Get Booked – Penny Batchelor, My Perfect Sister

Hello, I'm Hazel Butterfield, and this is Get Booked for Women's and Men's Radio Station, a show all about books and their incredible way to help support good emotional well-being and enrich our minds, opening discussion and offering support by the incredible writing community out there. Come and join us, get involved, and if you want to catch up on previous shows, you can do at womensradiostation.com/shows. Www.getbooked.co.uk or you can have a look on our SoundCloud. Right, it is now time to get booked, and today joining me in the studio is Penny Batchelor, author of My Perfect Sister. We can— it's an absolutely incredible book. We can live our whole lives not knowing or understanding why others have behaved a certain way. What can form your perception of life and create a sense of injustice and is the truth always better to know? You may not always understand someone's actions, or you may even resent them, but we can't always choose what others wish to impart to us, which is what My Perfect Sister is all about. It's a great example of how complex life can be, perceptions of right, wrong, good and bad, and mental health implications, and our view of protecting someone. It's an incredible debut. Penny, hi, how are you? Hello, thank you so much for having me, Hazel. It's lovely to be with you and your listeners. Hello. Hello. So, love the book, and it's one of those ones where, I mean, I'm a huge fan of reading. I like to mix up all my different genres, but I think the true test of a great book is when you sit there at the end of it and go, I don't know what was right and wrong. Well, that's what I hoped when people would read it. I wanted to leave enough ambiguity open So you would get thinking about it after you'd finished the last page. Obviously, you need closure in books. You can't just not have an end. But I'm hoping that when the readers read it, and I've had some fantastic feedback from people who've read it, that they get a sense of satisfaction that there is an ending, but there's enough left open for you to think about it, put your own perception on it, and also wonder what you would have done. If you were in those characters' shoes? Yeah, I mean, that is the thing. I honestly don't know what I would do, but, you know, I felt like I went on about 6 or 7 different journeys throughout this book because you're kind of thinking, oh, she's had it rough, her family's a bit, you know, her mum's absolutely bonkers, and then you suddenly change, you change your mind so many different times about what's actually happening. It's brilliant. You must be getting some great reviews back. I've done really well and I'm really pleased with some fantastic Amazon reviews. I'm with a little small independent publisher called Red Door Press and it's not so easy as it is when you're with the Big Six, which is Penguin and Hachette and all that, to get the word out. So it's— we don't have a massive publicity and marketing budget, so it's word of mouth really. And I've just been so thrilled with the way that people have enjoyed it told their friends and tweeted about it on social media, and the words got out. I, yeah, I couldn't be more happy. And interestingly, as it got released, you couldn't do the usual book tours. No, it was very strange because it's my first novel that's been published, and it was due to be published in May, and I got a party sorted out at my local wonderful independent bookshop, Kenilworth Books. But of course, when coronavirus came on, came along, that put the kibosh on that really. So we was wondering, I was wondering what to do, and the publisher said, well, how about doing a Facebook launch? Which is what I think all authors had to turn to the internet to publicise their books when they were launched. So it ended up being me talking to myself on the computer for half an hour. But again, I was really How many people did turn up and interact? And so I haven't had the experience of a proper launch party, but hopefully book 2 will be out next year. And not got much longer to go with writing it, and then I'm hoping I'll get a proper party then with champagne and cake. Let's, let's keep our fingers crossed. I hope you double it up. I will, I will, definitely. That's— you've said it on the radio now, that means it's got to happen. I will be expecting my invite. So what's the next book going to be about? Because I take it it can't really be a sequel to this because there isn't a possible sequel really, is there? There isn't. I haven't ruled out doing another story with the character Ian in the future. He's a solicitor and he has cerebral palsy, although that isn't the story in the book. In the book, I'll just quickly explain to your readers who don't know what the book's about. It's the story of Annie, and when she was 5, her older sister Gemma, who is 16, went missing. She didn't come home from school, and there was a massive police hunt, but nothing was ever found. So Annie grew up in the shadow of this older sister, family that was grieving, and Annie resented it really. She couldn't really remember her sister very well, and she felt that because her sister wasn't around, she was perfect— hence, my perfect sister— and that Annie, whatever Annie did, she could never live up to this fantastic sister. And when Annie is 30, circumstances come together that she comes back to live with her mum again, reluctantly. And while she's there, she does start to think, actually, what did happen to my sister? And tries to find out, well, as much as she can. I don't want to give too much away, but Ian is a childhood friend of hers who is a solicitor and who advises her on the legal side. And I think it would be quite interesting to take him again in a completely different story because solicitors, obviously that's a good way into getting more crime stories. But anyway, that, that hasn't happened yet. That's just a little idea hatching in my mind. But book 2 It's very hard to tell you what it's about without giving anything away, but there are two main characters. One is Audrey, who is— she's in her late 30s, she's a mum of two, she's given up work when she had a second child. She's quite middle class, very intelligent, gave up her job as an accountant, and she's finding that although she's so thrilled that she's got this family she thought that she wouldn't have, she's actually getting a bit bored at home. And then she meets Claire, who's about 10 years younger than her, and they quickly become very good