Fan mail

It's been a strange week. Most of it filled with the excruciating completion of interviews in which they make you complete a list - not the good to-do kind but the 10-best ridic sort, where you have to lie about everything in order to build up a picture of yourself that people might like and so buy your book.

Virginia Woolf-Burgers, anyone?

So this morning, nursing a brandy hangover, thanks to the Polly scamps (Courvoisier and Prince, (couldn't possibly, oh go on then, one for the road) and reading The Tiger Who Came To Tea to baby Agnes, it was an extraordinary relief to see something from the heart, which came through the post from an old vicar, who lives, judging from the postmark, somewhere Up North.

'I read your article in the Guardian last Saturday and was greatly moved by it. Thank you for writing it. These matters are very difficult for the Brits. I have had the privilege of listening to what I suppose I would call 'people with confused sexuality' many times. Until I read your carefully and beautifully written piece I was the confused one. It really helps if people are prepared to be honest and open. In the present time of relationship insecurity we need to know how people feel and to understand their deepest needs. I suspect yours, in spite of what seems to be an incredibly understanding family, has often been a lonely journey.'

My daughter, at the age of 39, is now pregnant with twins following IVF - first go. It is an exciting and worrying time for us all - please God all with go well. They are due in June/July. My son, O, married J some ten years ago and she had a child conceived in a lesbian relationship with the help of a homosexual friend. It has not all been plain sailing for them as J fell in love with O and the previous partner, who had shared legal custody, was hurt. Nevertheless, R is an amazing, understanding teenager, and doing fine.

My sister, S, has a daughter W, who has a stable relationship with her partner B and two homosexual men, one of whom, J, has parented the wonderful G. Now 11 and incredibly bright, he is fantastic, not spoilt but reared lovingly by two fathers, two mothers and a host of grand parents.

My wife and I hope that you and A. will be able to have a baby and we know that if that is that case he or she will be a very fortunate child.'

I'm not posting this because I'm trying to show off. It actually made me cry.

Ze launch

Well, chaps, it's an absolute disgrace that it's been a whole week since one of the most emotional nights of my life and I haven't even bothered to thank you all for coming.

I have no photos, which is perhaps as it should be (after all, the whole thing was about words, not pictures). But you were there (with two important exceptions, but the Atlantic Ocean is an acceptable excuse, plus Le Duc had a terrible stomach ache), so you know what happened, and so all that remains for me is to thank you, my agent, my editor, my parents, my public, my stylist, my exes, and my cat.

Wait! I did all that on the night. So all that remains is to give out some awards to:

Sicily - for managing to achieve a World Record for flogging the biggest number of books on a launch night, like, EVER (101, just so you know). The publishers are thinking of taking her on as their marketing manager.

Beth and Dave - for making like the paparazzi and making me look busy and important

Michelle - for appearing every 5 minutes with a wine-bucket full of prosecco

G - for charming my mother off her feet

Molly - for making people think that I hang out with models

PDF - for toasting like a true Russian

Heidi - for dealing with pre-launch Lady V shoe trauma

Man of The House (MOTH) - for suavely causing the entire 30-something hormone-raging female staff to swoon and give me top marks for genetic choice

FKJ - for managing to whip up a bit of the old green-eyed monster from the object of my affections : "have you really cried on her bosom so often? what was wrong"

Not last but by no means least, Mike-the-bike - for inappropriate advances

M: "I've just met your father"
V: "Uh-huh"
M: "Oh, yeah"
V: Suddenly remembering M's fetish for older men. "No! You didn't"
M: "Oh, YEAH!"
V: "Don't be ridic. No-one's found my father attractive since 1963 at least."

Next day. FKJ, MOTH and Lady V sit together at lunch.

FKJ: "Tots, I think I've got a kind of hag-fag girl-crush on your dad."
V & MOTH: SILENCE

I LOVE my friends...

Muff Monday

It’s all luck, luck, luck this week for Lady V. First, my appearance on the shelves of all good bookshops; next, a hospital cancellation, offering me the chance to skip the 6 months’ waiting list.

