Three Books – Daisy Buchanan

Hello and welcome to Three Books with me, Angela Clarke on women's radio station. On today's show, we welcome Daisy Buchanan, journalist, Agni aunt, and according to the Huffington Post, one of the funniest women on Twitter. Daisy's how to Be a Grown up is a part memoir, part self help guide for anyone who feels they are struggling with adulting. Daisy, what inspired you to write how to Be a grown up? My 30th birthday was approaching and I was lying awake. I was being fancy on holiday in New York, apartments sitting, and I kept being woken up because there were these two cats who were very chilled out and charming until I arrived in the apartment. And when their mum was away, they, they played and they took exception to me. So I was there needing to go to the loo, thinking, I can't go to the loo because the cats will demand to be fed, even though I fed them about an hour ago. Thinking as well about the upcoming birthday and thinking, I really wish there was some sort of audit I could do for adulthood. I'd really like to talk to you, an independent financial advisor, although obviously not one of those, because the idea of contemplating my bank balance or anything to do with money fills me with horror. But just someone who'd say, you're doing really well at these bits. It's fine, I think, because 30 especially is such a milestone and now I'm on the other side of it. I know there are infinite ways to be and you don't have to achieve any of the perceived milestones. But you know, I'm a millennial generation, compare and despair. And I'm aware of lives of my friends and family and peers in a way that I just wouldn't have been years ago. And I think we're constantly working out, you know, to see whether we measure up, if we measure up at all. And so I just wanted to write the thing I wanted to read and I believed it would be of comfort, hopefully to lots of other people in their 20s and beyond. That says it's all okay and you're not messing up in the way that you probably think you are. And everybody's struggling and actually the best thing you can do is to find the funny in every disaster. So you talk about being a millennial, but actually people of all ages have responded with joy to how to be a grown up. So YouTube sensation Zoella describes it as full of head nodding moments and best selling author Marianne Keys said every woman should read it. Why do you think it resonated with so many women? Regardless of Whether they thought they were grown up yet or not. I do like to imagine when Zoella said about the head nodding, that it was like she was listening to music going, yeah, come on. I am so, so happy that it did. I wrote it, I think, with an intention of kindness. I wanted a hug in a mug. But a book and, you know, something I'm aware of at the moment, the new edition's about to come out in paperback and it's also graduation time. Lots and lots of young people are about to enter the world in the workforce for the first time. And I think they've got parents who want to know how to understand and support them better and understand a bit more about what they're going through and what their lives are like. I've got a chapter on what it's like to be an adult child and reacting and relating to other adults. You know, I moved back and lived at home for a bit after I graduated, and I know lots of. I've got friends who are in the same boat, who are. They have children who are probably closer to my age than their age. And, you know, they love their children, they want to support them, and they miss them when they're not there. But equally, they know they should be making their way in the world if it's possible. And I know that isn't always possible. So I do think that now generations are really coming together, that we're all finding points of connection. And I think that's. That's maybe it, that there are also adults for whom the digital world, say, is new. And Facebook can be as tricky to navigate, whether you're, you know, 50 or 25 or 75, if you're, you know, relatively new to it. So if you are having a bad day, what's the book that you always return to? The book that I have read the most is the Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford. We had a very short reading from it, from my wedding, and the character Linda describes falling in love and knowing it's love after being mistaken so many times as being like seeing a friend in the street and you've mistaken other people for this friend and then you see the friend and it's so absolutely them that you can't imagine how they ever thought they were anyone else. It's just such a gorgeous, enchanting story. And Nancy Mitford is so witty and so clever. My friend, the writer Angie Miller, has talked about how, you know, she is froth in a very French sense. It's absolute lightness. There's nothing, you know, that's not sort of, you know, it's not to say she isn't sort of an intellectual heavyweight. She's an enormously clever woman. And I honestly think it's much harder to write about love and make it as sad and warm and relatable, as funny as she does then, you know, to be heavy handed about something. And do you like all of her books? I do, I