friends. But is Claire everything that she appears to be? And that's all I can tell you, but there's a good mystery in there, twist, and lots of red herrings. Oh, I love a red herring. And do you know what? There's, uh, if you get a couple of bored characters, or if they change because of boredom, that means that the story can go absolutely anywhere. Boredom's quite dangerous sometimes, isn't it? It is, and it's good for dramatic potential. And if you tell us a little bit more about yourself, you're a huge knitting fan, aren't you? I am, that's my thing, and that's thankfully come to the fore with lockdown and everything, because they talk about mindfulness and knitting and I'd never actually thought about it that way before, but if I haven't knitted for a while, I really miss it. It's just that, um, the feeling of creating something with your own hands and you see it get bigger, and then it's wonderful. I'm wearing a pair of socks actually today that I knitted, and they're so much more comfy than shop-bought socks. It's, it's really good. Yes, so, uh, that's my other big hobby, uh, knitting. And of course I'm a voracious reader too. I think to be a writer you really need to read a lot and sort of imbibe all the different ways of telling stories. Do you know what, I mean, there's so many different reasons that I read and I love it. It's, you know, whether it's distraction or to learn something or to just understand a little bit more about what goes on in other people's lives so we can be a little bit more open-minded. Definitely, and I I adore the feeling when I'm reading a good book. So I lose track of time. I could be anywhere. I'm completely just— my head is completely in that story. And if you ever had, Hazel, the feeling when you're getting down to the last few pages of a book and you just don't want it to end, you're almost grieving that, well, I've read that now and I can't read it again. It was so brilliant. I don't want to be out of that world anymore. I do know what, that's happened so much. I mean, it happened with My Perfect Sister as well. Yay! I also, I read Untamed by Glennon Doyle, and actually I didn't read it, I had it on Audible because sometimes there are books that I need to read quite a lot of books throughout the week, and sometimes I just like to listen to it while I'm running or walking the dog or something like that. And especially when it's kind of part fiction or part kind of drill home to you something that's happened, and she's quite motivational, and sometimes it's nice to have that person's voice in your head, and you can, you know, if you're walking around, yeah, especially in lockdown I listened a lot to Dawn O'Porter, and that kind of style was fantastic, but Untamed, I felt so uplifted by what she had to say, she took so much common sense, and at the end I was like, please don't go, I need you, so I follow her I've got it on every social media now just so I can get as much in as possible. What's Untamed about? It's about her perception of, you know, what a woman should be. So on the basis that, you know, a lot of women by the time they're 8 have been told that they should be this and they should be that. And we start conditioning women as to what they should be and whether they're wearing pink or whether they should be getting married regardless of, you know, their sexuality. And, you know, still now, you know, the concept of a woman who doesn't have a child, people wonder why and if there's a problem, when in fact that you can just be. And it's just about abolishing preconceived opinions of what a woman should be, and likewise a man as well. And she kind of changed her whole life about 10 years ago and decided to live up to what other people thought she should be. And she starts the book off talking about how this, I think it's a leopard, that is in captivity and it's following a Labrador doing some tricks. And her kid said, "Why are they doing that? Why does the leopard not know that it could completely ripped that laboratory to pieces, and it's actually its nature. And she just turned around and said, because it's never been told it can do. Gosh, yeah, so I'll have to look out for that one. It sounds like a really good book, and it's so true the way that women are conditioned to be a certain way. I mean, one of the people that I really admire and like in public life is Lucy Worsley, the historian. And not only because she's, uh, I've met her a couple of times actually at book readings. She's very funny, very clever, passionate about history and widening access to history, not just being seen as a boring subject at school, but also she is child-free and she's, I think, I don't have a child myself, that's not through choice, but that's just the way that life goes sometimes, but for me she's a great role model because she just says, yeah, you— it's fine to have a career, and it doesn't mean that you're not a motherly person or that you are in any way inferior to mothers. Of course, we all very much respect the job that mothers do, but it's okay to live your life this way as well. And I think that's a very important message. Well, I think one of the things that we forget, that we have— you can't control a lot in life, you can't control a lot of what happens to us and the circumstances that, you know, arise, but one of the things we can control is our choice. Yes. You know, how we choose to see a situation, how we choose to react to a situation. And one of the main points, I mean, she isn't— Glennon Doyle wasn't sitting there basically berating men, it was saying that women are the main problem, because when women choose to do things a different way, there's a lot of jealousy and fear, and the way that people behave when they don't understand something can quite often be appalling. Do you think it's more men who react against that, or other women, or is it equal? What does she say? Well, do you know what? She was predominantly— I think women can be more dangerous to women sometimes. Oh, women can be a little bit bitchy if they want to be. They can. Yeah, I mean, there's— I mean, there are issues on both sides, and likewise, you know, women can be problematic to men. And that, you know, there's no woman or man is completely the same, but it's just, you know, people are scared of being different or what that might mean for them in terms of, you know, if a woman decides to be independent, then she sometimes— other women can get quite upset or fearful or jealous of that because maybe they haven't taken that brave