Do You Want to Know a Secret?

RIGHT THEN, MIGHT as well get this over with. It’s Sunday morning, well, mid-morning would probably be a bit more accurate; myself and the girls having sat up till waaaaay late last night, giggling and messing and generally acting like three overgrown tequila tarts. Laura even got to stay out till well after 1 a.m., which for her is a new kind of record, but then she got so worried that her phone hadn’t rung with updates on whatever row was going on at home, that she panicked herself into thinking that the house was probably on fire and that she should therefore leg it home post-haste.

Anyway, Barbara and I stayed up till all hours talking shite, taking the world apart and putting it back together again, and now here I am, still in bed, physically unable to budge, I’m that hungover. I’m in no mad rush to get up though, mainly because my bed is probably the most comfortable place to be in the whole house/building site, so I stretch over to my bedside table, grab a pen and pad and get cracking on my homework from last night.

He must be fit, loaded and sexy.
He must go out of his way to win over entire family including messer brothers, who, let’s face it, will make it their life mission to reduce the poor fella to a gibbering idiot. And I needn’t fool myself into thinking that they’ll take pity on me and be nice: Vicky-boyfriend-baiting is something of a blood sport with them. Bastards.
He must survive said brothers re-enacting the ‘hilarious’ story of the time, aged nine, I shaved off the front of my hair in an effort to have that high-forehead look that Glenda Jackson had in Elizabeth I (at the time, my favourite TV show). Sadly I ended up looking more like my Uncle Jim, with a stupid looking comb-over that lasted for a full year while I waited for my hair to grow back. If asshole brothers are in particularly vicious form, they sometimes produce photos of me with said comb-over, to maximize mortification, then ask potential DSM whether or not I remind him of anyone? (Correct answer: Baldrick from Blackadder.)
He must find my complete inability to cook cutesy and endearing. Leading to . . .
He must love and adore take-out food and be prepared to live off nothing else. Well, until I eventually sign up for one of those cookery courses that celebrity chefs host from time to time, thereby becoming effortless hostess with reputation for holding glittering soirées and making all my own really complicated-looking cakes, like Martha Stewart. Well, Martha Stewart before all that unpleasantness . . . right, then, like Jane Asher.
He must on no account fancy Barbara, or Paris and Nicole from the office. Eyes only for me at all times, regardless of how badly my roots need doing, how haggard I look after a night out with Barbara, or how much water am retaining.
He must not be a couch commando, and if I fancy watching Desperate Housewives, he’ll be suitably quiet throughout and not keep talking through all the juicy bits. Nor will he fancy any of the women in it, either. I am fed up of listening to guys salivating over that Latino one that plays Gabrielle.
He must love that I live in a building site and be very handy with a power drill/bag of grout/good old-fashioned hammer and nails.
It’s also a useful advantage if he knows his arse from his elbow, unlike Joe Egan (three . . . no, sorry, four boyfriends ago) who thought tsunami was an actual place somewhere. Laura had great crack altogether with this and wound him up that Nancy Pelosi was a 1960s folk singer in the Janis Joplin mode and how come he’d never bought any of her albums? Poor eejit, you’d nearly feel sorry for him.

Oh for God’s sake, I think, crumpling up the list and flinging it on to the floor. Does such a man even exist?

Right, getting into dangerously negative territory here, I decide, so I hop out of bed, put on a pair of trainers that are lying on the floor, and head downstairs to get my law of attraction book, which I’m pretty sure I left lying on top of a pliers and wrench set strewn somewhere across the living-room floor.

As I’m racing downstairs, it strikes me that in this get-up I must look like that character from Little Britain that’s escaped from a mental home and spends her time running around in her nightie and trainers going ‘ah, ah AAAH’. Times like this, I’m almost glad I don’t have a fella to see the state of me . . . NO, scrap that negative thought immediately on the grounds that your word is your wand.

When I do have a lovely, suitable DSM in my life, I will of course never wear the horrendous, ankle-length pink fleecy thing I’m in now. (Purely for warmth, you understand, I’ve no heating YET.) No, it’ll be La Perla and fluffy slippers all the way, with spray tan done at all times, because everyone knows that makes your lumpy bumpy bits look a million times better and can take a full half stone off you, according to the beauty pages.

Anyway, I find the book lying beside some kind of wrench thing that almost looks like something they’d have used in medieval times to torture Catholics and get them to renounce their faith (don’t waste your breath even ASKING, is my motto with Useless Builder), and I hop back upstairs and into my snug, toasty warm bed. I randomly flip open a page from the book, which was dog-eared to start with, but is practically falling apart by now, I’ve been dipping in and out of it so many times this week. Honest to God, there’s whole chunks of it I almost know off-by-heart at this stage. Miracle I managed to get any actual work done.

Anyway, I come across an ancient quote from Robert Collier, dated 1925, which says,

See the things you want as already yours. Know in your heart of hearts that they will come to you, then simply let them come. Don’t fret and worry about them, just think of them as absolutely belonging to you, as already in your possession.

Yes, love it, it’s the perfect affirmation for me. And amazing that, although written so long ago, somehow it’s still relevant today. Right then, time for a bit of unwavering faith. Belief in the unseen.

