Elizabeth Day / Features / Untitled Books

“The make-up lady switches on a dazzling silver contraption that looks like a cross between a cappuccino machine and an old-fashioned ham slicer. There is a whirring sound as it starts up. And my face is gently sprayed in beige like a particularly boring bit of graffiti.”

Photograph: ©Kamal Ahmed

Elizabeth Day

Award-winning journalist (Sunday Times, Elle, Mail on Sunday, Observer) Elizabeth Day's first novel is published this month. She recalls a week from the Christmas break in which an entire day passes in a blur thanks to a bowl of soup.

Sunday

It is Boxing Day and everyone in the United Kingdom is contractually obliged to go for a very long walk. In a fit of atypical enthusiasm at the thought of physical exercise, I get out my green wellington boots. My boyfriend looks at them suspiciously.

"Are they new?" he asks, turning one of them over and discovering that it still has the sizing label stuck onto its sole.

"Erm, no," I say, unconvincingly. The fact is, I bought them a few years ago when the newspaper I was then working for sent me to write a piece about a spate of flooding in Gloucestershire. The features editor, concerned I might get trench foot, dispatched me to buy the necessary protective equipment. I returned with a pair of absurdly expensive Hunter wellingtons. But by the time I got to Tewkesbury, the floodwaters had receded. So, if you want to get technical about it, it's true that I have never worn them. But they're not exactly new.

Not to be deterred by my boyfriend muttering "urbanite" under his breath, I put them on and discover they are literally the most comfortable shoes in the world. Quite honestly, I don't know why anyone would want to wear anything else. I tramp outside feeling as though my feet have been freshly sprung, like a new mattress.

We walk along the river from Putney, where we live, to Barnes, where lots of smug people live, all of whom are kitted out in Hunter wellingtons and Barbour jackets. I blend in effortlessly. We stop at a pub for lunch and I order carrot and parsnip soup because it is extremely cold outside and I have a vision in my head of a steaming bowl of thick, chunky deliciousness that will warm up my innards. When the soup arrives, it is the wateriest thing I have ever seen apart from, well, a bowl of water. I launch into an extended bout of tutting and scowling, accompanied by much stirring of the spoon to demonstrate how disappointed I am. My boyfriend makes sympathetic noises through mouthfuls of his judiciously-ordered cottage pie. In the midst of one particularly violent spoon stir, the waitress suddenly appears at my shoulder and asks in a too-loud voice if everything is all right with the food.

"Oh yes, lovely, thank you," I say, as though I have been caught misbehaving and am in danger of being moved onto the naughty step. The waitress gives a satisfied nod and walks on. Immediately, I feel relief that she has gone and then, a few seconds later, find myself immersed in a fit of self-loathing. Why am I incapable of complaining in restaurants? Is it because I am a craven people-pleaser who wants everyone to like me? It's pathetic. In all other respects, I do a convincing impression of being a grown-up. It should not be beyond my powers to kick up a polite fuss over a bowl of awful soup.

But then the waitress would probably just spit in my food anyway. And that would make it even more watery.

Monday

Today passes in a blur of self-recrimination about the soup.

Tuesday

Off to do the late night newspaper review on Sky News. The best thing about this is that I get to have my make-up done by a very nice woman in possession of an extraordinary array of lip gloss. Ever since the channel started being broadcast in "high definition", all presenters and guests have been coated in what is called "airbrush foundation". This involves the make-up lady switching on a dazzling silver contraption that looks like a cross between a cappuccino machine and an old-fashioned ham slicer. There is a whirring sound as it starts up. Liquid foundation is pumped through various tubes and comes out of a high-pressure nozzle. My face is gently sprayed in beige like a particularly boring bit of graffiti.

Once in the studio, I have to come up with some mildly interesting things to say about tomorrow's front pages. This being Christmas, there is hardly any news apart from the fact that Elton John has adopted a baby and everyone else has Swine Flu. Oh, and there's some boring old cricket match going on in Australia.

It's at moments like these that I start to wonder if I actually have any opinions. Occasionally I do have certain thoughts, but then someone else will proffer a counter-argument and I'll think "Well, yes, that's a jolly good point" and then I end up having the opposite opinion from the one I started with.

I like to think this makes me well-balanced. It probably just makes me a bit dull.

Wednesday

Today I mostly ask myself: "Am I a bit dull?" I cannot think of a witty answer to this, which does not bode well.

Thursday

We are going up to Edinburgh to stay with friends over the New Year and decide to break up the nine-hour car journey by spending the night in a small village in North Yorkshire. We stay in a lovely little hotel that would be even more lovely if it did not smell overwhelmingly of dog. I decide that I do have opinions about things, namely that hotels should not smell of dog.

Friday

New Year's Eve in Edinburgh. Our friends, Ruaridh and Alison, put on a spectacular spread for dinner comprising of Cullen Skink (an unfortunate name, conjuring up the notion of sinks, stinks and skunks, but the soup itself is delicious and decidedly Not Watery) and a choice of beef or fish pie. The beef pie is helpfully labelled with the word "Moo" cut out of pastry.

After dinner and lashings of champagne we teeter slightly unsteadily up the cobbled streets of the New Town to watch the fireworks on Prince's Street. At midnight, a tramp comes up and shakes us individually by the hand, making us all feel particularly open-minded and misty-eyed about the basic goodness of humanity in 2011.

Someone lights a Chinese lantern and it floats gently upwards, a studded square of papery light pressed against the velvety darkness of the night sky. Just as I am in danger of getting nauseatingly poetic about everything, there is an extended discussion about how dangerous these lanterns are and how they keep landing on farmers' barns and burning them down. Someone suggests that they are even responsible for a spate of recent livestock deaths. Apparently cows are particularly at risk because they produce so much methane that the gas catches fire when it makes contact with the lantern and they are blown up like unwitting bovine suicide bombers.

I am not entirely convinced. That sort of thing never happens on The Archers.

Saturday

My New Year's resolutions:
1. To cultivate stronger opinions and try not to be dull.
2. To complain eloquently and politely in restaurants over things like watery soup.
3. To break in my Hunter wellingtons.
4. To never admire another Chinese lantern without at least spending a few minutes thinking of all those innocent cows who might or might not have lost their lives.

That should keep me going for at least the next 12 months.

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Elizabeth Day's debut novel Scissors, Paper, Stone is published by Bloomsbury
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Thursday, 20 January, 2011