do. There are some that I don't love as much as others I really adore. There's the Blessing, which is, it's interesting because it's about a divorce and the blessing is the child, Suzi, who is playing his parents off against each other. His parents separating because the, the duke, his dad is having an affair and his mum, who was English and his dad is French, saying, no thank you, let's get divorced. And everyone is saying, well, no, he's, he's French, let him get on with it. Take a lover if you must, but don't divorce him. And it's funny because we think that this is a very modern idea, but actually it's not that modern at all. And that's really funny. And I think of this time and of its time and then I suppose I think there are a few things like Pigeon Pie, which has been published under other titles, is lovely, but it reads almost more like a series of sketches than, you know, it's not quite got the fullness of character. And I think what I adore about the Pursuit of Love is the characters are so full. You've got Uncle Davey again, very of its time, but it seems so modern. He's obsessed with what he eats. He's a sort of proto clean eater. And he has these, he calls them White Days and Red Days. And one of Nancy Bitford's great jokes is, funnily enough, if chocolate was on the menu, it could always be subsumed into a red category or a white category. Do you think he would be a vegan, a gluten free vegan, if he was around now? I think he'd be an absolute man for fad. So I think he'd have maybe a week or a month of being vegan and then he'd do some sort of Atkins redux and then he'd be, you know, eating food out of bins if someone said that was trendy. Now, Nancy Mitford is one of several sisters and you are the eldest of six sisters. How much did growing up in such a large family inform your writing voice? I think it did in that I was always trying to make My sisters laugh. And I was lucky because I had so much access to funny things and people reacting and high drama. There's something really, really camp about my family, and I think about families in general, that the tiny things are made so dramatic and important and ridiculous. And I think I like to think I'm quite a camp writer and I have an appreciation for it. And of course, in a family that size, you're not allowed to get away with anything. Nothing you do is ever taken serious, which is difficult at times, but it also makes for some rich writing experiences. Definitely, definitely. There's a chapter on how to manage money that appears in how to Be Grown Up. Do you think women are discouraged from talking about money? And do you think that that should change? It was interesting because I wrote a piece about this for Marie Claire and I interviewed my friend Jo Hemmings, who's a behavioral psychologist and she is a self professed shopper. But she was saying how funny it is that when women say, oh, I'm so bad with money. Oh, I bought another handbag, you. Oh, you. Whereas there's a double standard where if a man says that he's bad with money, it's a big red flag. You think, you know, in a sort of Jane Austen way, you know, I need 12,000 a year from this in the 18th century, from this man. How will he provide? And I think it does everyone a disservice, this idea that women are discouraged from talking about that. And I think what's really interesting is women have been earning their own money and using the money they earn to run households and support themselves for a relatively short amount of time. And I think that's why we're so new to it. And I'm a freelance writer and I really do struggle to separate my earning from my worth. And something I have a big problem with still is if I get paid something, you know, because I also, I started out working in magazines. I was an intern. Even when I was a staffer, I was barely earning anything that you could call a wage. And something I told myself at the time was like, well, no, if I just work for 15 hours a day, they'll see how hard I'm working and how good I am. They'll give me more money and, you know, no, of course they're not going to do that. Brilliant. She's good and she's cheapness of a fiver. Well, thank you, Daisy. We'll be right back with more on Daisy after these ads. Women's radio station will give a voice to your brand. 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Breast cancer. Visit breastcancercare.org.uk Walk. Welcome back to Three Books on Women's Radio Station, the programme where we discover the three books that have shaped and influenced today's female writers. Today we are talking to award winning journalist, agony aunt and author of witty self help guide how to Be a Grown Up Daisy Buchanan. Daisy, you write sensitively and bravely about your struggles with anxiety. Is it important to you to discuss mental health issues? It really is. I think that now they are becoming such a big part of everyone's agenda. We know there's a statistic that gets quoted all the time that says one in four of us will experience it. And I would have thought there's going to be much more than that, that I think that we need to get into the habit of talking about our mental health in the same way that we talk about our