With characteristic bumptiousness, I’m very pleased with the way I’m dealing with lockdown, especially as for the past four decades I’ve been something of a convivialist. My idea of heaven is a big table in a warm restaurant, the table glugging with the pouring of wine, shimmering with the laughter of friends and me picking up the tab.

But long before I was a lunch-monster, I was a solitary and self-contained only child; one of my earliest memories is begging my mother to send putative playmates away when they called for me.

It’s that little me which chose to isolate in my new flat on Hove seafront rather than stay with my husband in the marital home – and there’s not one moment I’ve regretted it.

Happy in solitude

From my balcony I have a beautiful view of the sea, from one window I can see all the way to Worthing, and through another the start of the sprawling Sussex countryside. I couldn’t feel less hemmed in and every morning I settle down to write my book, aware of how fortunate I am to live in a place I love, doing work I love. And due to lockdown and the lack of entertainment that spring/summer usually tempts me with, I fully expect to hand the book in on its October delivery date.

I love my early morning walk to the neighbourhood mini-marts and seeing the small shopkeepers thriving now that supermarkets seem so full of hoarding hordes seemingly unaware that if you’re squashed in with several hundred similarly-minded souls, you’ve got every chance of catching that virus you’re banking on all that toilet paper to save you from.

“…nothing during these two months has left me as sorrowful as that walk from Hove Lawns to Brighton Pier”

But though the seafront is at the other end of my street, I keep away from it. Because the Sunday after lockdown, I decided to use my hour of allotted exercise to return to the scene of so many good times – and though I’m a cheery person and rarely let anything get me down, nothing during these two months has left me as sorrowful as that walk from Hove Lawns to Brighton Pier.

The sun was shining, the canned cocktails were cold – and I felt like I was walking towards my own gallows. For some dumb reason, though the bars and restaurants of my mainstreet ‘hood were closed, I imagined for some reason that the seafront at the bottom of my street would still be open for business.

Why? Because I saw it as some fantastic fiefdom which was a law unto itself, I think; Narnia with hen parties. But rather than cheering me up it caused the only fit of the blues I’ve had during the entire experience because of all the memories it prompted.

A melancholy sea of lost love and laughter

There was the Metropole Beach, where I snogged my girlfriend that summer when we came here for the weekend to escape the tabloid door-steppers. There’s the Metropole Hotel, where I bagged her brother’s virginity a few weeks later. There’s the shingle where I almost bit my best friend’s earlobe off after drinking too many Hanky Spankys at the Salt Room.

There’s where I took Rebekah Brooks to have her fortune told, and she came out laughing that the gypsy had told her she’d never succeed in her chosen career. That’s where I was standing by the carousel next to a beautiful mixed-race couple obviously down from London for the day and the girl turned to the boy and said ‘O, it’s just like Sugar Rush!’ There’s the walkway where I watched Sugar Rush being filmed.

There’s the i360 tower that I’ve been up with half a dozen times with out-of-town mates – and I can’t remember any of them because I was so drunk. I wish I didn’t remember all the fun I used to have at the Palace Pier, where I’d take my son Jack every weekend after I lost custody of him, because he committed suicide five years ago.

It’s the melancholy unique to abandoned pleasure domes which makes Brighton seafront so sad. When I was a little girl, I had a recurrent dream of a pier burning down and the horses from the merry-go-round all lying at the bottom of the sea, their big grinagog faces oblivious to their own ruin.

That’s how I feel about the seafront now – that it’s the graveyard of all the good times. I won’t go back there until we’re alive again.

Julie Burchill

Julie Burchill’s hobbies include luncheon, philanthropy and spite. She has published more than a dozen books, the latest of which is WELCOME TO THE WOKE TRIALS: HOW #IDENTITY KILLED PROGRESSIVE POLITICS, Academica Books, on Amazon in hardback and Kindle. She has lived in Brighton/Hove for more than a quarter of a century – and still feels like she’s on holiday.

