Sumerians are credited as the inventors of lipstick, followed by super-fans the Egyptians; both women and men would stain their lips with ochre or carmine. Elizabeth I, however, is probably the best known of the scarlet-mouthed. My favourite red lipstick tale, which unfortunately is disputed by historians, is that a law was passed in the 1770s banning it, aligning it with ‘witchcraft’ and ‘trickery’. Disappointing that this probably isn’t true, but the fact it’s been believed for so long is proof of the red lip’s mighty power.
PETTINESS
I am a huge fan of parochial wars over loud flute-playing dominating local newspapers, and adore a pointless petition. Generally, the more extreme the pettiness the greater the delight I take. I feel sick whenever I consider Saudi Arabia’s regime, but when the Saudis threatened to dig a canal and turn their nemesis nation Qatar into an island, I could only gasp in admiration at the level of pettiness.
Politics lends itself brilliantly to pettiness. After being sacked as education secretary by Theresa May in 2016, Nicky Morgan responded with a barb about May wearing a pair of £995 leather trousers for a photoshoot. Morgan was then disinvited from a meeting at Downing Street.
The pettiest person in the world is Donald Trump. It is the only thing to recommend him. The nicknames he gives to his adversaries are wonderful examples of the genre. Perhaps the standout was when he started calling Kim Jong-un ‘little rocket man’.
Brexit, meanwhile, is foreign policy via the medium of petty. Nigel Farage deploys similar tactics to Trump. But the Remainer camp projecting messages on to the white cliffs of Dover every time anything went wrong during negotiations (i.e. always, as predicted) is pettiness writ large.
Celebrities, whose lot is essentially to be bullied in the public sphere, take their revenge in small triumphant acts of vengeance: wearing pointed slogan tees or turning the tables by taking photographs of paparazzi photographing them. Breakups are also rich sources of pettiness. See Calvin Harris refusing permission for his ex-girlfriend Rita Ora to perform a song that she recorded, but that he had written.
The best acts of pettiness are knowing. That’s what stops them being pathetic. Often there’s no benefit to the architect of the pettiness, other than a small satisfaction. The joy of it is that it speaks to the fact that, deep down, we’re all just toddlers pretending to be adults.
I leave you with the most majestic act of pettiness ever committed. When E. E. Cummings’ first poetry collection was rejected by fourteen publishers, he self-published it with an amended title: No Thanks. On the dedication page he wrote a poem entitled ‘No Thanks To’ and listed each of those publishers who had turned him down. The poem was arranged in the shape of an urn. Just gorgeous.
SECONDHAND BOOKS
Something I will always, always remember because, even at age fifteen or so, it brought me such joy, was when I bought on eBay a first edition of Sylvia Plath’s Crossing the Water collection (of course I did) and stuck to the page of the poem ‘A Life’ was a squished dead fly.
I own a lot of books. Whenever I look for a new place to live, there must be a surfeit of shelving or the space to create it. The books come to me in various ways: as gifts, as new hardbacks from independent bookshops, as last-minute airport paperbacks, sent to the office by publishers (thank you), Amazon deals. My favourites are secondhand editions.
‘A life’ is a good way to describe it; books have lives. No two people read a book in the same way – each of us brings our experience to bear on a text. The exciting thing about a secondhand book is that one knows at least one other person has done precisely that. While we might not have insight into how exactly that played out, we do have a glimpse into the book’s journey. So many clues, each book a sort of Sherlock Holmes case to crack. A handwritten message to a lover on the title page (what ensued?). The notes of a GCSE student getting to grips with their set text (did they pass? Their bored jottings suggest not). Postcards as bookmarks that flutter out from two-thirds in (was the book ever finished?).
The pages yellowed by sunlight. The glorious, musty smell of old classics. A price given in shillings. Pages stuck together from sweaty hands. Crinkled pages from a spilt glass of water or a damp loft. Sand in the centrefold of a trashy beach-holiday read. The jacket of a beautifully designed Penguin Modern Classic clinging on by a sliver of glue. Or detached pages, taped back in.
I love the smell of new books, too, fresh from the printers. But it’s the same difference as buying a brand-new top and a vintage dress: you know nobody has gone out and danced the night away in your H&M t-shirt. Nobody has laid their hands upon it, around their partner’s waist.
With secondhand things, you might pick up a book that changed a person’s life. And that book might change your life. Maybe you will leave it somewhere accidentally, and it will transform someone else’s life. Or perhaps they will hate it.
That’s the thing about getting a secondhand book: you get two stories in one.
COMPLIMENTS
When I was about twelve, I distinctly remember being in a branch of Sayers the bakers. (Sayers was a popular chain in the north-west before Greggs came along – in completely the same colour scheme, I might add – and somehow became ‘cool’. I don’t think this injustice has ever been fully acknowledged.)
Anyway, I was in Sayers the bakers and I complimented a woman on her earrings. The woman didn’t thank me; she instead looked very embarrassed and proceeded to deliver a five-minute monologue about how rubbish her earrings were. How they were actually really cheap. And the colour washed her out. They weren’t real silver, either. These earrings were basically the source of all that was bad in the world.
