L'amour

A colleague asked me today if I was still in love. All I could do was offer this: love is blind, love is relative, love doesn't let you pick, and love can be one of the most beautiful or most foul things in the world. We choose to believe. We've got to believe, because it matters so much to us. Take away the structure of it and then what? You get songs and poems and movies and stories about love gained, love lost, searching for love, looking for love. It's half biological function designed for two humans to stay together and raise children, half social construct, half part of the intangible matter of the universe...

Lou and Lulu - Cover, Tatler Sept 2010

How to deal with Clingons

We all know people who get upset over life’s littlest hang-ups. They whine on and on about how people exist alongside them without even acknowledging their presence.

The degree of any such temperament determines how badly these people will try to leech off you emotionally before you have to reach for the shark repellent to fend them off.

Signs to look out for. The emotionally needy:

blame everyone else for their own mistakes. Zero responsibility: it’s so much easier to say that someone else made the wrong decision;
cannot move on when something ends, especially a relationship;
are incredibly selfish and clingy;
are unable to think ahead;
tell anyone who will listen how other people ignore them;
are incapable of taking charge in even simple tasks such as driving a car;
call their partner 20 or 30 times a day seeking absolution and justification for their actions.

There are so many signs, it would be too exhausting to list them all.

Emotionally needy people are selfish and suffer from an overdose of self-denial. They never stop moaning and offer every excuse under the sun to bang on about how incredibly hard life is for them. Like your own has been a stroll in the park!

The emotionally needy, as with the walking wounded, are alive but not well. If you are what is known as ‘a people person’ you are bound to know a few of them.

These people are economical with the truth. They lie about anything to anyone. It's their way of getting attention. It could be that they want to come across as more important or successful than they actually are, or to gain sympathy in order to create an attachment.

They will fib about all things, large and small. It gets to the point when the listener is loath to believe anything they say.

And they always resort to churning up some drama. It’s their way of saying “Look at me!” because, of course, that’s how they become the centre of attention.

If there’s nothing going on they will make something up. This can be done by starting rumours, sticking their noses in where they don’t belong, or ‘confiding’ a suspicion that may or may not have any basis in fact. Another way to do this is to act inappropriately and then rabbit on about it for days on end, boring others to death.

They will try to elbow their way into your life. They might blatantly ask to be invited to a lunch date that you have, even though they have never met the other person. They have no problem telling you that they want to come to an event they are clearly not a part of, like your son’s school play or ex-colleague’s BBQ. Or they may ask for your parents’ phone number, even though they’ve never met them.

These people continually refer to an alleged trauma from the past, and usually with a full audience present. It may just be the normal growing up stuff that we all went through, or a difficult friendship, but they still have to tell you how troubled they are by it.

They will replay and retell the same story for years without ever making any effort to resolve their feelings about that situation. The listener will generally show concern the first couple of times, before twigging that this is yet another attention-getting ploy.

They assume an inappropriately close relationship too soon. They are, after all, very needy, and are looking for someone to nurture those needs.

This is perhaps the most manipulative of their tools. If you show any sign of kindness, they will stick to you like glue and you will end up feeling as if you’re being suffocated. They will ‘open up’ to you, trying to create and affirm a bond by revealing dark secrets that quite frankly make you feel highly uncomfortable.

The emotionally needy are easy to spot but hard to shake off. The best thing you can do is stay alert at all times and exercise the utmost caution.

If you do become trapped by one of these people and can later extract yourself from the relationship, then run for the hills the first chance you get.

If you are tied to one of these people by family bonds, however, you must tread with caution. The best way to deal with them is to create an obvious and unmistakable distance while avoiding confrontation. They will eventually accept you don’t have time for them.

But if they do persist in looking to you to solve their emotional problems, let them know you are not equipped to deal with anything on that level, and suggest they get professional help instead.

And if all else fails, you can always change your phone number and announce on Facebook that you are leaving the country...

Betty Hutton - Blow a Fuse

Say Lah Vee

I have been disliked by many people. Perhaps some of this dislike may even have been justified, what with my multiple reported flaws. People I have met (and people I have never even been in the same room as) have found reason to dislike me, I have discovered.

And I’m really fine with that, in fact I’m very fine with that. Really, I am. I have long since realised that this is how the world works, how those people on it get around.

The practical reality of existing on a sphere full of people whose behaviour, feelings, opinions and words are largely influenced by ego, attitudes, fear, greed, insecurity and social programming is that there will always be those who find fault in someone else.

