Which witch, witch doctor?

Found this rather creepy flyer in our mailbox yesterday (click to embiggen). Phone number deleted to protect the innocent – ie the folks he’d be ripping off.

Aside from the 'mysterious' symbols (why are two missing in the first set?) and the odd amalgamation of problems he can solve - stress, depression, court cases (just who is his target audience?), would you really trust a 'spiritual healer and advisor' who purports to be an expert in a field he can't even spell?

My failure at fandom

I've been a fangirl for more than two thirds of my life. It started in 1985, when I first heard about a Norwegian pop group called a-ha, who I still follow today (and have tickets for their last-ever *sniff* UK concert in November this year). I bought all their albums in the 80s (replaced them on CD in the 90s, put them on my iPod in the 00s), read all the magazine articles and bought the merchandise. In my 20s, I collected X-Files episodes, memorabilia  and spinoff scientific books on the myths behind them. In a fortunate choice of jobs, I successfully stalked made contact with an actor whose work (and face) I had admired for years and inadvertently got myself invited to dinner at the family home. In my 30s, I followed a British pop band around the country (and even to Amsterdam), then nearly bankrupted myself following a related band after they broke up – this however, resulted in meeting my partner of five years (the drummer's best mate), so there was an upside to financial ruin.

I've hung out on forums and in chat rooms talking about songs, guitars, jeans and haircuts, I've made new friends at gigs (friendships that lasted longer than the bands themselves) and read (and written) all manner of good (but mostly bad) fan fiction, even before the internet existed. I've collected entire series of TV shows and books, I've written reviews (some of which resulted in the band seeking me out to say hi) and taken hundreds of (mostly blurry) photos. I've admired and sighed and swooned, I've cheered and danced and waved my hands in the air, I've gone back to gigs, movies and performances more than once, then tracked down rare footage (well before YouTube) to view at leisure in my home. I thought I had a pretty good understanding of the fan thing. Turns out I was doing it all wrong.

One of the things I was got wrong was that I never really wanted to MEET the object of my admiration. The few times I did meet them, reality was inevitably grounding and sometimes disappointing. How do you live up to a performance in real life? You can't. I think in the back of my mind I knew that, but for the most part, I didn't want their only impression of me to be labeled, with a gigantic neon sign above my head, as a FAN.

As a FAN, I knew the Famous Person in question would be on  their guard. Fans collect information, they collect it and share it, some to gloat over their ability to acquire it, others just to share and enjoy it with others they know would appreciate it. People in the public eye are aware of this and adjust their conversation appropriately. I wanted to have the kind of conversation I'd have if I was meeting someone through friends, or work, go to dinner, coffee or a pint and have a chat, not the one-sided kind where that someone was worried I was secretly taping the entire thing.

My other apparent mistake is that I don't approach fandom in the same way as a lot of the 'serious' fans out there, who don’t collect information or art, but experiences: conversations, photos with, signed objects, touched objects, waiting at stage door, attending multiple book signings, not to tell the actor/musician/author how much they enjoyed their work and have a conversation about process or other work, but just to say hi, shake hands and tally up another meeting. It's not to enjoy the object or the experience itself, for what it is, but to log another point in the grand scale of fandom.

I came to this realisation very recently – last weekend in fact. I went to my very first book signing. I've never gone to one because I figured while it's nice to have a book with the author's signature on it, I always wondered what the point of it was. The author isn’t my friend and speaking to him for 20 seconds that he isn’t going to remember in the thousands of 20 second meetings he'd have in his lifetime isn’t going to overly enrich either of our lives.

Fandom, I'd always thought, is about trying to make a connection. You see a film, a play, hear a song, read a book, you're impressed, moved, something about the work touches you. The person who created it is obviously someone you admire for their talent and creativity – and we always want to make a connection with someone we admire. In this age of interconnectivity, of Web 2.0, suddenly this becomes more possible. We follow a Famous Person on Twitter, and if we're lucky and clever enough, they'll see a tweet we send to them and reply to it. Receiving a response from someone you admire is heartening and I always harbour a microscopic (and therefore futile) hope that this could, might, just may be the start of an ongoing conversation… but it rarely is. Particularly if, like me, you back off immediately, in terror of being labeled as a FAN.