step to be slightly different from the norm. And you know, this is, it can be quite problematic. Very interesting book. Oh yeah, he's absolutely fantastic. I would recommend, I mean, I think pretty much I'm going to be fine for Christmas because anybody who I can't think what to get, I'm just going to get them that book. And yours, of course, obviously, Penny. Thank you, that would be wonderful. And if anybody does choose to buy my book, when any of the listeners here, I'd be very much appreciative if you reviewed it on Amazon, Goodreads. It's free to do, and authors really, really appreciate it because it helps spread the word to other people who might be thinking, "Should I buy this book? I don't know." And if they read a good review, that can help them Yeah, give that one a whirl. Great, and what I've done actually, I've reviewed your book and I've put it up on hazelbutterfield.com and I've made it really simple that if they click on the picture it takes them straight through to Amazon. Fantastic, thank you. That's fantastic. You're very welcome. I didn't look at your website yesterday, I didn't see it there, so I shall have a look when we finished our chat. Well, do you know what, I put it up, I think it was quite late last night. So it was, it's on there with my latest selection of 3 other book reviews as well. But yeah, it's on there, it's nice and easy, but people can also go to pennybachelor.com as well, can't they? And there's many different ways that they can click through and buy the book depending on, you know. It's pennybachelor.co.uk. Is it .co.uk? Yeah, it's .co.uk. I did that intentionally so that we could really drill that into the listeners. Yes, just don't do what you say. Yes, run it in your head now. So you were saying that you are a fan of reading. Is there any books that you've been reading recently that you just think, oh, everyone's got to read this? Well, I've, um, because I've been working hard on book 2, I've not read so much because I'm trying to sort of keep my own voice and not get swayed by the way other writers do it, but there are so many writers that I really admire within the psychological thriller, domestic noir genre. There's, I mean, Ruth Ware is brilliant, and she's got a new book coming out. I think it might be this month or next month. She is, she's fantastic at plotting, as is Lisa Jewell. And as I'm sure your listeners probably know, Lisa started out 20 or so years ago doing rom-coms, and then now she's moved towards the psychological psychological thriller side, and I always love her books. It's always— she's one of those authors that I know is whatever I buy, it's going to be good. And on during lockdown, I read, outside of the thriller genre, Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell. I think that was— oh, it was brilliant. I live not too far away from Stratford-on-Avon, and Hamnet's all about the son of William Shakespeare. I thought that was beautiful, beautiful writing. And then I also read— I'm a bit late to the party, but I'm in an online book group and we read, and I'm not quite sure how to pronounce this, Circe, Circe, it's a Greek goddess by Madeline Miller. And that was quite big about a year ago, and I'm late to the party, but that was amazing, absolutely Beautiful writing and very feminist as well, pointing out that you might be a Greek goddess, but you're still in the lower pecking order to the men. Oh wow, that's one of those ones where— you know what, I think the good sign of a book is when you want to tell everybody in the pub when it comes up. And I actually bought that for my mum and my sister-in-law because I just thought, this is so fantastic, I want to spread the word. And I'm slightly biased because my, my birth name is Penelope. Penelope, which I own. My mum uses when she's cross with me, and I use if I'm ringing up a company and want to sound like a proper Gravitas. But Penelope is a Greek goddess, so of course a little kinship with the book. You see, you don't hear Penelope much anymore. Everybody abbreviates it to Penny, don't they? And I love Penelope. Thank you. It's actually I saw on Twitter there was a list of popular girls' names and it's something like 40-something now in the charts of what people have called their children, their girls I suppose, this year, and I think it's wonderful that it's coming back because people never used to know how to pronounce it. Whenever I used to go to the doctors or whatever, they used to say, "Pennylope!" Seriously, I hope it's not your doctor that couldn't pronounce Penelope, otherwise you should not be going there. So that's penny, just leave it at that, everybody knows, everybody knows penny because they use the coin, so at least you know how to pronounce that one. You'd hope so, wouldn't you? What is quite interesting actually, something that I wanted to mention to you on It's kind of on the same line as My Perfect Sister. I read a book recently called What's Left Unsaid. Have you heard of it? I haven't, no. Who's it by? Oh, do you know what? I did actually interview her at some point. I need to remember her name. I'm just going to quickly Google it now, but it's brilliant and it's all about, you know, certain things that you don't know about as you're going through life, and you don't know why certain people have behaved that way. It's by Deborah Stone. Right, I shall write that down and look it up. It's a very pretty looking book as well. I love a cover that kind of catches your eye. Now, there's something that I want us to share with our listeners, is your inspiration for the book, and also you've you've decided that you want to get more characters in your books that have disabilities where that's not the main factor? Yes, definitely, because I was born with osteogenesis imperfecta, which is more commonly known as brittle bones. It was out of the blue and there's no history of it in our family. And when I was a child and I just read voraciously and spent a lot of time in hospital as well, there's I can't draw, I'm useless at that, so what else can you do? Watch telly, read a book. And reading these books, I never saw anybody like myself within the stories, other than very strange narratives such as My Secret Garden, or The Secret Garden, is it? Where there's a little boy who can't walk and they managed to get him out in the garden magically. Yes, he walks again, but he dies, which isn't the greatest role model for you. And it's not great, no. And then other, other books where if children just try hard enough or