I remember it because a week before I had read in some teen magazine that girls and women rarely accept compliments – and here was empirical proof. I resolved then to always accept a compliment. In truth, I often add a self-deprecating aside, but, more than I used to, I will just smile and say thank you. It feels good.
Is it better to give or receive? With compliments, as with sex, these are equally pleasurable. I give a lot of compliments. I love to give compliments. I compliment people on the street, sometimes weaving between commuters like the opening scene of a Bond film where he’s giving chase, to ask someone where they got their awesome top (it’s never, say, ‘Jigsaw last month’. Always: ‘Oh! A tiny off-the-beaten-track stall in Peru four years ago!’).
Most of the time, people beam at random compliments. If someone is looking great, why not tell them? Likewise, if someone has produced something you have really enjoyed, tell them. As a novelist friend once tweeted: ‘If you spot a harried husk of an author looking broken in the tinned mysteries aisle at Lidl, and you are considering engaging them in excited chat about their last book … do. Made my week.’
We don’t often get things for free in this world. But a compliment is free and easy. It can make a heavy heart lift. Or quell an insecurity, or remind you what a good friend somebody is, or that there are benevolent people in the world, just floating about.
I am writing this on the decking of a café, pavement-side. A man just walked past looking very dapper. I told him so. ‘Thank you very much!’ he replied. I can see him walking into the distance, grinning.
SATURDAY’S PAPERS
When it comes to Saturday papers, to paraphrase Brian Clough, I’m not saying the Guardian is the best, but it’s definitely in the top one.
Amid lowering circulations, Saturday remains the most popular day of the week for readers to pop to the shops and get ink all over their hands during breakfast. (We increasingly bury our heads on social media or apps to get our fix during the week.) Despite the fact that much of the UK press is on the verge of becoming stenography, I still enjoy reading a broad spectrum, spreading the different titles and supplements across the table, like William S. Burroughs and his cut-up collages. The Telegraph has great arts pages; the FT’s weekend edition is a fat joy; The Times has interesting features.
The weekends, our break from scroll
ing through the week’s quagmire, are meant for folding back pages, for supplements sliding out of centrefolds, and failing at sudokus. If it is a sunny day, and you are reading outside, the heat makes the paper give off an earthy, relaxing scent. Reading the papers is about sitting under trees, the simultaneous rustle of leaves and pages. Or baked-bean juice spilling from a greasy-spoon plate on to the margins. Or the celebrity interview earned after a run and a shower.
On Saturday, I will read all about sports that I don’t understand the point of (or the point systems of). I will dive into travel supplements even if I cannot afford to go away – and especially not to places where penguins are found on beaches. Because it is the act of reading itself that is the pleasure of Saturday papers – not the urgent need for news to be imparted.
It is taking the time to run the eye over photo essays and to read a startling review of a book that may turn out to be more fulfilling than the book itself. If not your life, then I’m talking about measuring out your day in coffee spoons – and colour profiles. Sometimes it’s the cheeky high of nicking a battered copy from the pub and reading it on the way home.
I even like to get the international papers: the New York Times, the Washington Post. Queen-bed-sized broadsheets that block out the morning light when held open, allowing your partner to snooze a little longer. Print’s demise is much discussed; it’s an industry on the edge. But I can’t imagine Saturdays that don’t leave the recycling bin bulging. And neither, I’d guess, can you.
BEING A REGULAR
There are the obvious people in our lives with whom we spend lots of time: a spouse, children, extended family, friends, colleagues. Those you would expect. But isn’t it true that we often see far more frequently the cashier at the local shop; the waitress at the nearby cafe; the lifeguard at the pool?
This is the joy of being a regular. I create bonds significant enough with those I interact with on a daily basis that last year, when going to my usual breakfast place first thing on the morning of my birthday, the staff all came out singing, with a candle in a piece of toast. And the only thing that would get me through the days when I was deeply depressed was the conversations with – and free bananas from – the guy who worked in the corner shop, Zain. I would tell myself that if I got out of bed and walked to the end of the street and spoke to Zain, that was something.
Zain sensed the darkness that descended, but he never addressed it directly, just looked up from the cricket on his iPhone and high-fived me – and kept me in potassium.
I don’t live in that neighbourhood any more. Now I have a new corner shop. A different gym, a different station, a different cinema. I am a new regular. There is the pharmacist who looks out for me – a team of three, in fact – because they know I am extremely skilled at leaving my prescription to the last minute. There is the restaurant that brings my order without me asking (silent communication is the apex of all communication; the first time in a relationship you both watch the TV without feeling the need for a running commentary, for example). There are the receptionists in the office who seem to know before I do when I have forgotten my pass.
This is the joy of people, the joy of place – and the combination of the two. Because being a regular is lots of things: belonging somewhere, being accepted, understood. Being acknowledged, even. Being a regular is what can stave off the loneliness for older people without family, or the freelancer eking out a coffee for eight hours.
The places themselves soothe, too. The familiarity of the wifi name or the exact sensation of upholstery on the back of the thigh, in the chair that is your chair, in your corner.