The book signing was for Joe Hill's new book Horns, and as I've outlined in a previous post, I had a fairly triumphant experience discovering this particular author.

So I went to the signing, queued up for an hour, had my book signed and chatted about jet lag – my 20 seconds with Joe Hill. All fine. But the odd part of the day was the other fans.

I already had my copy of Horns and had considered taking my copy of Heart-Shaped Box, but thought that was a bit presumptuous, as the signing was specifically for Horns. I shouldn't have worried. Some of the other people there had brought two, four, eight and ten copies EACH of the book to be signed. And sign he did, nice chap, knowing full well that these books were going straight onto eBay and he wouldn't see a penny of the mark up his signature would give them. He posed happily for photos and made jokes with everyone, some of whom had been to a few, if not all, of the signings he'd done throughout the UK that week, despite being weekdays and all times of the day.

Now I get the following-around thing. I've taken days off work to travel to the other end of the country to see a band play and meet with friends who are also fans. But that was an entire evening, sometimes a weekend including sight-seeing, four or five hours of music and dancing and drinking… not two minutes of small talk and watching someone sign a book.

A lot of the fans knew each other, obviously from attending signings, and were comparing notes about the next one they were going to (for another author) and past signings with other authors. One woman was joking about how she'd had to curb her book signings because her 'social life' was starting to encroach on the time she was spending with her children. But the most extraordinary thing were the lists. Lists of who'd been to what signing and how many books they'd managed to get signed, whether the author was happy to sign multiple copies and have their photo taken. These signings, it seems, were not a chance to connect with the person who'd enriched your life with their creativity, they were notches on the great bookmark of fandom. Your status as a fan increased with the number and variety of signatures you'd managed to acquire.

I’ve done some obsessive-compulsive things in my fan career, I own some rubbish merchandise and have spent way too much money on things non-fandom folks would see as irrelevant. But if this acquisition of two minute meet-and-greets is what it take to be considered a 'fan' in the age of the internet, I feel that my aversion to meeting the Famous Person, my contentment with a one-sided 'relationship' and my desire only to connect with them to tell them how much I enjoyed their work appears to make me a failure. But I do wonder if my experience of fandom isn’t richer as a result.

The nervous youth

We renewed the tenancy agreement on our flat this month, for another year - mainly because (aside from the fact  that we like it here and the rent's good) we don't want to move house again. We've moved five times in five years and that's just a few too many cardboard boxes. 

As part of the renewal process, our letting agent decided they'd send someone round to a) get the agreement signed and witnessed in person and b) do an inspection of the flat to make sure we hadn't sold off the appliances, repainted the walls black or ripped up the carpet. Fair enough, if I was a landlord I'd want to check that too, even if the tenants paid the rent on time, didn't complain (much) or cause any complaints to be made. Like us.

So, in anticipation of a middle-aged hawkeyed spinster obsessed with grease on hob exhaust grilles (yes, I'm speaking from experience), we got up early, Hoovered,  tidied, dusted and even washed the balcony windows (not a big task, but, oh my, the difference - we live on a very busy road with many polluting cars and trucks). The flat looked more than presentable and I was no longer paranoid about the disdainful inspector's imminent arrival.

The doorbell went and I put on my best welcoming smile, prepared to offer said harridan a cup of tea, when in walked a boy.

Yes, in a suit (or rather a sweater vest and tie) but a boy nonetheless. He couldn't have been more than 19, but looked about 15. He smiled nervously and shuffled a plastic sleeve of papers, looking for our tenancy agreement. They hadn't even given him a clipboard, bless - first tool of intimidation, the clipboard. As a stage manager I found it a terrific symbol of authority, right up there with walkie-talkies.

The boy finally found the agreement and we signed it, then he swallowed and said ‘I’ll just do the inventory’ and poked his head into the few rooms of our wee abode, rushing off a series of ticks on his list. I altered his list before signing it (we own the fridge but the other flats came with theirs installed) and he blinked, then nodded, wide-eyed and agreed. Too bad we're so honest, could have got ourselves a washer-dryer and cooker.