The post Always something there to remind me… my now-dismal playground appeared first on Silver Magazine.

Over the past few years I’ve forsaken cocaine, moved into a lovely Art Deco flat, and found myself a nice little billet at the Sunday Telegraph; add my volunteer job, personal trainer and Hebrew class, and I was living a leisurely life which befitted a successful sexagenarian.

I wasn’t that bothered; I’d had a bestselling book, won an Emmy, and made (and spent) millions.

But then last year I had my own Brexit bounce – and it felt like I was living through my 1980s heyday all over again. I’m turning journalism away and looking forward to the premiere of my musical Hard Times On Easy Street (showing in May).

…can I ever again find the focus which allowed me to write my teenage novel Sugar Rush in six weeks?

But most surprising is the fact that I’ve got a book to write –Welcome To The Woke Trials – by October; I haven’t had a book published since the crowd-funded Unchosen six years ago, and I’m both thrilled and trepidatious in equal measures.

I’ve become accustomed to a life in which writing takes up just a couple of hours a day; can I ever again find the focus which allowed me to write my teenage novel Sugar Rush in six weeks?

I decided to try Modafinil, a prescribed drug developed in order to fight narcolepsy but which in recent years has become the hack’s little helper due to its ability to improve focus and concentration.

I was excited on Day One; up at 5AM as usual, singing – despite insomnia and tinnitus, I’m very much a morning person, the kind known as a *super-lark* – I take half a 200mg pill with my usual can of espresso.

By 7 I’ve fallen down the M-hole, which means that whatever you’re doing when it hits you’ll just keep doing

By 6 I’m on Facebook, my greatest vice these days. Whereas most people could write it off as a waste of time and thereby shake the habit, Facebook has brought me many valuable things during the time I’ve inhabited it as a sort of second life; some of my dearest friends, the co-writer and financial backer of my Brexit play, my brand new brilliant agent, and though him, my book deal. It’s really hard to give up something you love which makes your life so much better, even if it is a waste of time.

By 7 I’ve fallen down the M-hole, which means that whatever you’re doing when it hits you’ll just keep doing, as the task you take on seems fascinating. But I don’t need Facebook to be more fascinating – I’ll never be off it! Attempting to wrench myself away, I suddenly remember I’ve got lots of books still unpacked from my move; I feel great sorting them, like the most crucial cog in a brilliant machine – but it’s still not writing.

By 8 I finally tackle chapter one; writing feels exciting, like I’m on a date with someone whose company I love.

O no – it’s 9 o’clock – gym time! Jumping around like a fiend, lifting my heaviest weights yet, music sounds even better – like I’m hearing it from both mine and the musician’s point of view. But at my volunteer job at 11, I notice an interesting influence – one I don’t like.

Sensible with Stephanie

Unlike most mind-altering chemicals Modafinil doesn’t make you reckless; if anything it feels like you’ve ingested several instruction manuals in one sitting. Usually I mess around with my steaming machine (Stephanie) dancing with her to make my colleagues laugh, or using it as a pretend microphone. I have no inclination to do that today: ‘Stephanie is a potentially hazardous piece of machinery – not a toy!’ I keep cautioning myself. I’m very speedy with my steaming – perhaps a hundred garments in an hour – but because I don’t feel inclined to play the fool with Steph, it’s not as much fun as usual.

1 o’clock! I’m used to being tired by now, due to my chronic insomnia, but instead I’m writing this piece and thinking of asking my octogenarian neighbour if she’s up for a small house party. I’m also always hungry by now but instead I look dispassionately at the vegetable samosa I’d normally be inhaling.

Unlike most mind-altering chemicals Modafinil doesn’t make you reckless; if anything it feels like you’ve ingested several instruction manuals in one sitting

By 2 o’clock I can’t bear feeling so alert and I scoff the samosa with a glass of red wine and a couple of codeine. It works and I have a half-hour cat-nap; when I wake up I write very easily and enjoyably – but then I always do, once I get round to it.

