Strong beginnings

The importance of drifting off

Dear friend,

Sorry about the wait for your V.I.P Velvet room special extra material from me. I have been travelling around Lesvos for some new book research and because I wanted to communicate something thoughtful to you, rather than a cobbled together piece on Sappho, Tzatziki and wild cats (though I might write about these at a later date) May’s story took longer than usual.

Last Friday I had an exciting delivery of the new babies. A box containing copies of In Search Of The Missing Eyelash and under these, the first glimpse of my finished memoir, Lifting Off. This dynamic duo are an odd couple of sorts; I wrote the novel while I was flying for British Airways - yet the memoir is about going into freefall during that time.

If you had met me when I was working as cabin crew, you would have said I was a jolly and confident person. But inwardly I knew I was slowly dissappearing. The doubleness, this performance at being, was something I did to get by. It makes me think about all those poor souls who are seemingly confident and happy-go-lucky people, who then take their own lives. People say, ‘but they were always so upbeat.’ But I know, if you pretend long enough, the buoyant persona becomes a tight uniform, while something vital gets cast adrift.