'What has happened to us, the literati, the Middle Classes, 'purveyors of culture' as the boss puts it, boasting about our low-budget brands?' asks the Publishing Director, rhetorically, because we know exactly what has happened to us. We're broke.
Meanwhile, I'm walking through Notting Hill Gate where there's a brand, new swanky Deli opened, with chairs outside on the pavement where you can sip your cappuccino with the car fumes racing up Camden Hill Road and, presumably, scoff some pasta rolled between the thighs of Veronese matrons, served with Pecorino from blind, albino goats on a Genovese hillside while eco-goatherds, hold parasols over their heads. I say, presumably, because I've never set foot in the place. Heck I never even make it into Mark's & Spencer. These days I'm a Tesco's Value gal when I'm a foot-shopper and my entire Sainsbury's-to-you shop is white as a virgin bride with big orange letters on it (four gallons of 'basics' bleach - I think the delivery must have though I was making a very economical bomb - in fact I'm cleaning the house. It's cheaper than belonging to the gym and one of my few affordable leisure activities.)
My ex-husband is shocked. Me? Not been in? Ever? Me, deli-addict, food fetishist who almost licked the shelves in the tiny branch of Eataly housed in the basement of Milan's Coin? Me, the salivator over three quid packets of frilly pasta and the coveter of twenty quid bottles of any kind of liquid that has a pretty label? Me, the person who has empty tins of French fish paste arranged (tastefully, mais, bien sur) on her shelves because they just look pretty, even though they did taste a tad cat foody?
Yes, me. My food-porn days are over. I don't even get turned on any more by a sandwich board saying 'Fresh Truffles in Stock' - I just think, oh truff off, really? You Holland Park hotties who trot into Mechanico for a 60p fig when you can get five for a quid on the stall outside Holborn Tube station, swanning into Jeroboams for your ruddy white truffles - how do you AFFORD it? Where is your money coming from? Not publishing, that's for sure. We're the new poor, we publishing types. Currently, Waitrose, is my idea of a luxury deli, and even then I can only go in for a few, select, items.
Watching Gossip Girl the other day with my kids, I was amused, bemused and then just plain irritated, to see one of the characters get a book deal and be invited along to a dinner in a swanky restaurant to meet his publisher (a real-live one, his cameo role shoehorned in for - ahem - authenticity) and being told, (after they'd applauded him) 'This is your editor'. Oh how I laughed. Till I cried. Real bitter tears. And then there was the publicist, who when planning the book launch for that evening (which wasn't FHB*, a bag of crisps and three bottles of Tesco's value red; but held in some palatial uptown duplex with double, yes really, double door, behind which he 'hid' before appearing to more applause) called out: 'Don't forget your suit fitting at Emporio Armani at three.' Okay, maybe I got the time wrong, but dear GOD, have these people ever read a book, let alone claim to have written one? The most we at Pedantic have stretched for was a Tuxedo hire for an author who didn't own one (naturally enough, because, of course, it is not, really, an absolutely vital piece of wardrobe for a person who sits all day facing a wall, and dreams of a book signing in Waterstones' for 26 people, 22 of whom are his blood relatives, but who have still had to be bribed to come along by the aforementioned three bottles of plonk). The last awards ceremony some of the Pedants attended, a young editor turned up in the taxi in socks since he was borrowing the Editorial Director's husband's dress shoes for the evening.
Barefoot and penniless - a life in literature. Down in out in Potter's Bar and Lewisham... Grapes of Chilean Merlot, Of Mice and Menus...
God bless us, every one.