physical health and think of it as taking our temperature and recognizing our signs and triggers. And I think that what lots of people do at the moment, and it's just because of the way we talk about it and you know, what has existed before when we try to understand it, is that it wait until something goes really horribly wrong and then of course it's difficult to seek help and something that I am aware of Is, you know, there's such a stigma. I didn't know I had anxiety until my mid-20s. I just thought, does everybody not feel this way? Is everyone not constantly heart pounding, on the verge of tears, thinking, you know, the world will end if you don't get the A star or if you leave your lab coach in the locker? I was a real nerd. That was the reason my anxiety share daddiness. So I do think that while I write about myself quite a lot, it's very important for me that it's never gratuitous that I want every single experience I share to serve someone else. Obviously, I have no way of knowing that. That I can only hope. But I'm, I guess going from a point of attempted empathy maybe to think, well, what would have been really useful for me to hear a few years ago when I was going through something and, you know, something or someone had shared what they were experiencing, it might have comforted me. It's interesting actually, because there does feel like we're living in quite anxious times. Like a lot of people are suffering from anxiety, like there's a bit of an epidemic. But I don't know if it's. If it's because, you know, we're being triggered by social media and that's kind of changed the way in which we kind of interact or if it's that. Also we're talking about it more as well, so it's a little bit more open. Do you think it's one feeding the other or do you think social media and things like that impact on anxiety? I think there's an element of symbiosis. Something that I keep thinking about is just how many people are in my head. And I was thinking about something today and feeling really guilty about not getting back to someone's email and also about some work I did with someone and it stalled a bit and it's like, oh, I thought I let them know about that, but did I? And then, oh, and my friend's got a book out and I've not said congratulations. And I think that I just wouldn't have known all these people before social media. And it's a privilege and a joy and it enriches your life, but it does absolutely kind of suck at you a bit. I think it's very, very hard to focus on what you're achieving and what you want to do and who you are. I was always that child in school while being a nerd, as we've established, where the teacher had to say, stop looking at genuinely behind you, do the work, focus on what's in front of you. And it's like the expression stay in your lane. When I first heard that, I thought, well, that sounds really mean. And like, you know, you don't go where you're not wanted and just focus on your own thing. But actually that's really important to do, to have some, some boundaries. And I don't. And I think again, because it's not social media as such, it's the fact that it's so new and we've been given this sort of mad infinity machine and we have no tools as to how to handle it or how to recognize when it's not making us feel good and we don't know how to step back from it. And, you know, lots of people, I find this a lot when I talk to, I guess, you know, the parents of teens and 20 somethings and the parents themselves and they say, well, you know, surely the thing to do is just step down and shut it down and not go on. I think, well, no, that's not really practical because you're going to be really isolated if you're alive in 2018 and doing that unless you genuinely don't want to participate, which of course is fine. And so I think that we have to recognize that it's not a sort of ephemeral thing. It's a massive part of the world we live in now. And it's a space where we need to feel seen and we need to feel connected. And when it's good, it's so very good. But you know, when it's bad, it's toxic and we need to balance the two. So going back to your point of looking at what the girl behind you is doing during school, what's the book that you wish you'd written? Nice segue. It is. It's really hard to choose this because there was another book that I nearly said, but I picked Bridget Jones Diary by Helen Fielding. I think Helen Fielding is one of the finest novelists he's ever lived. She's a brilliant comedic novelist. I love funny things. I think that often funny things are dismissed because they're so easy and joyful to read. People assume they must be easy to write when they're the hardest things things to write. And I think that what she did is so powerful because Bridget Jones has sort of entered the language and entered the vernacular. And people are really rude about Bridget Jones when they've not read the books. They're not familiar with the books or even the films necessarily. And it's become a sort of a single girl cliche. Whereas firstly, I think we forget that in the 90s it was still unusual to have a single woman protagonist. And, you know, she wants to fall in love. It's not just about having a