To sum up, Modafinil enhanced the banal to the point where any task diverted me. I’ve enjoyed the experience – it was like cocaine without the bad bits or the constant cash haemorrhage – but it didn’t make me work.

I can see how it might give confidence and can-do to people who have low self-esteem but quite frankly I’m such a big-head and show-off that I think I might have *lapped* myself. So when it comes to my book delivery, I think I’ll rely on that age-old writer’s friend – last-minute panic.

Julie Burchill

Julie Burchill’s hobbies include luncheon, philanthropy and spite. She has published more than a dozen books, the latest of which is WELCOME TO THE WOKE TRIALS: HOW #IDENTITY KILLED PROGRESSIVE POLITICS, Academica Books, on Amazon in hardback and Kindle. She has lived in Brighton/Hove for more than a quarter of a century – and still feels like she’s on holiday.

The post Modafinil motivation – Burchill on the pill that’s more buzzkill than thrill appeared first on Silver Magazine.

I remember well my 20th birthday – I locked myself in my bathroom and cried inconsolably. This was quite understandable, seeing as how I was married alive to Tony Parsons at the time, but I also wept because I genuinely believed I would now be *past it*. Having achieved my ambition of being a published writer before I was old enough to vote, I really believed that it would be all downhill from thereon in.

I’m overweight, have tinnitus, chronic insomnia, and feet which look like they’ve been run over by a callous millennial skateboarder. But I don’t find myself missing my youthful beauty one bit

The big birthdays after that – 30, 40, 50 – passed me by in a blur of booze and cocaine. But I approached my 60th birthday with a reasonably clear mind and an unexpectedly revived writing career. I found that I viewed the occasion with nothing worse than mild surprise that – in the words of the song – I’m still here. Whew, that went fast!

I’m overweight, have tinnitus, chronic insomnia, and feet which look like they’ve been run over by a callous millennial skateboarder. But I don’t find myself missing my youthful beauty one bit; look at the prize pair of poltroons it *got* me in the marriage market before I was even thirty!

I really hated being told ‘You’re too pretty to be a journalist,’ by visiting American musicians (ALWAYS Yanks!) and being asked ‘How much?’ by strange men in the street – something which started when I was a tall blonde 12-year-old in a school uniform, so I’ve had a good innings of being objectified.

Some ageing women complain of feeling *invisible* but for me it’s not a problem, which may have something to do with being 5 foot 10 with a good rack and a bad attitude.

As my looks have faded, my confidence has grown. I was an excruciatingly shy adolescent, a situation probably not helped by my dressing up like a Vegas hooker in the skintight satin and tat of my tribe, the Glitter Kids, and then wondering why men were perving over me. I can’t count all times I was written off as a rude snob simply because I was too scared to talk to people. But I’ll talk to anyone now.

I’m more patient than I once was, too, though my awareness that I have more of my earthly life behind me than ahead has made me feel puzzled at people who seem to believe they have an infinite amount of time to waste. One area where my patience has waned is with the young; individually they are charming, but was there ever a generation less robust in their attitude to being offended? I’ve never cared what people think of me and this, more than any other quality except my talent, has contributed to my ongoing happiness.

If people are so touchy when they’re young and strong, one can only imagine what sort of miserable oldsters they’re going to turn into, when they really will have something to moan about as their brains and bodies break down.

Me, I’m going to carry on causing offence and doing good, marvelling that I’ve made so much money and had so much fun doing the only job I ever wanted. Losing a bit of health and beauty is a small price to pay for no longer being shy or scared.

I’m not romanticising old age – I know it can be lonely and challenging, but then so can childhood, adolescence and middle-age. But if I – who made it as a teenager, was fetishised in her profession for being The Voice of Youth and was the oldest *enfant terrible* in the hacking racket until well into her thirties – can navigate it with boldness and curiosity, anyone can.

