Titles are so bourgeois, don't you think? It is what it is.

Sometimes I find it excruciating to write. It’s not so much elaborate Emu quill plume to paper so much as writing that doesn’t make my skin try to escape off my bones. When I get the feeling of a hag fish nestling in the cavity of my chest, I know that what I am about to write will not be good. It will not have pizzazz, as they say. Then when I pause to think, the only genius that springs to my tongue is that of other peoples. My word, I think, surely there must be some left of my own somewhere int here.

The prospect of writing often daunts me. I suppose that these days it might be called stress. Once upon a time it may even have been called hysteria and diagnosed as wandering body parts – this has always been my favourite Victorian diagnosis as it makes me think that my insides are like a dark forest and my body parts some small girl in a cloak.

I dislike the word stress. Stress is not elegant. Stress is always frizzy hair. Lopsided (lopsided is my current favourite word) glasses and frantic hand gestures. Move slowly, readers, always. In your car, pull out like it weighs nothing and is carried like a skein of silk on the breeze – you will never have a crash because everyone will stop in your presence. Use your hands slowly, like you are moving through molasses. Elegance is slowness, patience and eyes that could shoot a whole room dead if they wanted to. Go slow, speak quieter and hold longer, then people will listen.
Have you ever tried speaking quieter in a chatty group? Everyone gabs louder and louder and as soon as you open your mouth their silence and rapture.

Oh – I must mention. I saw something recently that discussed the word Rapture. It seems that it has been misappropriated to an odd cause. The Second Coming, that of Mr. Christ and his cronies, will come down and take away (vanish, evaporate) those worthy to heaven – Leaving their clothes behind. My word, I thought, the only reason this might be possible is because there would be new wardrobes up there waiting – which almost made me convert but the fine print mentioned nothing of it. Even then, though, to leave behind my museum, my clothes, my photographs – surely I can pack a little overnight bag, Mr Christ? I shan’t take any of the champagne as I’m sure you are well stocked. Or perhaps I should, as you are better prepared for the middle class with your water to wine party trick.

What I mean to say, without diversions, is that elegance is knowing you have freckles, ginger hair and buck teeth, but knowing full well that these are precisely the reason you are not tanned and working for InStyle. I was never a face woman, but that doesn’t mean it’s not exactly what worked in my favour. You’d be able to pick me out of a line up blindfolded in the thickest wool.

There, D, that wasn’t so hard to do, now was it.

K, Darling, it’s asking me if we link Amazon to the site. Does this mean I can purchase a new species? I would quite like a petite, highly poisonous and brimstone red frog to be called the D frog, would you like one too? Perhaps we can order in a jaguar to use as a throw rug in my studio. Shall I talk to one of the assistants?