Rookie private investigator and part time waitress, Clarry Pennhaligan in The Love Detective series, shares some of my personality traits and many of my flaws.
The Love Detective Next Level
On trend?........I’ve had my regrettable moments. The look this season is, apparently, classy, provocative but untouchable. Try translating that into a wearable outfit. Much like my heroine, Clarry, in The Love Detective series, I’m sensitive to the influence of clothing. In a power suit I strut, in a flowery dress, I sway……ok, it’s actually more of a lurch, but whatever it is that I’m wearing, I try to own my look and not let the clothes wear me. In my experience, Occasion Wear is one of the hardest looks to get right. There’s so much pressure and most of it self-imposed. I’ve spent hours…days, searching for the perfect dress for a Big Night Out, Christmas Party, Super-Smart Wedding or Summer Ball and I don’t think I’ve ever really pulled it off. Perhaps, like Clarry, I should remember that The trick is to wear an old and inexpensive outfit with as much self-assurance as if it were new and designer labelled.
There’s nothing more depressing than gazing into an empty fridge. In Clarry’s fridge, as in mine, there’s always some white wine, some Prosecco, a bottle of gin, a litre of vodka and…. oh, yes…. food. And by that, I don’t mean a few wilting salad leaves, a punnet of sad looking blueberries just this side of mouldy and a ready-meal past it’s sell-by date. I mean real food.
Lovers……they come….and they go. It wasn’t going to be anything serious between us; It was just sex. And that was alright with me. I’d built up a lot of tension and now, thanks to Tim’s energy, stamina, and surprisingly proficient touch, I’d released it in the best way possible. Four times. Clarry, at twenty-six years old is open for business. She believes that the right man for her is out there somewhere, that he’ll turn up one of these days, and so she’s not in any hurry to track him down. I hope that in this, she’ll be luckier than me. I’ve had my fair share of lovers, some of whom I can barely remember and some of whom I will never forget. But the right man? No. Or at least, not yet. Lover, it’s a marvellous word, isn’t it? Cooler than hook-ups, one-night stands, fuckbuddies or even boyfriends, it sounds classy and for some reason… French.
The relationship we have with ourselves is a complicated one. Clarry is a curvy woman. There’s flesh on her bones, quite a lot of flesh. And she’s very OK with that. It feels like a lifetime ago, but after being scouted in the street in my early twenties, I did some plus-size modelling. It gave my confidence a much-needed boost as I’d been struggling to come to terms with the fact that I was nearly always the largest girl in any room. I wish that hadn’t bothered me so much, but it did. And still, at times, does now. The journey to self-acceptance is a long one. And one element of that journey for me was in creating a character who is completely free of the outdated idea that conforming to a physical stereo type is the only acceptable version of beauty. She’s way too smart for that. She stands tall and doesn’t apologise for who she is.
Self-doubt is normal. Anybody who claims to believe in themselves one hundred percent is either lying, deluded or is a complete narcissist. No one’s entirely confident. We’re human. We screw things up at times. And we worry about it. Then we worry about worrying about it. I have never really believed in myself, and as a result have missed out on some great opportunities. My heroine, Clarry certainly experiences self-doubt but is not paralysed by its effects.
The most fun you can have in a restaurant. For Clarry, it’s working there. In my own waitressing days, I waited tables alongside aspiring actors, stand-up-comedians, a street artist and a male strip-o-gram who, on a quiet night, would jump up on to the bar and show us his moves. We had a blast.
It’s a new day. I was alright and still the girl I’d been yesterday. No need to send flowers: Clarry’s adventures, escalating from the bizarre to the downright dangerous, soon get Next Level, but she refuses to let herself be haunted by them. I’m working hard on being more like her and to remember that The past is behind us, the future can’t be relied upon, and so the present is to be lived in…fully.