He was gone a minute later in a flurry of floppy hair and nervous nodding, but I have to wonder - what would he have done if he'd turned up to find we'd gone all Pacific Heights on the place? What if we'd repainted the ceilings to match the Sistine Chapel, torn up the carpet and carved Satanic symbols into the floorboards, punched holes in the walls and torched the balcony with a bonfire-style BBQ? What if, my chap said, we'd taken out all the walls and tiled the entire flat in pale green, with nothing but a toilet in the centre of the room?

I have to wonder, would our young inspector just have nodded, hyperventilating, and got us to sign the agreement anyway, then run away in tears of terror? I felt at the time that if I'd looked sideways at him and suddenly hissed 'BOO!' he might have wet himself. I can't imagine him standing up to the Andrex puppy, let alone a psychopathic Satanist decorator. Which, fortunately for him, we're not. But I have no idea about our neighbours.

Really old stuff

One of the coolest things about living in the UK is just how mind-bogglingly old everything is. In Australia, unless you're looking at Aboriginal art and landscape formations (which are also cool but not as accessible to the city-girl), everything ‘old’ within sensible driving distance of a pub or coffee shop is only just over 200 years old - like The Rocks in Sydney. All the cobble-stoned olde worlde goodness you can handle, but only two streets really, dating back to when the first English chaps decided to set up house when they got off the boats in 1788.

In Britain, people have been building things out of stuff that doesn't fall down (stone, pretty much) for thousands and thousands of years. Skara Brae, in the Orkneys, for example, dates back to 3100 BC - that's FIVE THOUSAND YEARS. I don't know about anyone else, but that starts getting beyond what my wee brain can cope with. The other useful thing is that the UK is quite small geographically, so most areas near water (rivers, lochs etc) have been populated for a long time by people  fond of building things out of sturdy materials that would withstand snow, ice and the perpetual rain. Which means that today, in our modern society, where we can travel from London to Cardiff in five hours instead of five days, the remnants of these ancient buildings survive in the most suburban of locations all over the place - mostly now protected by government and private organisations dead keen on history.

Half an hour's drive from our flat in Greenwich, is the village of Eynsford. It's one of a thousand 'historic' villages dotted all over the UK, that you drive through in a blink of an eye. They are mostly full of city commuters (the only people who can afford to live in such picturesque surroundings) or families who've lived there since their great-great-grand-someone settled as a farmer centuries ago. These little villages tend to sit between great tracts of open land, but comparatively close together, so a drive through the Kent  countryside will be mostly green fields (crops, sheep, cows) then a tiny village, then more fields, then another tiny village. The villages sometimes join up as the urban sprawl creeps outward and housing developments of 'Tudor-style' semi-detached homes are seemingly dropped into empty land by an unseen hand (my chap likes to call it the 'house-machine being left on' - hundreds of identical houses in nice neat rows), but more often than not, they're quite separate.

But the cool, if slightly surreal, thing about them is that you'll be driving along and  suddenly, out of the corner of your eye, you'll spot a pile of stones, a shadowy dip in the landscape, a structure that looks out of place in the suburban skyline. It will be sitting there, quietly, as it has for a thousand years, with livestock, tourists and local teenagers wandering past and through it, mostly oblivious to any historical significance (this is particularly true of livestock), it's just part of their neighbourhood. But in a lot of cases, an unassuming pile of rocks, a stone wall or a ramshackle structure will be older than anything around it (the earth not withstanding). Point in case, Eynsford Castle. Or the ruins thereof.

A few weeks ago, on the one sunny Saturday we've had since Christmas, we'd programmed our sat nav with the postcode given to us in the English Heritage guidebook (which lives in our car for such adventures). We drove past the point on the map where the sat nav's voice (an Irish chap named Sean) said (or would have said, had we not turned the sound off) 'You have reached your destination', five times before I finally spotted the English Heritage sign post saying 'Eynsford Castle'. I'd been joking to my chap that it was probably in the middle of someone's backyard... well... five minutes later we were negotiating a winding lane, in between the back fences of several semi-detached homes (and some very sweet slanty cottages) to what looked like someone's back driveway, to park alongside what were evidently local residents' cars (including a trailer) and lo, there was indeed the ruins of Eynsford Castle.