The fee for this piece has been donated to Sussex Homeless Trust
www.sussexhomelesssupport.co.uk

Julie Burchill

Julie Burchill’s hobbies include luncheon, philanthropy and spite. She has published more than a dozen books, the latest of which is WELCOME TO THE WOKE TRIALS: HOW #IDENTITY KILLED PROGRESSIVE POLITICS, Academica Books, on Amazon in hardback and Kindle. She has lived in Brighton/Hove for more than a quarter of a century – and still feels like she’s on holiday.

The post Grow up? I’m 5 foot 10 with a good rack and a bad attitude. No chance! appeared first on Silver Magazine.

‘Overlap’. It’s not an attractive word, with intimations of too many teeth spoiling a smile or shoddily-lain linoleum. It’s certainly not a word that one would associate with such a fragrant presence as that of Felicity Kendal, the nation’s superannuated sweetheart.

Yet in an interview with the Sunday Times earlier this year, the demure thespian – 72 and still sexy – spoke thus of her long and interesting romantic record: ‘I didn’t have affairs – I just went from one to the next, with a bit of overlapping.’

Maybe I’m a touch touchy about this because my laughably-named ‘private life’ has been one long Overlap. I’ve probably slept with far fewer people than most women of 60 (especially considering I’ve spent forty-three years in the world of journalism, a milieu so sexually generous before the daytime drinking ban that we made your average Aerosmith tour look like a Women’s Institute AGM), but that’s because I got married as a teenager to the first man I had sex with.

I’ve hardly been some sort of bed-hopping fly-by-night. But nevertheless I have persistently Overlapped

My first marriage lasted five years, my second ten and I’ve been with my third husband for almost a quarter of a century so I’ve hardly been some sort of bed-hopping fly-by-night. But nevertheless I have persistently Overlapped my suitors, at one point uttering the unspeakably vulgar line ‘Why would anyone get out of the bath until they’ve turned the heating on?’

Having left my first husband for my second when I was 24, then my second husband for a girl when I was 35, then that girl for her own younger brother six months later – Overlapping all the way – I feel I’ve certainly packed in enough romantic permutations to last me a lifetime.

The first Overlap was a cloak-and-dagger affair during which I took the train to London from my suburban bungalow once a week to my lover’s flat in Chelsea. My husband, a traditional man, would not have appreciated this one bit and so I fled before we were detected.

My second husband was worldly enough to *allow* me to have a love affair with a girl but not worldly enough to understand that love laughs at allowances

My second husband was worldly enough to *allow* me to have a love affair with a girl but not worldly enough to understand that love laughs at allowances. My love affair with a girl imploded under the pressure of too much oestrogen and the unsettling presence of her younger brother – now my third husband – who made me realise quite quickly that just because one enjoys a holiday on Lesbos, one doesn’t necessarily want to move there for life.

It’s a widespread phenomenon; at the other end of the celebrity spectrum from the semi-sainted Kendall we have Katie Price, who has stated that when she feels a relationship is coming to an end she ‘always has a new man on the back burner’. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve read unsolicited advice from insolent agony aunts advising her to ‘take time for yourself’ because ‘jumping straight into a new relationship is never the answer.’

But you just can’t win with these professional sticky-beaks; should a famous female go for ‘too long’ without male companionship and she’ll find herself splashed over the celebrity magazines as ‘a recluse’ who has ‘given up on men’. Personally, I believe that those who advise us to leave a gap between courses are probably just *hangry*, and want us all to suffer with them. Like those friends who declare they aren’t eating carbs and then stare resentfully at your cheesy chips till they’re gone.

Overlapping has always been common among women with the wherewithal not to need society’s approval; look at Liz Taylor, who Overlapped so much she ended up lapping herself and reuniting with Richard Burton, or indeed Kendal herself, whose current ‘boyfriend’ is the husband she left for Tom Stoppard more than two decades ago.

I asked around amongst my friends for examples of Overlapping. L remembers: ‘When I was young, I Overlapped with three brothers – one of them knew about all of them, another knew about one, the other knew about nothing. In fact, I Overlapped to the extent that I recall one going out of the basement flat door while another was walking up the stoop to the main front door.’