believe in God enough or are decent, you know, behave very well and obey their parents enough, they get to walk. And I remember thinking Is that gonna happen to me? Nah, it's a load of rubbish. And I know it's very big in the Black Lives Matter movement now for people and children to be represented in literature and in books and to see themselves there. And it is getting better with disability and neurodiversity and everything within children's literature, although there's some way to go. But in literature for adults, or, you know, just your nice commercial fiction that you read, 1 in 5 people in the world have a disability, but they're not there in fiction. And if they are, it's either— it's one extreme or the other. It's either some sort of misery memoir talking all about how dreadful it is to have a disability, and people have got obviously their their right to talk about that, but that isn't the whole identity, I think, of somebody with a disability. On the other end, it's triumph over tragedy that somebody might climb Everest with a prosthetic limb, perhaps. And again, if that's what they want to do, great. But most disabled people are just busy living their ordinary lives. They haven't got the time or the inclination to climb Everest and don't want to have to feel that they have to do something like that to prove that they conquered their disability. And I don't like that word conquer. It's— you live with it all your life. It's part of you. And I wanted to read more stories where, as you said, disabled people, they're just living their ordinary lives. They're neighbours, colleagues, lovers, parents, sisters, what have you, in commercial fiction. And what actually inspired me a while ago was Sarah Waters' books. I think she's fantastic, and her Victorian thrillers, the plotting masterclasses. But also she had lesbian characters in her books. And to be honest, if I hadn't been reading those books, I if they hadn't been mainstream, I probably wouldn't have gone into the, the gay fiction area to look for them. So I thought, well, how fantastic that that's in the mainstream and it's, it's not niche anymore. And I just thought, well, I, I want to do the same for disability. I don't want it to be a niche thing that you have to go to sort of the, the social issues bit of the bookstore. I want it to be in Tesco's in the top 20, and just to normalize and bring to people's consciousness that all these people are out there in society. So it's, it's that— I remember Mum saying, well, if nobody does it, does it yourself. So I thought, well, that's what I shall do. And I started off sort of quite small with the character of Ian in My Perfect Sister, But the next book has got a character, a main character who has a disability, but it's not mentioned until a little bit of the way in. It's hinted at but not mentioned because I wanted viewers— sorry, not viewers, it's— that's my dream, isn't it wonderful, it'd be picked up and made into a film by Reese Witherspoon— but readers would get to know her first as a character and then think, 'Oh yeah,' rather than having to signpost it straight away as, 'Well, this is all she is.' So I hope that people will read the books and take something away from that. But I think the key word there was to just normalize it rather than making it an issue to stand out. Exactly. I mean, when I meet new people, I'm not going to tell them all about my medical history. It's not their business. It's just— I'm Penny, and now I use a wheelchair, and it's just— well, that's just part of me. There are lots of different aspects to my life. And so I think it's also really important with the normalisation that there are people out there who become disabled within their life or might have a chronic illness and find it difficult to relate to their new physical or mental circumstances, and I want them to be proud to say, "Yeah, I'm disabled. That's a positive thing. That's my identity. It's not something to be ashamed of or worried about or frightened that I'm going to be discriminated against or whatever." Just be who you are and be proud of it. Well, we should all embrace being different in whatever way, you know, that is. Definitely, definitely, because we are all different and that's the joy of humanity, isn't it? We've all got something different to bring to the table. Yeah, and we need to— this is what I love about reading because it's just— this is our opportunity to bring this into everybody's arena and to kind of help people just to understand life a little bit more. Yeah, it's another mission of mine is within publishing to try and encourage more people with a disability or chronic illness to work in publishing. Again, there's a big move at the moment for diversity, and I really want disability to be included in the party because sometimes it's a bit of a tag-on at the end. Because if you get disabled people working in the industry, they know what it's like, so they're more likely to commission the books and to champion them rather than thinking, "Hmm, are people going to want to read about that? We haven't published things like that before. I'm not sure if there's a market for it." Whereas a disabled person, you think, "Well, that's my life just as much as, you know, other books." books, perhaps set abroad, or people's experiences in different countries, different cultures, religions. That's their life, and part of the point of reading and literature is to expose us all to these different worlds and different thoughts, different cultures that we haven't come across before in our day-to-day lives. There are many different industries where they really need to be shaken up a little bit, and we need to shake off the kind of traditional elements of politics and public— so many different P's— but we need to, yeah, encourage a damn sight more diversity so that, you know, it's the only way that people are gonna learn how to produce better quality and equality. Exactly, and I think that all diversities should stand together and say, great, that's fantastic that you're supporting me, but what about the LGB— sorry, LGBTQ+ community, or the BAME community, what have you? Because if we all stand together, We are the majority, and that is a very powerful thing to be. It's not just going to be the old guard, and that doesn't mean that, um, you sort of white London middle-class people in London won't get a chance anymore. It just means that there's going to be a bigger pool of people to choose from, and that can only be better for them, positive