Further Under the Duvet

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Authors: Marian Keyes

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Further Under the Duvet

by the same author

Watermelon
Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married
Rachel’s Holiday
Last Chance Saloon
Sushi for Beginners
Under the Duvet
Angels
The Other Side of the Story

Marian Keyes

Further Under the Duvet

MICHAEL JOSEPH

an imprint of

PENGUIN BOOKS

MICHAEL JOSEPH

Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London
WC2R 0RL
, England
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M4V 3B2
(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)
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Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)
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Rosebank 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London
WC2R 0RL
, England

www.penguin.com

First published 2005

1

Copyright © Marian Keyes, 2005

The moral right of the author has been asserted

All rights reserved.
Without limiting the rights under copyright
reserved above, no part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior
written permission of both the copyright owner and
the above publisher of this book

EISBN: 978–0–141–90499–3

For Himself

CONTENTS

Introduction

1 Handbags and Gladrags

The Nicest Thing That Ever Happened to Me

I Shop, Therefore I Am

The Great Outdoors

Fabulous, Darling

My Five Top Fives

Action!

The Real Thing

2 On the Road

Passport Out of Here

Cheaper than Drugs

Stack ’n’ Fly

Thirty-six Hours in Jo’burg

Being Sent to Siberia

Queen of the Earplugs

Climb Every Mountain

3 Health and Beauty

They Say You Always Remember Your First Time…

Hand Upgrade

Knickers: A Vexed Area

Your Bad Health

Hair-brained

Mirror, Mirror

Faking It

Once Were Worriers

4 Woman to Woman

Man Power

December

The F Word

5 Friends and Family

Big Night Out

Villa-itis

Life Begins

Big Air

Eyes Wide Shut

Viva La Resolution?

Hurling Insults

Black Out

We Really Must Get Together This Year

Season of Goodwill (and chocolate)

6 But Seriously

Beyond My Wildest Dreams

Concerned

Rebuilding Children

7 Short Stories

Mammy Walsh’s Problem Page

A Moment of Grace

A Woman’s Right to Shoes

Wishing Carefully

Precious

Soulmates

The Truth is Out There

Under

Introduction

Hello and welcome to
Further Under the Duvet
, the follow-up to
Under the Duvet
, my first volume of journalism. I say ‘journalism’ but the articles included here are mostly humorous autobiographical pieces about subjects like my great love of make-up and ill-health and my great fear of being trapped on a bus in a foreign country with forty Irish people (it’s the
singing
). There are also a few more serious pieces about feminism, mediums and charity trips I’ve made to Ethiopia and Russia.

This time around, some of my short stories are also included. In fact,
all
of them seem to be, all seven of them. The thing is that I find it really hard to write short stories. (The clue is in the name: they’re too
short
. I’m only really getting into my stride with the characters and the plot, when next thing, it’s time to finish it. As a result I’ve written very few.)

Also included here is something called Mammy Walsh’s Problem Page. Mammy Walsh is a character who has appeared in several of my novels as a supporting character (a mother, as it happens) and over time she has developed a life of her own. In response to readers’ requests, she now dispenses no-nonsense advice from my website. I am slightly worried that by giving her a platform in this book, she’ll lose
the run of herself entirely; she’s pretty strident at the best of times.

Some of the articles in this collection have already been published and the various publications are credited at the end of each piece. Thank you to all of them, especially the wonderful Marie O’Riordan of
Marie Claire
, for permitting me to reuse the pieces.

Now, just before someone writes and asks, everything in the non-fiction pieces in this book really did happen to me (yes, even turning forty), but occasionally I’ve changed people’s names to protect thegm (and sometimes me).

All my royalties from the Irish sales of the hardback will go to To Russia With Love, a wonderful charity that works with Russian orphans. And thank you very much for reading this book. I sincerely hope you enjoy it.

Marian Keyes

HANDBAGS AND GLADRAGS

The Nicest Thing That Ever Happened to Me

It was like a dream come true. My friend Aoife was made editor of an Irish women’s magazine; after I’d congratulated her, I said, ‘Give us a job as a beauty columnist,’ and she said, ‘Okay.’

I stared at her and went, ‘
HAHAHA
!’ She said, ‘I’m serious,’ and for one brief moment the world stopped spinning on its axis.

‘I’m serious,’ she repeated. ‘I was going to ask you but you beat me to it.’ And I went home that night, thinking: I’m the luckiest person who ever lived.

The idea was that I’d have my own page in the magazine where I’d ‘try and test’ half a dozen or so of a particular product type and award them marks out of ten. Usually when I’m doing something new I’m nervous and I doubt my ability to do it well, but not this time – I was
born
for this. I knew my subject matter inside out. I could hold my own in any discussion on free radicals and sea kelp. I could differentiate between Stila lipglaze and Bobbi Brown lipgloss at a glance.