Why do Overlappers irk people? It can’t be sexual morality, as we often have less sex partners than other types, who may well fit in interludes of frantic promiscuity between real relationships. There may be a sort of overly-fastidious morality at play which sees Overlapping as a prolonged version of ‘double-parking’ – having sex with two people in the same day – which shamelessly contradicts the idea of woman as some sort of chaste vessel with only one careful owner.

It indicates that a woman can have her cake, eat it and then order a muffin too, which contradicts the boring old lie about men being polygamous and women monogamous – which only ever existed because for most of history women haven’t been able to pay their own way in life and depended upon the *protection* (a nice way of saying the ownership) of men.

But of course it’s not just women who Overlap. D says ‘I left my wife for another woman, had a change of heart and went back with her for one Overlapping night before deciding the initial decision was the right one and resuming the other Overlap – only to discover six weeks later that my by then ex-wife was pregnant with my eldest son.’

P confesses ‘I dated three Sarahs at once – mayhem! I’d come back from lunch and there would be a note on my desk – ‘Sarah phoned – please call her back.’’ J can literally go one better: ‘When I was at university four different girls I was Overlapping with asked me which train I was getting back from my hometown after Christmas. Only after telling the fourth did I realise it might be embarrassing – so I bravely caught an earlier one.’

Though I am endlessly delighted by my own company, I don’t care to have it imposed upon me, but rather to choose it when I please.

I don’t feel in the least regretful about my serial Overlapping, and I’m not sorry that I failed to do the agony-aunt-approved penance in the slough of solitude. Though I am endlessly delighted by my own company, I don’t care to have it imposed upon me, but rather to choose it when I please.

I love being in relationships and I’m good at it, being both amusing and affectionate. I love having a partner-in-crime and a not-quite-captive audience. I like having sex on tap; I’ve never been to a singles bar, not even when I was a hot young thing, and the idea of resorting to such a random raffle so late in life and being a swinging sexagenarian feels me with equal parts amusement and amazement.

Though seeming to be a particularly duplicitous brand of promiscuity, I believe that Overlapping can actually stem from an over-romantic desire to find the mythical One – what the Cathy & Claire problem pages of my girlhood used to call ‘frantically seeking happiness from bed to bed’. And if there is any reason to condemn it, this is the one I’d choose. Because one thing it’s never too soon to learn about relationships is that no matter how often you bolt or how far you run, you inevitably take yourself with you.

Forget finding The One who’s going to make everything perfect; as long as you’re dissatisfied with The One in the mirror, you’ll be dissatisfied with your primary romantic relationship. And no lover, Overlapping or not, can ever fix this.

Julie Burchill

Julie Burchill’s hobbies include luncheon, philanthropy and spite. She has published more than a dozen books, the latest of which is WELCOME TO THE WOKE TRIALS: HOW #IDENTITY KILLED PROGRESSIVE POLITICS, Academica Books, on Amazon in hardback and Kindle. She has lived in Brighton/Hove for more than a quarter of a century – and still feels like she’s on holiday.

The post When you’re the leaver, do you leap? Or do you like to ‘Overlap’? appeared first on Silver Magazine.

Those not lucky enough to be familiar with Madeira may dismiss it as little more than a fragrant holding-pen for the professionally Past-It. I believe that adherents of architecture, botany and eye-wateringly cheap booze’n’fags – all of which I am a fan of – will find much to delight them about ‘The Floating Garden.’ Let me tell you about my holiday in Madeira.

I first went to Madeira with my husband some fifteen years back. But when I returned this spring with my bezzie, The Botanist, it was like I hadn’t been away. Only three and a half hours on the plane! Barely time to get drunk, buy expensive scent one may well leave in the seat pocket due to one’s befuddled state, or apologize profusely to the stewardesses for absentmindedly popping one’s head out of the toilet and asking them for a light.

There’s no time difference, but it was another world from the cooler weather we left behind. And even in the winter months, Madeira is warm enough to swim in the Atlantic. While in summer, it can be hotter than Brazil.

