Every new generation changes the rule-book - sometimes it's a tweak, sometimes it's a wrench from the past. Even my own mother was considered somewhat unchaste by her parents for talking about boyfriends with my sister and me .The gramps would be turning in their graves if they knew about some of the fruitier chats I've had with my own daughter on the same subject. Many is the time I've had to put my life on hold, in order to help with the emergency wording of a critical text to promote the right reaction from an erring boyfriend. (Shadchan? Moi?)
Paradoxically for me, rather than changing the rule-book, I like to feel I'm swimming alongside the younger generation. The boundaries have merged - or is it just that I still think I'm 35? If memory serves (and it does mercifully, although I do lose my glasses five times a day) 35 is a time when the nervous, ambitious 20s are replaced by a focused career-path with a more sensible love life attached. I have plateaued at 35. But am I deluded or embracing a new reality? Am I an affront to other, younger women? Or is there a consensus that if you're out there doing it, the age of the person doing it is less significant than the action? As long as one is not dribbling or being a bit creaky, surely we would be welcome at any table? Of course it can't go unnoticed that my generation was the first to have highlighted hair, Botox and a raised glass ceiling in the work-place – not to mention a celebration of white teeth and a minor brow lift, for the more pioneering . Thankfully for some, the sighting of a perm and sensible shoes after 50 is becoming as rare as seeing David Cameron in a shell suit. We have standards. So, if we make the effort to look different from our own mothers, chances are we're going to behave differently as well. But there's a twist. Although radical rebellion against our parents stopped in the 1970s , we might not be behaving that differently from our own offspring as we stay young. Just as facial filler buys us time, our sense of vitality matches our equally vital children. We want to keep going, but they want to get going - so there's quite an overlap. I wouldn't say I'm competitive with my grown-up daughter, but we have been known to bump into each other in Soho on some evenings. I don't like to crowd her, but I'd like to hope that I get on quite well with some of her friends. My daughter has now left the country for Thailand to find herself - let's hope she doesn't take too long or (and this is my real worry) get married to a fisherman while she's out there. Don't get me wrong, I love fish and I'll be pleased for her, no really I will, but it would be nice if we could resume our mother daughter thing, when she gets back - unencumbered. I know they say you can't be best friends with your daughter, which is why I loved writing about the "unsaid" dysfunctional area of mother-daughter love. (I blame my mother. My daughter blames hers.) I just hope she forgives me when she gets back.
Let's face it, life is far more interesting and funny when it's dysfunctional - which is why I invented the term Mid-Lit to describe this kind of female fiction. Needless to say, Mid-Lit is post chick-lit but pre granny-lit. (So far.) Perfect families aren't funny or interesting. Complex ones are. And they appeal to those who've lived a bit. Funny female fiction should embrace areas of uncertainty and empower us. Why choose a quiet game of golf over a night out on the tiles? In the words of the great Eve Ensler (Vagina Monologues) "If you don't use it you lose it" and I know which I prefer.
I still get excited by new things. I am motivated to get up in the mornings (mostly) and if I'm not experiencing desire, or shall we say arousal, I make sure I do something about it. Desire is the electricity we need to keep us running. I took myself off to a yoga retreat after finishing my new book to find myself and I can safely say, in seven days, my chakras were duly opened. When I touched down at Heathrow I told my husband darkly that I'd changed. "Out of what," he asked pleasantly…
I have to confess, as a female comic without many boundaries, the joy of writing about some of them in a novel is a great prism for fiction. And if my daughter says she intends to marry the fisherman in Thailand I'll be on the first plane out. Not that I'm controlling in any Jewish mother type of stereotypical way - but she'll thank me one day.
I believe that desire is still the thing we need to keep us running