No matter how ‘nice’ we are, or how nice we try to be, people will always find (or perhaps create) a reason / rational explanation / justification for not liking someone else. And of course there will also be those amazing, incredible, positive people who will encourage, support and love you no matter what.

But remember this: compromise should not be an option for those who just want to be liked. That way, one may indeed end up being liked by others but also being loathed by oneself. And that way lies madness, sadness and badness.

You shouldn’t have to work at being popular; work at being yourself instead. This is a lot easier and requires far less energy and acting. Identify your core values, those things that are most important to you, and try to live a life in alignment with them.

If you can do this, you are being your authentic self rather than trying to satisfy somebody else’s needs, expectations, values, demands and rules. When your decisions and behaviour reflect your core life values, you will be able to live a life of synergy, harmony and contentment. The ‘need’ to be liked will be a non-issue.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

Here comes the bride ... there goes my dosh

Let’s admit it – we all love a good wedding. In Cyprus, though, our big fat Greek weddings are anything but enjoyable. Standing in a sweaty queue, dressed to the nines in my vintage kitten heels, just to exchange an envelope full of money for a piece of crusty cake isn’t my idea of a great wedding bash. The best wedding ‘do’s’ I’ve ever been to have been in London, Ireland and Italy, but even there, other people’s wedded bliss doesn’t come cheap. And according to a friend of mine who is single and therefore a popular ‘wedding guest’, other people’s matrimony can damage your savings account quite severely.


Weddings in England have become a lot more than somewhere where you don your best outfit and shimmy to crap pop music with utter impunity. Marriage is certainly back in vogue, with experts claiming the rush of celebrities tying the knot has convinced young couples that marriage is cool. But the downside to all of this is that weddings are an expensive business – and these days not just for the happy couple, either. Everything from the hen party to the bash itself has become a lavish production for which guests are also expected to fork out. An evening reception at the local golf club is now a four-day stay at a Scottish castle, a John Lewis kettle is now a Le Creuset casserole dish, and an M&S shift dress is now a Marc Jacobs frock.


Take the hen do. Forget the good old-fashioned piss-up in a nightclub. Even in London they have now become weekend breaks in manor houses, and New York shopping sprees and European city breaks are also ‘de rigueur’. Forget cheap flights – think about the cost of the hotel and the fact that you’ll spend your precious weekend trapped with a bunch of hens with whom you may not have anything in common, especially their 80k salaries. Keeping up with the City high fliers or aristo toffs is no joke when drinking and dining ‘en masse’ in London.


Then there are the wedding lists. One friend desperately scanned a particularly highfalutin list only to find the cheapest pressie was 68 quid for a serving spoon! Even having a starring role in the wedding can be a backhanded privilege. Ellen, a friend of mine in London, recently was looking forward to her American debut as a bridesmaid. Then she discovered that her Vera Wang ensemble was going to set her back 320 pounds – and that was after she paid for her return flight to Charleston, South Carolina. Particularly galling when you consider that it’s unlikely that she’ll have much reason to wear an organza wrap, silver faille bustier and ankle-length A-line skirt again in the near future (unless she wears it to her own wedding when she finally finds a husband...).


Meanwhile, there’s the fact that the Big Day can actually turn into a Big Week. Her Charleston experience apparently started with an Oyster Roast plus steel band and fireworks display. This was followed by a formal rehearsal dinner for 100, then the beach day with the wedding ceremony, grand buffet and live band in the evening. The finale was a prawns ’n grits Sunday brunch! Even in Britain, what was once a day out is now at least two nights away in a B&B. Whatever happened to Gretna Green? I complain about the cake and envelope dos in Cyprus, but judging by Ellen’s stories she’s become a full-blown wedding tourist. Travelling miles for love: other people’s, that is.


Despite all this complaining, I have to admit that I get invited to lots of weddings too (a few too many, judging by my empty bank account). I get invited to lots here (which I rarely go to as they are a complete farce) and in London, which is weird, considering that my recurring conversation-halting mix-up is to refer to weddings as funerals. As in ‘I had so much fun dancing to Abba at Uncle Tom’s funeral.’ Freudian, or what?


Mind you, there are similarities between the two. As with funerals, you can’t refuse a wedding invitation. Like Six Feet Under, they’re both essential viewing. No-shows are a no-no. This seems to me the only advantage of getting wed – I mean, how often do you actually succeed in gathering ALL your friends in one place to celebrate YOU? Next time it happens they’ll be dribbling sherry and you’ll be dead. I myself almost faked a wedding just to get a full house for my 21st, though in the end I settled for something close to pretty normal and I ended celebrating on my own in a hotel in the Carribbean (that's another story)...


