogie”, while dancing on a wall to greet the new arrivals, wearing a deeply unflattering white A-line skirt with light blue blazer, all in the name of investigative journalism. Beat that! (Or should I say, Beat it! HA!)

It had been on the cards for months, but with the actual date drawing near I devoted the weekend to preparing. Frantic emails to top publishers, agents, journalists and authors ensued, as I coaxed them to give snippets of useful information.

Aware that students today are facing the toughest time ever in terms of finding jobs, (I’ve read it in the papers so it must be true), I wanted to be able to give them an insight into the real world, outside the warm sanctuary of academia.

Contributions rolled in from people with careers far more successful than mine. You could feel everyone’s concern, everyone’s goodwill to give something useful to these students, some encouragement, something practical. I added them all, incorporated them into my little talk:

Richard Williams, acclaimed sports writer for the Guardian and author of several best-selling biographies, including Ayrton Senna and Miles Davis.

Robert Yates, Assistant editor of the Observer and author of Extreme Nation (John Murray).

Jane Green, author of Dune Road and The Beach House to name just two of her international best-selling novels.

Polly Vernon, Deputy Editor at Observer Woman Monthly, regular contributor to Grazia magazine.

Kate Morris, author of Single Girl’s Diary and The Seven Year Itch.

Deborah Schneider, of Gelfman-Schneider, New York, agent to Lauren Weisberger (Devil Wears Prada) and New York Times bestseller, Jane Green

Maggie Phillips, of Ed Victor literary agency, London, agent to Janet Street Porter and the late Melissa Nathan.

I wrote, I read, I read it again out loud. I made my husband read it. I booked a nanny to pick my kids up from school the following day as I wouldn’t be back in time to do it myself.

Monday. I took the train to Cardiff and watched a romance unfold between the two strangers sitting opposite; he was from Hay on Wye and did something in sport for teenagers, she was a Romanian via New York with wild blonde hair and interesting eyeshadow. She sung him songs about underwear in a quiet, breathy voice. It was all rather charming. I hope he calls her.

When I got to Cardiff, I had an hour to kill so I sat in a bar or a pub or a café or whatever they’re called these days - this one was called The Yard - and I ate a veggie burger. Then I went to Boots and the kind woman behind the counter gave me a safety pin so that my oyster-coloured blouse wouldn’t gape by my bra. That might be off-putting for the students, I thought. Or possibly entertaining. Either way we were worried it might snag the chiffon fabric, so we stuck the pin in the cardigan instead. She wished me luck with my talk. I took a taxi to the campus.

For the first talk, four slightly confused but very friendly-looking Italians rocked up. They were studying Humanities, with a bit of marketing, and one of them was studying something to do with putting on cultural events.

Their English was excellent, they understood words like “bob” as in “making a bob or two” and “scam”. I hasten to add this was in the context of explaining the narrative of my new novel, and had nothing to do with an article earlier this year in the Guardian by journalist Ian Jack who writes that Creative Writing courses feed students with false hopes that they too could be the next Zadie Smith, yet they’re popular with universities because of the fees they bring in. 

But back to the Italians. I apologised for not having geared my talk more to their specific subjects, and they smiled sweetly and said, “that’s okay.” One of them looked a bit like Russell Brand.

“I’m hoping you’ll get a better turn-out at the next talk, scheduled at five,” said Dr Russell Deacon, my old tutor. “I did send them an email reminding them, this morning.”

The Western Mail came and interviewed me. Comes out on Friday.

The Alumni officer did a podcast interview with me.

Five o’clock loomed.

We walked up some stairs, and along a corridor. The corridor was very quiet. But not as quiet as the room we had been assigned, which was bare, apart from some vacant chairs and desks and a classroom projector.

“It’s a busy time of the term; they have lots of essays to write,” said Russell. I suspect he was slightly embarrassed at the distinct lack of enthusiasm radiating around the empty room.

He gave me a present from UWIC, a manicure set with the letters UWIC embossed on it.

He drove me to the station.

I shall think of the Creative Writing students at UWIC every time I clip my toe-nails.