for businesses and for readers, I think. Yeah, 100%, completely agree. But on this line, who do you think at the moment in the public eye is smashing it out of the park in terms of just being a great mentor or a great person for people to look up to who is just making the right waves? Well, I think Tani Gray Thompson. Who was a Paralympian and now she's fantastic in the public eye. She's on the BBC board and she's championing diversity there. She's somebody who has taken the fame and the power that she's earned through her sport and now is using it for the public good, and I very much admire people who do that. Not so much people who are just doing their job, job, like actresses and what have you, and, um, and that's what they get paid for. But people who go over and above and use that power that they have to raise issues— and another chap is, um, Marcus Rashford, the footballer. Oh yeah, brilliant. Campaign against food poverty for children. He's got experience of that, so he knows, he knows what it's like, and he's used that power and the influence that he has as a footballer, not to go out every night and pull women and get drunk, but for a fantastic cause. And he, he got the government to, to change. That's amazing. So I have every respect for him. Um, I don't— to be honest, I don't follow football. I haven't got a clue which team he's in. My son would know. Fear poverty-wise, that's, you know, he should be getting an MBE or whatever for doing that, I think. Do you know what? It is ridiculous, but if a footballer or a YouTuber says something of any worth, that is how kids are going to listen, and they do have such a responsibility in that respect. I mean, my kids, as soon as this went up on Instagram and everywhere, they knew exactly what he was talking about and, you know, it was being discussed and it seems ridiculous but like you've got 8, 9, 10, 11-year-olds discussing it in the playground because Marcus Rashford brought it up. That's amazing, I mean it's all changed so much since I'm in my 40s, since I was that age, I don't sort of watch that much YouTube but I think it's wonderful to think that these children are socially motivated and are aware of these issues and then can go and talk to the parents and maybe educate them about it. So yeah, hats off to Marcus and people that do that and aren't just on YouTube to make some money out of it and sell products and sell makeup or whatever. They're there to actually use that platform for good. So yeah, hats off to them. I think, do you know what, if people want to make money out of whatever they're doing but they also choose to multitask and make good of it as well. I think, you know, hats off to anyone, however you want to do it, you know. But if you are extremely successful and you're making lots of money because of your followers, then that's when, you know, there is that responsibility. And that's the difference between a good, you know, valuable person and I guess a less valuable person who doesn't use that power for something responsible like Marcus Rashford. Yes, I completely agree. I mean, I do have a bit of a beef against some influencers that are always posting pictures of them being thin and beautiful and pretending that they've got this marvellous life. So I don't have a problem with people earning money via that, but like you say, just be real. Say, look, well, this, this picture's filtered, you know. I might be on this beach now looking wonderful, but my baby was sick on me this morning and the car broke down, and I still have real life. It's— you didn't— so you shouldn't feel bad that your life isn't exactly like mine. Do you know what? It's— I'm incredibly lucky that I have two boys, and the— what I'm hearing from my friends who have girls. The effect of Love Island alone giving them incorrect ideas of what is possible with their bodies and what people want to see is, is unbelievable. You have certain mentors in schools now that are there to help these girls understand and appreciate themselves because there are so many people who are supposedly admiring people because they're beautiful. And you don't see any disabled people on Love Island, do you? You don't see any, yeah, people who are— I'm not going to say overweight, I'm going to say normal size— because they're all very thin, aren't they? And all the men have got their pecs and they've all been to the gym. There's no celebration of ordinary people. And yeah, I mean, that's— it's fun, Love Island. It's good entertainment. It does what it does, but I don't think— there's always been pressure on young girls or teenagers. There was in my day to look a certain way and be a certain way, but programs like Love Island and Instagram and what have you, I think have made that sort of tenfold. So I think it's great that there are mentors in schools, but there shouldn't be the need for them. Because we should be saying on these programs, let's just celebrate the diversity of who we are. And you don't have to be thin to get a boyfriend or a girlfriend. You just got to be lovely. Do you know what? It's the responsibility of the executives as well, because I mean, the thing is, they're doing what they know is going to sell. So we need to change as well. It's not just the executives. We need to change what we're interested in. And, you know, everyone's got a responsibility. Responsibility to that, don't you think? Definitely. Uh, I guess we should be writing in and saying, hey, why aren't there lots of different kinds of people? Aren't there any older people on Love Island? Why do we just want to see pretty young people? People in their 30s and 40s want to find love as well. It's, uh, but I think, uh, I think with Love Island that they've got a formula and it sells, and they don't want to divert from that because because they sell advertising and I guess the advertisers are all for makeup and clothes and things for young women. But yeah, we should be vocal about our thoughts and yes, I guess if you are— if you don't say anything, then the producers aren't going to know that people want change. Yeah, well, I think it's wanting change versus the monetary element as well, isn't it? It is, it is. And that's what's going to be changed. I mean, at the end of the day, all these people on Love Island, they know that when they walk out, they're walking away with, you know, at least a £500,000 contract with one of the clothing companies. I mean, there've been suicides with Love Island, haven't there? Oh yeah, too many. It's— I mean, that's