man. She really wants someone to make her happy. And that has existed in literature and you had, you know, male characters doing that in literature for thousands of years. But some of Helen Fielding's lines in that, my goodness, the brilliant, brilliant description of an unexpected heat wave in London. And there's a bit where she talks about how everyone's sort of rushing around and losing their minds, trying to, you know, oh, we must go to an outdoor cafe and sit on a pavement drinking Citron Presse and pausing only to think, shouldn't we be an outdoor performance of a Shakespeare play? Marvellous. If you were updating it, obviously, it would be an aperol spritz. Out of interest, what was the second book that was vying for that Space Diary of Adrian Mole Again, for the same reason, I think that, see, Townsend is, you know, they're both, for my money, as good as Woodhouse and I adore PG Wodehouse. But, yeah, that just every single line in Adrian Mole, my goodness, it's just devastatingly good. You know, it's like sort of perfect, tiny plays. It actually reminds me of Victoria Wood and perhaps if, you know, to add something that isn't a book, maybe. I also wish that I'd written Dinner Ladies. Oh, yes, that would be marvellous, wouldn't it? Or beat me on the bottom with A Woman's Weekly. I think that's one of the best comic lines. I mean, honestly, you could just write I am a fish a billion times. And if you wrote the Woman's Weekly line, you'd still be one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. Absolutely. Now, there's a beautiful chapter on being sad in how to be a grown up. And in a world that's often obsessed with outward appearances of success, ramped up through kind of compare and itis on social media, how important is it to feel rubbish once in a while? Thank you for saying that. I think it's so important and was just surrounded by, I guess, information about how to be happy and you should be happier and we need those lows and we need levels and we need to know. And I think, again, it's really connected with mental health that now, because we are. It's a very tricky thing to. To navigate because obviously you should absolutely look after your mental health. But I think perhaps part of that is recognizing when you feel sad and low and allowing yourself to have that feeling, because it's when you don't, you try to run from it and push it away, that you cause problems further down the line. Life is magical and glorious, but it's also bloody hard. You know, there are all sorts of disappointments and tricky bits and you need to know. You need to have those sadnesses and know that you can come through them and that it's going to be okay. You know, I think of things like grief and I'm really lucky in that I don't think I've lost anyone before it was their time. My darling granny died last year and I was very close to her and I was heartbroken to Lisa. But Also, she was 19. She'd been ready to go for ages. You know, we were gutted by it. She was delighted. But if you've not allowed yourself to experience and feel those tiny sadnesses, I think the inevitable big ones, like grief, will really knock you sideways. And something I think that's really important is if we can, and I know it's a big ask, we have maybe a responsibility or a sort of an implied responsibility to share the sadness, you know, so other people know they're not alone when they go through it and they're surrounded by perfect, happy people on Instagram. And finally, what's the book that made you think differently about women? Gotta say, Nora Ephron the most of her essay collection again. She wrote a brilliant essay about losing a job to arrival and she wrote so honestly about corrosive envy and career envy and competitiveness and comparing. And I thought, but you're Nora Ephraim. You're not just born thinking, no, I'm brilliant and I'm really funny and everything I do will be great. Also, her essay on Dorothy Parker and wanting to be her and the danger of wanting to be the only woman in a room full of men and how to put a stop to that is great. That's essential reading, I think now, as ever, thank you very much, Daisy. How to be Grown up by Daisy Buchanan is published by Headline and is out in paperback from 28 June. If you have any questions for three books, email us on presentersmensradiostation.com or tweet us. Womensradiostn. That's Women's Radio Stn. You've been listening to three books on women's Radio Station with me, Angela Clark. If you'd like to listen to any of programmes again or catch up on any of them, if you'd like to listen to it again or catch up on any of our previous programs, you can head to the presenters page on womensradiostation.com thanks for listening. We care about social change within communities around the world and we want to help. This is why Women's radio station is giving free airtime to all charities. For more details on charity advertising, visit our website@www.womensradiostation.com. hi, I'm Michelle Bartlett, the founder of Live Laugh Love Ladies Club. We're looking for ladies to link arms across the globe. This is a new vibrant brand connecting women socially. 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