Walk in the park really, I mean all I have to do is imagine my ideal life, or in my case, my ideal partner. The book says you’re supposed to spend about ten minutes a day, morning and evening, meditating or channelling or whatever it is you want to call it, but basically it all pretty much involves the same thing: me lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, really, really, REALLY focusing on what I want out of life.

OK then. One simple, clear image that to me encapsulates what would make me happy, or as it says in the book, what would be my ‘bliss’. There’s also a quote from Einstein, of all people, about imagination being the highest kite you can fly, so with that in mind, I close my eyes and off I drift . . .

Yes, there I am. Still in bed with my wonderful partner stretched out beside me, except just not this bed as it’s ancient and a bit creaky; no, what I’d love is one of those fabulous four-poster beds that really suit old houses, you know, you see them in posh hotels all the time. Oh, but then, how would it fit into the room? Oh I know, they’d have to dismantle it then reassemble it . . .

Shit, shit, shit, this is not exactly what you might call focused concentration, now is it?

I start again, bearing in mind that the point of the exercise is to visualize my perfect life; soft furnishings are a detail that I can worry about later. Although, while we’re on the subject, I definitely do want those stunning Frette sheets that cost a fortune, but that are just the sexiest thing against your skin, like satin only warm to the touch, and I’d nearly swear I saw that they were on sale in the House of Fraser . . .

Oh for f**k’s sake, even Laura’s seven-year-old has better concentration skills than me. Right, go again.

Yes, here I am all snuggled up in my yet-to-be-decided-what-it’ll-end-up-looking-like-bed as my boyfriend/life-partner/future husband spoons into me from behind.

I chose that particular image on purpose, so I could hear what he sounds like but not actually see his face, because otherwise, knowing me, I’ll only hold it in my mind’s eye like some kind of Identikit picture and then measure any subsequent, future DSMs against the picture of perfection I’m about to conjure up. And, let’s face it, how could any flesh and blood fella possibly compete? At this stage in my long and chequered dating career, the one thing I can say with absolute certainty is that it doesn’t matter a shite what he looks like.

Although the voice is definitely . . . Johnny Depp’s? No, no, I keep thinking of the way he sounded like one of the elderly Rolling Stones in Pirates of the Caribbean . . . James Mason’s? No, too creepy . . .

Got it, George Clooney’s. You know a gravelly, sexy, cigars and brandy voice . . . mmmm . . .

HIM: ‘Darling, would you like me to bring you some breakfast in bed? You know how I trained to be a cordon bleu chef in my spare time, before I floated my company on the stock exchange and became a billionaire, and right after I won the Olympic silver medal for having such a hot bod?’

ME: ‘Mmmm.’

HIM: ‘But in spite of all my humble achievements, Time magazine Man of the Year, all of that, there’s still nothing in this world that gives me more pleasure than to cook for you, my sweet, slumbering angel.’

ME: ‘Fair enough, make it . . . ehh, two rashers, two sausages, scrambled eggs on wholemeal toast and a cappuccino, low fat. Thanks, love.’

HIM: ‘It’s my pleasure. Have I told you so far today how happy you’ve made me, darling?’

ME: (Mock mortified, yet slightly raging that Laura and Barbara aren’t around to overhear.) ‘Ah, you’re embarrassing me now. But don’t let that stop you, go on, keep going.’

HIM: ‘I often think that until you came along, darling Vicky, my life was so empty and meaningless. I mean, all I ever did was flit around the world in my Lear jet, dating a string of vacuous supermodels, none of whom could hold a candle to you, even without your make-up, in that very fetching pink fleece thing you’re wearing now. I would divide my time between all fifteen of my properties dotted around the globe and think, ‘Where’s the right person for me? When will the fates ever bring us together?’ Little did I know that when I was invited to Dublin to accept the award for ‘best and most generous humanitarian who ever lived, ever’, that the woman of my dreams would be doing the PR for it. You, my darling, have made me the happiest man in the world. How long is it since I showered you with a token of my undying love?’

ME: ‘Ehh . . . that would be . . . last Tuesday. The racehorse. No, hang on, that was the week before, oh, yeah, now I remember, this week it was the tickets to go first class on the Orient Express.’

HIM: ‘Then how about we go jewellery shopping today, darling? And afterwards I absolutely insist that you go on the piss with Laura and Barbara while I play snooker with your delightful brothers. You know how I just can’t get enough of their company and their hilarious pranks. Oh dear me, is that the door? It must be the people from Architectural Digest to photograph the house for their feature on ‘the top ten most beautiful houses in the country’. No, you lie on, dearest, let me get it.’ (All of the above speech to be delivered in very sexy, non-doormat tones.)

Well, if the secret to life is just ask, believe and receive, then I’ve already done two out of three. And the book is very clear that, just like ordering from a catalogue, once you’ve placed your actual order, then you only have to sit back, relax and wait for the miracle to happen, serene in the knowledge that it absolutely WILL. In fact, it’s all sounding so scarily easy that I go back to my tatty book just to check I got it right.

As for receiving, all that’s required is to feel absolutely positive that your bounty is on its way towards you. The more joyous you feel about the wonderful life that’s just about to begin for you, the faster it will manifest, winging its way towards you with the speed of light.

How fab is this? I think, snuggling back under the duvet. All I need do is feel like I’m in love and Mr Wonderful, Mr Ah-Go-On-Let-Me-Cook-For-You should be here by the end of the week, by the sounds of it.