On our first day The Botanist remarked on how pleasant the weather was, as we strolled in the sunshine. On the second day she had one of the worst cases of sunburn I’ve seen. Her face swelled up like an overcooked sausage, with pricked bits under her eyes. Good look, Botanist! WEAR A HAT IN FUTURE!

So we deserted the multitude of pools which link the beautiful, modernist Vidamar Hotel to the deep blue sea. In which whales and dolphins are so close up and personal that boat trips offer you another free go if they should evade you. We made our way to the centre of gorgeous Funchal, the island’s capital.

I sampled the local blend, which I found to be of almost hallucinatory power

A riot of white houses, black shutters and terracotta roofs, this is Gothic Lite. Built on a towering volcanic crater that looms over the sea like an ocean-liner. This, along with the riot of flowers, gives Madeira a fairytale Land-Of-Counterpane look, which was heightened by our trip to Blandy’s Wine Lodge. I sampled the local blend, which I found to be of almost hallucinatory power.

Funchal is very walkable, with paths and benches and buildings and friendship bracelets all hewn from the same black volcanic rock. It’s fun to be a proper tourist and have lunch on the balcony of the Cafe Ritz while aeroplaning 20 euro notes to the handsome buskers below. But it’s also nice to see the real Madeira.

The fish in Madeira is so fresh that one expects it to get up and perform a medley from The Little Mermaid. I even ate LIMPETS

Always be nice to your taxi driver and tip like a lady (or rather, like ‘a tart, a Jew or a journalist’ – one London cabby’s description to me of the most generous passengers) and he’ll take you to the sort of restaurant so local that it has no name on the bill, literally hewn out of the mountain, full of fish in buckets and fishermen in their cups, where we were given wine, spirits, fish and unspeakably saucy custard pastries for 39 euros.

The fish in Madeira is so fresh that one expects it to get up and perform a medley from The Little Mermaid. I even ate LIMPETS here and found them utterly delightful – like mussels that aren’t up themselves. I thought it too cheap and queried the bill – and they took 10 euros off! So I tipped massively (like a journalist), of course.

If the monochrome charms of the city pall, you can grab a taxi up to the tropical lushness of the Monte Palace estate (you can also go up by cable car and come down by toboggan, but I’m far too rich and fat for all that these days) which was recently voted 13th Best Botanical Garden In The World by Conde Nast Traveller.

You might like: Paul Tierney on backpacking to Amsterdam in your 50s

Watching the world go by

No one could call me the outdoor type. I’ve only ever thought Mother Nature existed just so one could show the old bitch who’s boss. But you could almost get drunk on the sights you’ll see here. ALMOST. That’s why it’s so good that there’s a lovely little cafe right by the entrance where you can drink poncha and watch the cable cars glide by. And say to The Botanist ‘The cab’ll be at least another ten minutes – go on, hon, get me another one!’

This was a lovely trip, full of firsts. Someone was sick on the tour bus and IT WASN’T ME! Someone spilled champagne over me and THAT WASN’T ME EITHER! Madeira is both pretty and dignified – an unusual combo – and though it’s quite a while since I’ve been either, I can certainly appreciate it in others.

Photos: Yvonne Doyle

Costs:
Hotel rooms start from 155 euros for a double side sea view room, half board
www.vidamarresorts.com

British Airways flights from London Gatwick to Funchal Madeira, starting £270 return
www.ba.com

Julie Burchill

Julie Burchill’s hobbies include luncheon, philanthropy and spite. She has published more than a dozen books, the latest of which is WELCOME TO THE WOKE TRIALS: HOW #IDENTITY KILLED PROGRESSIVE POLITICS, Academica Books, on Amazon in hardback and Kindle. She has lived in Brighton/Hove for more than a quarter of a century – and still feels like she’s on holiday.

The post Julie Burchill has a holiday in Madeira and finds fun in Funchal appeared first on Silver Magazine.