The ruins are surrounded by what was a moat at some point (if I had a castle I'd so want a  moat) and English  Heritage have built a sturdy wooden bridge over the hollow that was the moat, leading into the main body of the castle, which is built on a raised section of ground. Now basically a pile of stone half- walls, it's more like a fort built by over-enthusiastic boy scouts who were called in for their tea before they could finish it. There is very much a feeling that it was a defined structure at some point, the information boards list out a kitchen, a great hall, a solar (lords and ladies chamber or bedroom) and undercrofts for both, with a spiral staircase that lead up to the first floor. Apparently there was some kind of Saxon structure built there before the castle was built in the late 11th century and many changes of hands and conflict surrounding the building throughout its life - at one point it was even a kennel and stable.

It was a gloriously sunny day, but it was still very cold (witness the remains of a snowman still frozen in the  centre of the main section of the castle), not to mention the arrival of a family whose children didn't seem to grasp the concept of keeping their voices below a shout in public, so we did the rounds of the ruins, me taking entirely more photos than necessary, then wandered down to the stream at the back of the ruins. Snow melt water had raised the water to the top of the bank and there were a couple of resilient ducks trying to swim against the substantial current (and winning, to their credit), and the  stream flowed down into fields that were more like wetlands - we suspected the stream had been diverted from its original path at some point, to irrigate the fields below. Sometimes I think we've been watching too much Time Team.

But there was very much a feeling of something having happened there, rather than a cold, empty pile of stones, which is one of the best things about living in a country with so much history. The sense that you are standing where people stood a thousand years ago, where someone built a home and went about their daily lives, just as you are now (but they were probably considerably more smelly). It's one of what I call 'amoeba moments'. When you realise that in the grand scheme of the universe, you're an amoeba. A tiny, tiny organism bearing little or no impact on the gigantic surroundings that are space and time. That the world will go on around you, or without you, and maybe one day, a thousand years in the future, someone will stand where you stood, wondering what your life was like, but, like you today, with no clue about who you actually were. Or maybe they'll just have a picnic.

Snow

I grew up in Far North Queensland. Which is so far north it requires capital letters. The temperature in summer can get up to 40­­° Celsius and even in winter it doesn't get much lower than about 17°. Humidity stays around the 60/70% mark all year. So it's pretty warm and sticky most of the time, but particularly at Christmas time. Traditionally my family don't do cooked lunch, it's ham and potato salad and sparkling apple juice, then sit around trying not to sweat.

I don't like hot weather. I don't like having to reveal that much skin to anyone but my partner and I don't like wearing shoes with a no-sock requirement. I like trainers. And boots. The sandal and flip flop require a pedicure and inevitably cause blisters while you're wearing them in. I hate blisters.

I moved to the UK in part to get away from the hot weather. That and the lack of culture, artistic merit and availability of tickets to arena concerts (yes, yes I know, topic for another post). But mostly for the weather. Unlike most English people, I like the weather here. I like the rain (unless I'm required to walk long distances in a direction opposite to home), I like clouds and I like the temperature no higher than 22 degrees. While I don't really enjoy the early darkness six months of the year brings, British Summer Time means it's sometimes light at 9.30 at night. Which is awesome.

However, I'm not convinced about snow. The first time I saw snow (actual snow falling from the sky, as opposed to sitting in frozen lumps on the side of a mountain) I was in New York on holiday. I was travelling on my own (though I was staying with my brother in Brooklyn, he had to work all week) and I had just finished looking at treasures in the Pierpont Morgan Library and Museum on Madison Avenue. I was collecting my coat from the cloakroom at the front entrance and looked out through the glass door to see tiny white fluffy things floating around in the air. It took me a minute to realise what it was, and I think I must have been standing there looking amazed because the large black security guard at the door stepped forward and asked me if I was okay. I said I was, I'd just never seen snow before. He was amused in the way that I'd only ever seen New York characters on television amused - he laughed out loud and announced to the couple who were leaving the museum behind me that I'd never seen snow! They smiled in that kindly patronising way that New Yorkers do and stepped past me, putting up their umbrellas as they left.