Aoife had said she’d contact a load of beauty PRs and tell them to send me stuff. So from the very next morning, I began to wait. All week I stood by the downstairs window, my nose pressed to the glass, waiting, waiting…

The days passed and no free stuff arrived and then, just
when I was starting to think it had all been a practical joke, the Lancôme lorry drew up outside. (Looking back, it was probably just the postman on his bike but it was so exciting that it took on mythical qualities.)

Himself answered the door, then placed a bulky padded envelope in my arms. With shaking hands I opened it, tipped the contents out onto my bed and nearly
puked
with excitement. I had been sent their latest night cream – expensive and fabulous – but the real prize was a selection of the forthcoming autumn cosmetics. There was a blusher, a quartet of eyeshadows, a lipstick, a bottle of nail varnish and the best bit of all: a new shade of Juicy Tube. I’ll never forget it!

I made Himself play ‘Lancôme Lady’ with me. Sometimes he’d be the customer coming into the shop enquiring about the new season’s colours and I’d be the Lancôme Lady demonstrating everything for him. Other times I’d be the customer and he’d be the woman behind the counter. We played for many happy hours. I made him. Even when he begged me to stop.

Then my sister came over to share our joy, but when she saw the Juicy Tube things threatened to turn ugly. Especially when she discovered that it wouldn’t be in the shops for another six weeks. ‘I’ll buy it off you now,’ she offered. But no amount of money could have persuaded me to part with it. ‘Don’t make me have to steal it,’ she said gently. So I emailed the girl at Lancôme, telling her the whole sorry story, and guess what? She sent another!

Two days later, the Clinique lorry arrived, laden with goodies – lipsticks, an all-weather face cream and not just one, but
two
foundations. Shortly after that the YSL lorry
drew up outside with (what seemed like) most of their new autumn range for me to try.

It was like being in love, I was dizzy, giddy, giggly and my free cosmetics were all I could think about. I arrayed them in a little basket by my bed, so they were the first things I saw when I woke up. Even when I could no longer persuade Himself to play Lancôme Lady (or Clinique Lady or YSL Lady), I played by myself. Sometimes I arranged my products by brand name and other times by body parts (all lip products in one little heap, all skincare in another, etc.).

Every Thursday Himself and myself go to my parents’ house for our dinner, so this particular Thursday I gathered together all my free stuff, brought it with me and spilt it across their kitchen table to be admired. But instead of being dazzled, my mother was anxious: there had to be a catch. Then Dad came in, found the price lists and began to add up the value of all I’d been sent. (Once an accountant, always an accountant.) When he had everything totted up – it came to over three hundred euro – he could scarcely believe his own sums. ‘That,’ he declared, ‘is shagging well ridiculous.’

The magazine was fortnightly and, with a racing imagination, I began to plan my columns. First weeks, then months ahead. I had a big, big vision for autumn through winter, with the columns as follows: new lip colours, new eye colours, protective winter face care, winter hands, then as we came nearer to Christmas, a how-to-look-like-you-don’t-have-a-hangover column, a party make-up special, a gift-buying guide and, finally, an end-of-year thirty best products ever! Moving into January, of course, we’d start off with a detox special, then start focusing on nice stuff for Valentine’s Day,
then the new spring colours would be out… All this I’d already planned in September.

Novels piled up unwritten, promotional work was abandoned and friends and family were neglected, as I took up full-time residence in a delicious dreamworld of time-defying eye creams and lash-thickening mascaras. Because I’m a perfectionist (i.e. insane) I didn’t want my column to be just any old beauty column, a patchjob of rehashed press releases. I wanted it to be fabulously funny and witty, and there wasn’t room in my head for anything else. (Triumphs included describing Clinique’s Repairwear as ‘It’s night cream, Jim, but not as we know it’ and Origins’ Gloomaway shower gel as ‘Prozac in a tube’.) I wrote and rewrote constantly, cutting, adding, honing and polishing. I admit it: I was obsessed.

I had to give marks out of ten, but I was so in love with every product I got that the lowest score I could manage to give was eight. My ratings shuttled from eight to nine, passing all points in between (8.5). Occasionally, I gave ten out of ten and, I admit it, there were even times I gave eleven out of ten. Yes, and twelve. All the way up to fifteen, but
only when the product really merited it
.

Part of the job was having to bond with those all-powerful women, the beauty PRs, guardians of the freebies. I’d ring, nervous as anything, and rattle off my name and rank and finish by saying, ‘So if you’re interested in having your products covered, let me know.’ In other words, ‘Please send me free stuff. Like,
please
.’

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