I am a regular. I have my places. And when I move, I carry them with me.
CLOSING BROWSER TABS
When I was a kid, The World’s Strongest Man was televised each year during the fallow period between Christmas Day and New Year. The thing I remember most was the sheer release on the faces of men built like tree trunks when they stopped pulling a train, or rearranging Atlas Stones that had made ribbons of their forearms.
That’s the relief I feel when clearing all my internet browser’s tabs. Clicking the crosses like a long line of kisses finally indulged. There are many reasons why one has tabs open in double figures. In my defence, they are often related to work or research. The sense of lightness that comes over me when closing them is down to a task completed. It is a bit like setting one’s pen down at the end of an exam; the way the air feels that bit fresher coming out of the hall than going in.
Then there are the cajoling tabs bursting with opportunities to procrastinate. The icons of social media accounts winking alluringly or the random YouTube clip pulled up and watched four times for no apparent reason. I cannot tell you the number of tabs I have open on 10,000-word long reads that I will eventually, ostensibly, ‘get round to’. Closing these unread would be to acknowledge defeat, and so they just stay there, like a guest at a party whom you would like to leave but are too anxious to throw out.
When I first moved to the offices of the Guardian, I was quite shocked to find each individual had but a single monitor. Where I had previously worked, each of us had a two-monitor setup that meant our tabs could be spread across two wide screens. I see now that this only encouraged the habit. Because tabs, like gases, expand to fill their container. I will even open new windows to accommodate more of them. Sometimes I have more than one browser open and my desktop ends up looking like a game of solitaire.
We should take the same approach with tabs as when sorting a closet or bookshelf: if a tab has been dormant for a certain length of time, it should go. It’s only a moment’s work and doesn’t involve the crushing revelation that 90 per cent of your cashmere has been eaten by moths and everything else left untouched.
Close your tabs. All of them. One fell swoop. No looking back. If you need something, you will already have it bookmarked, or you will remember it well enough to revisit. Un-tab yourself. It’s pretty much the only life advice I am qualified to give.
CHEATING A HANGOVER
Brace yourself. That is the first thing that enters one’s head after a heavy night out, before the eyes are even open. Sometimes, listing nausea or a banging in the brain is what wakes us in the first place. We all know that if someone invented a cure for hangovers – and boy, have they tried – that person would be very rich indeed and worshipped as a deity.
It doesn’t matter if it has been one too many after work drinks or cracking open a second bottle of wine with one’s partner: the consequences of over-indulgence patiently lie in wait.
It’s the knowledge that a brutal hangover reduces one to a quivering husk – a sweaty bundle of anxiety, a half-person with memories as fuzzy as static – that underlines one of the greatest escapes any of us can enjoy: the Houdini-level trick that is Waking Up Without A Hangover.
I know two types of non-hangover intimately. The first became my normal when I was sober for a year, and it was glorious. Clocks seemed to expand with time. I was – and I’m afraid there’s no other word for it – sprightly. But waking up without a hangover after a night of getting plastered, when, by rights, one’s liver should spend all day in the foetal position, is one of life’s true gems. It’s the world saying: here, have one on me.
A warning though: pride comes before a fall. Many of us know the false sense of security, an assertion that ‘Oh, I feel fine’. Cut to the afternoon and a delayed hangover has worked its way into one’s insides like bindweed. It’s a bit like chatting to a stranger at a pub, having a jolly good time, then boom – racist comment. You didn’t see it coming and it’s all the worse for that.
The genuine hangover-free day, though? Truly a chef’s kiss. Of course, life being as it is, it’s a treat overwhelmingly likely to occur on a languid Saturday, when vomiting into one’s loo wouldn’t be the end of the world. The devilish hangovers, meanwhile, the ones that feel like a raw deal after what one thought was actually ‘a pretty chilled night’, will, inevitably, happen on the Wednesday morning of an
important work presentation.
I am sure scientists could tell us the reasons for discrepancies: the type of beverage imbibed; or mixing drinks; amounts of food eaten; water consumed. But to me it always feels like Russian roulette, an absence of rhyme or reason. We play the booze game and we take our chances. And it’s immensely satisfying when we win.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I have something to acknowledge: I love acknowledgements. They are the first thing I read in a book. (Often I won’t read an author’s introduction until after I have finished, in case it contains spoilers.)
Gratitude is one of the most important things. If someone doesn’t say thank you after I hold a door open for them, they might as well be a serial killer. Acknowledgements are the literary equivalent of thanking all the people who made a book possible; who held the door open. (Or gave the writer a key to their cottage by the sea for a writing retreat. Lots of those.)
I am quite a nosy person, so I enjoy scanning the names to see if there is someone I recognise; it is as though I have spotted two people I did not know were friends dining together in a restaurant. I enjoy the turns of phrase writers come up with to avoid repeating themselves. The in-jokes.
We even get a glimpse into the circumstances of an author’s life and the backdrop against which the book was produced. Those who acknowledge Arts Council grants or thank the NHS, and even food banks and housing charities, as was the case in Anna Burns’s Booker-winning novel Milkman; a mini political commentary in itself.
The Joy of Small Things Page 5