disgraceful. I, I feel so sorry for the young people who— they go on it thinking that they're going to be famous, and they are for a little while, but then of course there's another series and somebody else gets, gets that fame and they get dropped. Uh, it's very difficult to maintain a long-term reality TV career. And if you go in it at 40, you've got the ex-life experience and the— hopefully the people around you to ground you, just to say, well, I'm gonna take it for what it is and then get back to my ordinary life. But when you're 21, you haven't got that experience behind you, and it's— you are incredibly vulnerable. So I mean, I hope that there is a lot better mental health provision for the contestants? And if there isn't, if there's another suicide, well, it shouldn't be on the telly at all, should it really? I thought they were thinking about possibly getting rid of it. I mean, I think there's definitely certain provisions that have to be put in place. I think what we do need to point out though, that the best thing on TV at the moment in terms of, you know, hitting all the buttons. Great British Bake Off, you can't beat it. You've got everybody, you know. There's— it's— I think that is what TV needs to be a bit more like, don't you think? Well, I actually— I haven't watched it since Mary Berry stopped doing it. Oh no! But I know lots of people are saying it's really— it's better than ever. It's really— it's tried. So I need to— I need to watch it again because when it was When I did watch it, it was just so lovely, the kindness and the fact that people were in it together and would help each other. And there was no— although of course there was a competitive element, that wasn't really the point of the show. And then I did hear that, was it in the last series or so, there were— it did get a bit more sort of trying to get a bit of Jeopardy into it. But apparently this series has gone back to to its original, just kindness, and that's what we all need when in the pandemic. We want a nice cake, we want to be nice to our neighbours, we want a bit of a laugh and just to be homely, I think, and you can't be more homely than with a Victoria sponge, can you? You can't, I mean, life is so much better with a Victoria sponge. It is, but I think I'd go for a red velvet Kate personally, but I wouldn't turn down SpongeBob if, who's it now, Prue Leith is it? Yeah, well, they've got Matt Lucas in it now and I just think he is hilarious. He's great, isn't he? He's fantastic. And my son is quite excited about whether he's going to sing Baked Potato Saved My Life in this. He wants to know if the potato is going to be Well, I'm sure if it is, it'll be on YouTube and we'll all get to watch it. Well, that's the thing, we at least we never miss out on anything. It gets to be absolutely everywhere. Now, a question I quite often ask all of my guests on Get Booked here at Women's Radio Station and Men's Radio Station is what would be, for our listeners, your what are your 3 top tips on well-being and just trying to, you know, this kind of links back to what's going on with Love Island. What do you, you know, what are 3 good ways to help people just be the best they can be and be as happy and healthy as they can be? Well, I think my first would be to be your own best friend. I think we're all a lot more critical of ourselves than we are to other people. So we can sit there and say to ourselves, you're lazy, you've not done enough work, 'Oh, you've not done enough exercise,' and what have you. If your friend sat and said that, you'd say, 'Don't be silly, you've got to cut yourself some slack, stop being so hard on yourself.' So I think we need to try, and when we have that critical voice in our heads, at least I try anyway, think, well, what would my friend say to me? Am I thinking, you know, is it reasonable what I'm thinking, or is it just me being stressed and, you know, anxious. So I think that would be certainly tip number 1. If I just, if you just point out there that, you know, regardless of whether you watch TV a lot, you like YouTube, Instagram, if you're reading, whatever, no matter how often you listen to or watch influencers, the one voice you are gonna hear the most is your own. Yes. Yes, and we want to make sure that that's a kind voice and it's not a cruel and what-have-you voice. It's something that's compassionate and caring. You've got to look after yourself, so treat yourself like you would do your loved ones. Cut them some slack, certainly. And then And I think number 2 would be try not to compare yourself with other people. And again, that goes back to Love Island. You can see those people on the TV and think, oh, they've achieved this, they're slim, they look good in that bikini, they've got that boyfriend, they've got that job. Well, they're not you. What have you got that they would be thinking, oh, I'd really, you know, she's really lucky to have that family. That partner, that job, or to have that quality. So it's— I mean, I sometimes compare myself to other people and I, oh, I haven't done that, and perhaps getting a bit competitive, and then think, well, their life is completely different from yours. And going back to my perfect sister, we don't know what's gone on in somebody's past. We don't know what they're going through. Through. We all present only the, the best side to everybody apart from our closest loved ones and friends. So it's easy to think that somebody else's life is really easy, but that's not the case. We've all got our own difficulties. They might not be the same ones as the one that you have, but we all have our own issues. And so don't think that somebody else's life is much better than yours because because you're completely different people. Do you know, my dog's agreeing with that, sorry! One of the joys of the COVID studio means that I do have the cat and dog listening at the same time. It's interesting what you're saying, it's quite natural to compare yourself to other people, but I had a friend of mine the other day saying, "I can't believe how amazing that person looks in that bikini, I wish I looked like that," and I went, "Do you?" because you know full well she is not happy at home. And have you seen the food she eats? I've seen the food that my friend likes. I'm like, what would you rather do? Would you rather look like that in that bikini and eat that food all the time? Or would you rather enjoy yourself with your Sunday roast and all the nice places we go to? Because trust me, you can't have both of, you