Berberis' World

Were very definitely false. No question. It wasn’t as though the rest of her was any less false. Her meringue dresses, her pampered pooches, her powdered complexion; the woman had been a walking advertisement for some kind of ageing process which led to decay and foolishness and ridicule.

Then there were the books. Best sellers in a hundred languages. Millions sold to the unsuspecting. All the same plot. Same characters. Same dialogue. All crap.

That’s my opinion, anyhow. Anyone who’s watched ‘Little Britain’ will know about Sally Markham and her 7 pages of blah blah blah, and how she churns out book after book with no real thought whatsoever. I used to live in Catherine Cookson country, and I can’t say I read any of hers either. Books for old women.

But then, I think, I’m getting towards being an old woman. Ok, on current demographics, I’ve got a while to go, perhaps another span of the years I’ve already lived (like I’m going to tell you how old I am!) but I am still older than I was. I don’t feel it though. I’m doing the kind of things now that perhaps a 25 year old might do – getting very drunk and chatting up strangers in pubs – even though I’m not 25.

A friend of mine said I was finally going through my teenage years, long after I should have. And I guess I am. I do things now that I wouldn’t have dared to do then. I express my opinions, I read the books I want to read, I watch the films I want to watch, I listen to the kind of music I want to listen to, I sing very loudly at the top of my voice in the car… I could wear false eyelashes too, like Barbara Cartland.