Naturally, I jumped at the chance. And so it was, dear readers, that I found myself waking at 5.30 yesterday morning, starved of food and water, facing a journey through the worst snow for 20 years to UCH.

It was actually rather beautiful, making my way through the dark, deserted streets. Even Camden was pristine. I trudged on, wrapped up like a Russian babushka, listening to The Smiths. Girlfriend in a Coma. I thought of John Malkovitch in Dangerous Liaisons after the duel, and imagined a trail of blood in the snow.

Luckily I soon arrived at the hospital, where I was met by the lovely S, my chaperone for the day, who cheered me up by talking me through his outfit (3 layers, one cashmere, one merino wool and one merino-cashmere mix) topped off by a Harris Tweed jacket which, according to Vivienne Westwood, is the very best thing for keeping out cold.

I talked him through my outfit: a vest, a Top Shop t-shirt and an over-sized hoodie. Unchic, but comfy.

Eventually a nurse arrives to let the day patients in, telling us that it was her first day and she doesn’t know anything and there are no other nurses because of the weather. As the morning wears on, some patients decide to go home. Others are sent home because their surgeons hadn’t turned up. I dig in my heels and refuse to go anywhere.

The surgeon arrives and does a double take.

‘Yes, it’s me again. You saw me on Friday with my friend. My turn today.’

We christened that day Fanny Friday. Today, we’ve decided, is Muff Monday. But I don’t tell the surgeon that. She tells me that they’re going to do three operations, all fairly routine but there is the risk of bursting the bowel, lifelong infertility and that they might need to cut all my stomach muscles. I nod and sign everything.

She leaves. I feel sick. Put on gown with sense of doom. Pull on hideous thigh-length surgical stockings.

The Guardian phones to tell me they want to publish my article on Saturday and can they do a photo-shoot. I tell them I’m in hospital but out by the evening. They suggest sending a photographer to my house tomorrow afternoon. I say yes, hoping that I’ll still look pale, and resolving to recline on the sofa like La Dame Aux Camelias.

I do a little dance of satisfaction. Swap scurrilous stories with S, fondly believing that the closed curtains around my bed mean that no-one can hear us. We are just in the middle of doing a mini photo-shoot of our own, me trying to look sexy in said stockings and gown, when the nurse comes and sternly tells us that I can go for my anaesthetic. I follow her along the corridors, not realising until I get to the room that I am flashing my ass through the back of my gown.


There is no anaesthetist available so I read National Geographic for an hour or so. By the time I am wheeled in, I am ready for an hour or two of oblivion.

I wake up and ask where A. is. The nurse says he is probably in my head, since I was mumbling about him, plus somebody called Tots, another called Maude and another called, er, Marcella, when I was coming round from the anesthetic. Apparently I also rambled on about an oak tree, a dog bone, a party, a patient and a library….

‘Are you in pain?’
‘Yes’
‘Would you like some painkillers? I must warn you, they’re opiates.’
‘Mmmm, well, that's ok’ (coughs piteously)
‘On a scale of 1-3 how much pain do you have?’
‘Er, 3?’

I drift off into a highly enjoyable state. Next thing I know, I’m in the ward and awake, feeling appalling. The doctor comes in and talks me through what happened and what they found. She tells me that my stomach will be bloated for a few days because they blew it up full of gas, I will bleed profusely and the blue dye they squirted through my fallopian tubes will come out too.

I can’t think of anything to say. It all sounds vile.

S strokes my arm.

‘Cheer up. Think of Picasso. We shall call it Lady V’s Blue Period.’

I snort and immediately feel somewhat better.

Today I am walking like an old lady and porking down painkillers in profusion. Soon I shall get up and wash my hair in preparation for the Guardian photographer. But before then I have seasons 1-3 of The L Word to watch. Bliss.

At last...

Tipped off by the ever-vigilant Sicily I trotted off to Borders. And shed a small tear as I spotted D-o-G in the New and Bestselling section.

This was a good day.