know, there's a certain joy you can have. And we love our food and we love our cocktails. And you know, you're not going to be sick thin if you enjoy. I don't want to be thin and miserable. I want to get back to wellness. Being too thin is not, isn't good for you, just as being too overweight isn't. I mean, I, my disability, it's to do with a defect in the collagen, so I have to be very careful to take calcium supplements and things to keep my bones as strong as they have the capacity to be. And it really gets my goat when there's faddy diets that say cut out calcium and what have you, because that can bring on osteoporosis in women and men. And I'd much rather be as healthy as I can within my myself with the strong bones that I've got rather than following a fuddy diet and being looking like that in a bikini. And, and the, the woman that your friend saw, she's probably on the photo shoot. It's been, it's been lit properly. She'll have had a fake tan. It'll have been— yeah, it's not real. She won't look like that when she goes in a bedroom and puts a bikini on. It's— she'll have had her hair done and her makeup and it's not real life, is it? Yeah, eat your Sunday roast, enjoy it. That's what I say. Just enjoy your life, live your life, be happy. I did actually have a friend recently who'd lost quite a bit of weight. She'd put quite a bit on, but she'd lost a bit. I said, oh, how did you do it? She said, oh, the Weight Watchers diet on the points system. She goes, oh, you need to go and have a look at it. I logged in, had a look, and it basically told me that I'd have to cut down on cheese, so I just closed down the on the Bryzer page and went, nope. I mean, if you just follow with food, just a little bit of everything, uh, it's all right to have chips or chocolate, just don't eat, have too much. Just to try and, you know, eat your 5 portions of fruit and veg and make little changes. I think drastic changes don't work. If somebody said to me, you can't have this, that would make me want it more. Oh, exactly. Bit less and find something else that you do like to eat, but you have as much pleasure in that might be that slightly bit healthier. I really like rice cakes. I'm really into salted rice cakes, and that stops me eating so many crisps because I love salted crisps. But I sort of go half rice cakes, half crisps. That's, you know, it balances it, doesn't it? Well, actually, thinking about it, Penny, you're a fellow northerner, aren't you? You Born or brought up around Doncaster. I was, yeah. Where were you? Huddersfield, born and bred. Eh, good old Yorkshire lass. Yeah, and the other day, like, you cannot get Seabrook crisps down south for love or money, especially not the Corn Cracktail ones. Oh, that chive one, cheese and chive, or onion and chives. Ah, I had some at my sister-in-law's house when I went up. Why don't they sell them down here? They'd make a mint. Well, they would, but occasionally you can go into like Poundland and places like that and they'll occasionally have like a variety. But I came across the other day, I realized you can just go on Amazon and I picked up a box of 36 Prom Cocktail Seedbroke. And all of my friends that are northern, they've kind of seen my little post on Instagram and they're all about people like coming around going, "Can I have a packet of crisps?" Well, I think I should go and have a look. Yeah, brilliant. You can get the cheese and onion ones actually on Amazon. I think it's like about £14 for 36. It's worth it. You've got to do it. Go treat yourself. Got to do it. Got to do it, definitely. And talking about that, I think my third tip for mental wellness would be to think that tomorrow is another day. I mean, I certainly did that over lockdown when was getting anxious, just thinking, is this ever going to end? Because I've been shielding and I'm back shielding now because the area where I live, it's high, high risk, borders on an area where there is more of a lockdown. And it just think, oh, it's never ending. And you have a bad day and you just think, is this going to end? And I just think, no, tomorrow, tell yourself tomorrow's another day, tomorrow is a whole nother opportunity. Just get through today. Just don't think towards the future. Don't worry about what's going to happen in the future. Focus on today. Tomorrow's another one with the potential for being a whole lot better. I read a book called The Anxiety Girl once, and there were a lot of excellent points that she came out with. But one of them was depression is about what's happened in the past, and anxiety is fretting about what could happen in the future. Live in the now, then both of those can't exist. Well, that's a really good point, isn't it? I loved it. I mean, it's easier said than done. I mean, I've had struggles with depression and anxiety, and sometimes I say that to myself and I'm like, yeah, yes, well done, Hazel. But it's a great point, and sometimes we just need to keep on telling ourselves things like this, and it will, it will hopefully sink in. Or at least, as you say, as you said it in your in one of your first tips, you know, what you say to yourself, what you keep on filling your mind with, and it will, it will change our mindset. But I love that concept, you know, of just, if you're living in the now, depression and anxiety can't exist. Yeah, that, that, I think that's very true, and it's a, it's a very good point, and it's very relevant to everything that we're going through now, because I know I've seen in the news that anxiety and depression levels have skyrocketed amongst people. It's the uncertainty, I think, of not knowing, and so many people worrying about their finances and jobs, security, worrying about family and friends, people they know who are key workers and putting themselves at risk. It's, it's so easy to worry, but we can't control what happens. I can't control what happens to the virus. All I can control is what I choose to do, and that is keeping myself and my family safe at the moment. So I focus on that today. Do you know what? What I have been doing, and what I absolutely love about this show as well, is just, it's just what you can get from reading. And I like kind of reminding people, you know, people who are worried about what's going on on with our global pandemic, you know, reading is a distraction, and we can't change necessarily, there's very little we can do as individuals to alter what is happening with COVID at the moment, but, you know, learn something new, be distracted, find out