Girlbooker's Tea and Toast

The other day, I emerged into the sunshine, energised and inspired from a fabulous talk organised by the lovely crew at Creative Mornings. The speaker, Yassmin Abdel-Magied , is such a delightful, articulate, intelligent and warm individual, that it's difficult to grasp why so many people have spent the last few months attacking her so assiduously ... I don't want to focus on that, but rather on the main content of her talk. It's something I badly needed to hear this week, so I took careful note: "Don't underestimate the power of the stories you tell yourself" Abdel-Magied recounted her time working as a mechanical engineer on offshore oil rigs. Apparently, she genuinely saw herself as exactly like her colleagues, which in this case meant "middle aged white guys with random neck tattoos".  It didn't even occur to her that other people may look at her and think she might look out of place. In this instance, the story Yasmin was telling herse...

Paris and New York are my two biggest dream destinations. “What about Tuscany?” I hear the Cliche Police ask. Well, maybe when I turn 50 I’ll develop  a sudden urgent and passionate desire to buy a Tuscan farmhouse and make lots of bean soup in it while I write my memoirs (which will consist of a combination of authentic Tuscan bean soup recipes and hilarious anecdotes involving me, the neighbours and a crazy misunderstanding about a goat).  But for now, my twin destination obsessions are Paris and New York. I’ve been to Paris several times but I’ve never been to New York, so I have to satisfy myself with reading books or watching things that have been set there.  I am actually pretty happy being an armchair traveller at the moment, and particularly enjoy devouring a book set in New York.   The longevity and richness of New York’s place in culture and literature is a big part of what makes it so mythical and enticing to an outsider like myself. One of my lit...