I had an umbrella with me (my first overseas trip, I had EVERYTHING with me), but I wasn't going to miss out on my first snow - I walked back up to Central Park, gazing around at the snowflakes with an expression not unlike Jeff Bridges' in Starman and trying to catch them on my hand and my tongue. That night it snowed enough to make the pavements slippery and give mailboxes and railings snow cone hats (though CNN would have you believe that a blizzard was on its way). I ventured forth into freezing sleet (this time with my umbrella, can't tell you what a difference it made), thanking my sensible hiking books and diligent shop keepers with grit bins for stopping the worst of the pavement slipping and then realised why snow in an urban environment is not necessarily a wondrous thing. Once the city heats up the snow enough to ice over, everything is slippery. If the snow stays as snow it's fine, you can plough through drifts in waterproof boots and the soles will grip as they should and so long as you don't try and rush, you'll get where you're going without falling over. When it's icy, chances of arriving at your destination without a soggy bum are slim to none.

I hate falling over. I hated falling over as a kid, the embarrassment, the pain and the indignity at not being able to maintain a simple thing like balance. I was always the last one to make it back to the beach when we were rock-climbing, I never let go of the railing on my few attempts at roller skating and I don't even like stepping into a wet bathtub without having a two-handed grip on something that can't break. I hated it as a kid, but now in my late 30s, and weighing considerably more than I did at 14, there's a lot more of me to land on my knee, elbow or my substantial behind.

So here is my quandary. I love to watch the snow. I love to see the white feathers swirling, floating, piling up on tree branches. I love the way it sits on top of post boxes and window sills, the icing sugar on sponge cake look of roofs and lone trails of footprints (human and canine) through pristine parkland. I like seeing kids (and grownups) making rude snowmen and chucking lumps of it at each other, I like the way that dogs are ridiculously excited by it and zoom around, nose to the ice, trying to figure it out, as if they've never seen it before. It's still a marvellous magical phenomenon to me, and I get completely snap-happy.

I also hate the snow. I hate slipping and catching myself before I hit the ground almost as much as actually falling down. I hate having to leave extra time to get to the station in the morning, I hate having to remember spare socks and hoping that my boots will hold up to their waterproof bargain and my toes won't be wrinkled and cold when I get to the office. I hate the messy slippery slush left behind after several thousand pedestrians have traipsed through the snow on their way to work, much earlier than me. I hate the way the UK's transport system breaks down when more than an inch of powder lands on the train tracks, roads and airports. Just before Christmas there was an unexpected snowfall about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, a good two inches landed on London with a 'whoomp' and all vehicular transport ceased to function.

Trains were delayed, cancelled, gave up and went back to their train duvets in their train sheds. Traffic banked up as cars slipped and skidded on roads (hills were impossible) unless they'd managed to get in behind the frantically-deployed army of grit lorries. Buses stopped in case they slid on the road or crashed into shop fronts at three miles per hour, killing everyone on board and spoiling Christmas displays. We got to our next-to-local train station, waited for a bus in the snow only to be told they'd all stopped, then gave up and walked home. It's normally a 30 minute stroll over a grassy heath and along not-unpleasant shop-lined streets, but it took us nearly an hour plodding along in our hiking boots (I exceeded the limits of their waterproofness at about 40 minutes). I held onto my chap's arm with a vice-like grip, paranoid about ice patches and spent the entire walk with my eyes on the ground, placing my feet in a steady, stomping fashion like so many snow-shoed Eskimos before me.

Of course later, in my contrary way, I was taking photos from the window of our flat, watching in wonder at the swirling flurries and wondering how long the road surface would stay coated in the snowy frosting before a car (or a grit lorry) came along to destroy the illusion.

I think snow is a bit like action films where the hero beats up the baddie/alien/volcano with an array of heavy artillery, staggering triumphantly through bloody noses, broken ribs and bullet wounds. I like to watch, but faced with actually getting physically involved, I'd rather stay in with a cup of coffee and biscuit if it's all the same.