about something else, just reading is fantastic for these reasons, and, you know, if you don't like reading, again, you've You've got Audible, you— there are many different ways, and if you're skint because of what's been going on, libraries are free and they do have Audible, well they have like the audio CDs, and we forget that this is— there are many free ways to read books, or extremely low cost. I mean, even if people wanted to go and get My Perfect Sister, I think it's currently £7.60, on Amazon, but if they wanted it cheaper, they can get it on Kindle for £2.99 and they can start reading it, you know, within 3 seconds. They can get it from their local library. I've requested it from mine actually, just because there's the little girl in me who went to her library every Saturday to get some more books would be so thrilled, I think. I just can't wait to actually hold my book as a library book. But yeah, so I would say to anybody, if it's not in the catalogue in your local library, ask them to get it. And again, yes, another good way of sort of reading but with audible books is Radio 4. I've been listening to lots of their podcasts and they've got a good library of novels that they've adapted. So there's lots of ways, and I think some people think, well, I don't like reading, I don't like fiction, then read a history book, read a travel book, read a manual on car maintenance or whatever. Yeah. It all does the same thing. It all takes you out of the worry of that moment and gets your brain involved in something else and gets your brain cells ticking over. And that is so powerful in helping with anxiety, I think. Well, it's about reprogramming your brain. I had somebody say to me, oh, I wish I could read like you, Hazel, because I just I just can't get my brain to concentrate. And I said, well, then you're exactly the person that should be reading, and you need to keep on doing it to reprogram your brain. If you can't concentrate, then you're having issues, and reading is a great way to kind of readjust your concentration levels. And it's like, you know, sometimes you do have to— reading isn't always that easy. You know, I read 2 or 3 books a week, and sometimes I have to stop, go back a couple of pages and start reading again because I've drifted off. You know, I'm thinking about something that's happened and it's, you know, I've read 2 pages, none of it's gone in because I've been thinking about what I might have said that has been seen as, could have been, you know, maybe offensive or maybe I said the wrong thing or something like that because there's a particular situation that happened in the book. Even I have to do it and I read a lot. I would say to people also who say they're struggling reading, try short stories because then you can read one before you go to bed and you don't have that issue of coming back the next night and thinking, I can't remember what happened before. And also try something a bit lighter. I love Hilary Mantel's books, but you really need to— they are heavy. Yeah, that's— it's not something that's, that's easy to read. So try some nice short stories, something that, uh, that read in 20 minutes or whatever. Every minute that you spend reading is valuable, so don't sit and look at Anna Karenina or War and Peace and think, "Oh, got to get through that." Just pick something that's fun, that you really actually want to read, and short and sweet. That'll get you back in the groove, I think. Yeah, and shift it up a little bit. I mean, I get sent a lot of books in a week, and to have on GetBooked. And I have them all lined up and I make sure that it's a fiction one, then it's something that's self-help, then it's something that's possibly more memoir-esque. And I like to shift it all up, but I also know that if there's something a little bit crazy going on in my world, um, and I'm a little bit panicked or something, then I know I need to read a bit more fiction. Yeah. Yeah, I understand that. Yes, I get like that too. I like to mix it up a bit, history books. I've just been reading a book, it's a memoir of somebody, a woman who was at boarding school in the 1960s. So I used to love all those Mallory Towers and Enid Blyton things when I was a kid, and it's just something different. And then I've got about 5 books on the go actually, or depending which mood I'm in and how long I've got to read and that sort of thing. Such a pleasure. It's kind of, it's just one of those things, it's just, you know what, the greatest power we can have is knowing what enriches us, knowing what brings us back round to our happy place. Yeah, and it's a, if you go to the library, it's a free hobby. You don't have to spend lots of money on expensive kit and buy a £200 Kindle or whatever. It's the words, words are there. For all of us to enjoy. And I really hope that your listeners will enjoy my book if they read it and will try the other books that we've talked about and get to their own happy place in a book. And we must make sure that we let our listeners know that, you know, if they want to mix it up a little bit and they want to go and dabble a little bit in knitting, you do have the Woolly Yarn, don't you? Yes, it used to be. I used to do a blog, and now the blog's still up there, woollyarn.co.uk, I think it is. But I stopped actually adding to it last Christmas when I was— it was full on with my book. But it's now on Facebook and Instagram, Woolly Yarn. So it's particularly British wool, local wool, Yorkshire wool that I champion, and designers. So I like to sort of point out the patterns and the new launches and things that I like, and just send some funnies out there and just create a little bit of community of like-minded people. It's very trendy now, you know, to knit. It's thrown off the shackles of the sort of old granny knitting a blanket sort of thing, although what's wrong with that if that's what you want to do? Yeah, it's It's quite up to date and now because it's— you knit a jumper, you've done it. It's not been done by somebody in a sweatshop being paid below minimum wage. And I really love these socks that I'm wearing now. Unfortunately, actually. You know, it's a very slow fashion way of doing things. But it keeps us entertained. Now we've come to the end of today's show. Thank you so much for chatting to us for the last hour, it's been fantastic. Please go out and get My Perfect Sister, and thank you for chatting to us, Penny. Thank you, Hazel, and I'll see you at my book launch next year. You will indeed, thank you. Bye-bye.