The good news is that in London, and I hope that the Mediterraneans will follow suit soon, the big wedding backlash seems to have started and the new cool thing is to eschew the super-hyped bonanzas in favour of heartfelt lo-fi dos. I recently attended a ‘back to basics’ affair in a room above a pub which was great, and the sentiments were just as moving as those at a big bash. But the truth is, since I have sworn I would never do it again myself, I prefer to be a bystander at the more spectacular affairs – money aside. It’s rather like being a football fan, in that you don’t have to play the game to love it.

Bye-Bye...

Lou Loves French Grey...

Keep Calm Lulu...

It’s hard work being a grown-up - Lou dedicates this to all her hard working grown-up friends...

To do something well you have to like it. “Do what you love.” But it’s not enough just to tell people that. Doing what you love can be complicated.

The very idea is foreign to what most of us learn as children. When I was small, it seemed as if work and fun were opposites by definition. Life was split into two parts: some of the time adults were making you do things, and that was called work; the rest of the time you could do what you wanted, and that was called play. Occasionally the things adults made you do were fun, just as, occasionally, playing wasn’t — if you fell and hurt yourself, for example. But work was pretty much defined as not-fun.

School, it was implied, was tedious because it was preparation for grown-up work. The world then was divided into two groups, grown-ups and children. Grown-ups, like some kind of cursed race, had to work. Kids didn’t, but they did have to go to school, which was a diluted version of work meant to prepare us for the real thing. Much as we disliked school, the grown-ups all agreed that grown-up work was worse and that we had it easy.

Teachers in particular all seemed to believe implicitly that work was not fun. This is not surprising, since I’m sure work wasn’t fun for most of them. Why did we have to memorise King Henry’s six wives, instead of playing hockey? For the same reason they had to watch over a group of children instead of lying on a beach. You couldn’t just do what you wanted.

I’m not saying we should just let children do what they want. They may have to be made to focus on certain things. But if we make them work on uninspiring tasks, it might be wise to tell them that tediousness is not the defining quality of work, and indeed that the reason they have to work on the boring stuff now is so they can work on more interesting and exciting things later in life.

When I was 9 or 10, my father told me I could be whatever I wanted when I grew up, as long as I enjoyed it. I remember that precisely because it seemed so anomalous. It was like being told to use dry water. Whatever I thought he meant, I didn't think he meant work could literally be fun — fun like playing. It took me years to grasp that.

By senior school, the prospect of an actual job was on the horizon. Adults would sometimes come to speak to us about their work, or we would go to see them at work. It was always understood that they enjoyed what they did.

The main reason they all acted as if they enjoyed their work was presumably the upper-middle class convention that you’re supposed to. It would not merely be bad for your career to say that you despised your job, it would also be a grave social faux-pas.

Why is it conventional to pretend to like what you do? The first sentence of this posting explains that. If you have to like something to do it well, then the most successful people will all like what they do.

That’s where the upper-middle class tradition kicks in. Just as houses all over England are full of chairs that are, unbeknown to their owners, imitations of chairs designed more than 100 years previously for European royalty, conventional attitudes about work are, without the owners even knowing it, imitations of the attitudes of people who have done great things.

What a recipe for alienation. By the time they are old enough to think about what they would like to do, most children have been thoroughly misled about the idea of loving one’s work. School has trained them to regard work as an unpleasant duty. Having a job is said to be even more onerous than homework. And yet all adults claim to like what they do. You can’t blame children for thinking “I am not like these people; I am not suited to this world.”

Actually they’ve been told three lies: the stuff they have been taught to regard as work in school is not real work; grown-up work is not (necessarily) worse than schoolwork; and many of the adults around them are lying when they say they like what they do.

The most dangerous liars can be the child’s own parents. If you take a boring job to give your family a high standard of living, as so many people do, you risk infecting your kids with the idea that work is boring. Maybe it would be better for children in this case if parents were not so unselfish. A parent who sets an example of loving his or her work might be of more use to the kids than an over-priced house.

It was not until further education that the idea of work finally broke free from the idea of making a living. Then the important question became not how to make money. The definition of work was transformed into how to make an original contribution to the world, and in the process not to starve. But after so many years my idea of work still includes a large component of pain. Work still seems to require discipline, because only hard problems yield big results, and hard problems literally cannot be fun. One has to force oneself to work on them.

How much are you supposed to like what you do? Unless you know that, you don’t know when to stop searching. And if, like most people, you underestimate it, you’ll tend to stop searching too early. You’ll either end up doing something chosen for you by your parents or the desire to make money and prestige — or end up wallowing in sheer inertia.