The reality of working in show business

I'm not going to pretend to be objective about reality shows. I hate them. I've hated them since the very first Big Brother leeched its way onto our screens in Australia nine years ago and I've studiously avoided them in any shape or form. I particularly loathe the talent-show versions where people with average voices and minimal stage presence win competitions voted for by the public and get massive record deals. But the main reason I hate them is because they have taken away budgets for decent television programming and work from trained performers - and not just in television. Suddenly lead roles in theatrical productions are being given to individuals with little or no formal training and certainly no formal experience.

We were given tickets to see Oliver! last week. I had a vague idea there might be someone from a reality show playing Nancy (the coverage of these shows means it's impossible to completely ignore them) and I was pretty sure she'd won a competition to play the role. However, when we got there, the 'alternate' Nancy was on for the evening, Australian actress, Tamsin Carroll. Tamsin was exceptional, as I would expect from a young woman who has been working in the theatre since childhood. But it got me thinking. Why was there an 'alternate'? Not an understudy (the role of Nancy has two understudies), but someone who plays the role for a specific number of performances each week.

Most West End shows run eight shows a week (six nights and two matinees) and often additional rehearsals during the week for understudies and swings (performers covering multiple supporting roles). That's two hours a show onstage and for a production like Oliver!, leading actors usually have some vocally strenuous numbers. So logic would dictate that you're going to need some strong singers. Singers with training, technique, experience. Singers who can handle eight shows a week, two hours a night and not lose their voice by Saturday night.

I don't know anything about Jody Prenger, who won the reality show competition for Oliver! other than what was in her bio in the programme (lots of reality TV and a Disney cruise ship gig) and a YouTube video, which, to be honest, wasn't a patch on Tamsin's performance the other night. I also don't know anything about Connie Fisher, another reality-show winner who went on to play Maria in The Sound of Music. But I do know she also had an 'alternate' after her voice packed it in three months into the run.

Two for two. Add Martine McCutcheon (television actress and former pop star), who had to drop out of My Fair Lady for 'health reasons', three for three. Is anyone else seeing a pattern? Tamsin Carroll played the role of Nancy in the Australian production of Oliver! (with no alternate) and Jody Prenger's replacement next year, Kerry Ellis (who understudied Martine McCutcheon in My Fair Lady) doesn't look like she'll have an alternate either.

I feel I'm stating the obvious here, but evidently it needs to be stated, because it keeps happening. Actors like Tamsin and Kerry, who work their way up through the ranks of the chorus, understudy and supporting roles – 'work' being the operative word – who have the talent, skills and guts to play the leading role to its fullest, aren't given the opportunity because those roles are given to the folks who've been on the TV. Regardless of whether those TV folks  have the talent and stamina to handle the role. They're famous, so they'll bring in the crowds.

Musicals are not the only genre where this is happening – Daniel Radcliffe garnered lacklustre reviews for an average performance in Equus, Josh Harnett lacked the presence and gravitas of his theatre-trained co-star Adam Godley in Rainman (but Harnett was aware of it, and suitably humble in his curtain call) and Kelly Brook has been hired for her 'talents' to play an 'ordinary woman' in Calendar Girls. Not to say 'famous' equals 'no talent', I saw the superb (theatre-trained) Gillian Anderson in What The Night is For, Brendan Fraser and Frances O'Connor were just perfect in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (and I'm eagerly awaiting James Earl Jones and Adrian Lester in the latest production of same), John Barrowman was wowing theatre crowds long before he was Captain Jack Harkness and I can die happy knowing I saw Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart in Waiting for Godot. But these are all performers who put in the ground work from day one, who earned their dues and got the break they worked for. They have talent which made them famous, as opposed to  mass-market personality appeal which made them famous.

There are arguments for getting the famous people in - what good is a show if no-one comes to see it? And people will come to see it if there's someone famous in it, regardless of whether they have the chops to carry off the role. I rebutt this argument with 'then educate people about the difference between good and famous'. What if all school children were inspired to see wonderful productions for the production's sake and not so they could say they'd seen Kelly Brooks' baps? The famous people argument reduces theatre to water cooler chat. People go to see the shows to say they've seen it, regardless of how bad it is. So what's the point in getting the good people in, when no-one will see it? May as well have a less-brilliant show that thousands see for the wrong reasons than a brilliant show that hundreds see for the right reasons, right? And so it goes, until there are less and less good shows to see.

Then I ask myself – would I have seen Waiting for Godot if Magneto and Captain Picard hadn't been cast? The truth? No. I wouldn't have. Because the London tickets were £50 each. If they'd been £10 then a much better chance. But I'm not about to fork out a fortnight's worth of groceries on the off-chance the show might be good. I paid a tenner to see Cyrano de Bergerac at the National Theatre some years ago, Stephen Rae was in the lead role and it was bloody awful. But McKellen vs Stewart? They could recite the phone book and it would be awesome.

So what's the solution? Aside from abolishing reality TV? In my book, education. Get the kids while they're young, expose them to good story-telling, beautiful production values, moving performances and teach them how to appreciate what they're watching. Let them know that performance is a job, it's work and not just something you fall into because you're an Irish set of twins with big mouths and big hair. Think of all the wonderful stories we'd all get to see and hear, how much more beauty and light there'd be in the world, how much more hope and productivity there'd be if people were inspired, Roddenberry-style, to want nothing more than to enrich their souls. There is nothing enriching in reality TV. It is voyeurism in its most despicable form – the twitch of the net curtain to gossip about your neighbours. It is stealing jobs from talented performers, writers and directors and, worst of all, robbing us of the stories to weave into the once luxuriant fabric of our community and culture. It has no place in an intelligent society and I look forward to its ultimate demise at the hands of a public so bored they have no choice but to seek out new stories.

When did I become a Ma’am?

I was in Prêt a Manger today, which I am most days, as I buy my morning latté from them. Prêt make the best lattés of all the chain stores in London. I'll go to Starbucks at a pinch (and load it up with vanilla or caramel), Costa as a last resort and Cafe Nero ONLY if the baristas are Mediterranean. English Cafe Nero baristas evidently all drink Nescafé at 40 degrees Celsius and wouldn't know a good latte if it imploded in front of them. The best coffee I’ve found in London (so far) is made by the lovely ladies at MUGI in Ealing Common. Polish construction workers drink it at 7.30am with nothing but cigarettes, so you know it’s good. Should you find yourself on the Ealing Common High Street, I recommend a detour, for the coffee and the hilarious music videos on Russian cable television.

I am a caffeine junkie and used to drink five or six cups a day. However, in a begrudging concession to my health, I only have one coffee a day now, as it made my heart beat irregular when I was a stage manager working 80 hour weeks in my 20s. So my one cup a day is significant and not to be treated lightly. I've tried to support my local small businesses and have gone to all the independent coffee shops in the five blocks around my office (mostly run by aging Italian men who employ contemptuous eastern European girls) and they all make terrible coffee. I mean the kind of terrible that makes you wish you'd ordered Maxwell House instead. I suspect they're all using Maxwell House to make coffee for their English customers, assuming they won't know the difference and keeping the really good, fresh, medium-roasted Italian good stuff for themselves. Bastards.

Anyway, when I was ordering my latté from the friendly folks at Prêt today, I realised that one of them had called me 'Ma'am' when she gave me my coffee. Ma'am. As in 'Madam'. Mrs. M'dme. Missus. M'lady. Not Miss. Or even Ms.

I realised that people had been calling me Ma'am for quite some time. In restaurants, bars, on the phone (where I tend to get 'Mrs' in front of my surname too) and certainly in the mail. And it made me wonder, when did I become a Ma'am? When did it become obvious that I was no longer a Miss? That I was now 'of a certain age' that commanded this level of respect from customer service types?

Is it my expanding waistline that lends me a matronly air? My lacklustre work attire (who can be bothered making an effort for pie charts?) or sensible walking-through-the-park trainers? I refuse to believe it’s crows feet, I have too much natural collagen (mostly thanks to 20 years of chips and chocolate), so it’s got to be my attitude. Evidently I have thrown off the exuberance and naivety of my youth and present myself (to customer service folks at least) an imposing worldly figure impressive enough to inspire in them the use of a befitting title. Or at least fear that I’ll get more annoyed with them if they call me ‘Miss’.

They might have a point.