Gone West... Life is Peaceful Here

I'm currently in Cornwall. On my own. I'm still working for clients. And I'm trying to write. Trying really hard. The beauty of being freelance is that I can work from anywhere really, as long as there is a good WiFi connection and power. I can go anywhere.

So I decided to trundle off to Cornwall because I am lucky enough to be able to stay here free.. And it is beautiful. I am situated in a tiny village called Kingsand which is on the Cornwall / Devon border of the South West Coast path. I can walk for miles and miles with beautiful views over the coast and cliffs. I have already seen at least thirty butterflies since I have been here.

It's kind of my safe place. My place of firsts too, I've been coming here for 22 years. I saw my first brawl outside a pub, I also saw a stripper here when I was about ten; it was someones birthday in a pub and I stood on an outside table to see what was going on. I think I first got really drunk here when I was 15 too.

What Books Made You?

Yesterday, I went to Bailey's Women's Prize For Fiction and Grazia present #ThisBookClub Live, a panel discussion by five notable women and readers on the two books that they believe had the most influence on their careers and lives and shaped them to be who they are today. The discussion was part of a week's celebration of reading and authors in the run-up to the announcement of the winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction on Wednesday.

Chaired by renowned author, Kate Mosse, the panel was made up of columnist and author, Grace Dent; Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty and chair of the 2015 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction judges; Polly Vernon, Grazia columnist and author of Hot Feminist; Aminatta Forna, award-winning author and Jane Shepherdson Chief Executive of Whistles.

The discussion was lively, the women were intelligent, insightful and a joy to listen to; I was especially spellbound by Aminatta Forna who I must admit I had never read and who has the most mellifluous voice that I ever did hear and smart, lucid opions (must buy her book). Grace Dent is delightfully witty as you would expect from her columns and Polly Vernon is part-girly, part fierce-honesty. Shami Chakrabarti I love, I have heard talk before and she must be one of the wittiest lawyers that has lived... (sorry cheap lawyer joke there). Jane Shepherson, an incredibly impressive business woman came across warm and bright. Kate Mosse, was just well, the narrator/chair that charmed us all, as she does in her books.

Of the two books they chose each, I had read four of ten, the rest are on my reading list now... I will list these at the bottom.

However, what the discussion really left me with, was what books had affected me in the same way? What literature had shaped my life in some way.... obviously there are numerous, but as 60% of these were wiped out of their stipulations, due to the fact that they were written by men, I at least could cut my list a little shorter. Here, after some soul-searching, are my two...

1) Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

Frankenstein was one of the books I chose to write my dissertation on; a ten-thousand word rambling on motherhood, taking in the novels of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter, Mary Shelley, as well as Wollstonecraft's pioneering text, A Vindication of the Rights of Women. My dissertation, was not as good as it should of been, crafted in my third year at university where I was a little lost in a spiral of slight depression and - as I now recognise - quite bad OCD.

However, Frankenstein sung out to me when I read it... Billed as a horror story, I thought I would not like it, but in fact, I loved every part of it. The creature's narrative especially, which is written in the most beautiful language thrilled me to the core. Shelley is so gifted in telling the story, but she also teaches through it. She teaches about the danger of unnatural creation, the danger of leaving women by the way-side, the story of nature vs nurture. To me Frankenstein, is a story about a lost child and Shelley herself had an absent mother - dead as she was. With all the impressive themes that the novel delivers, what I most gained from it at the time, I think, was the beauty of language, of description and of narrative. The narratives of the three main protagonists of the novel are all written so differently. She is a wonder storyteller is Shelley.

2) Harry Potter series JK Rowling

Ok, I ummed an ahhed about this second choice, there are novels by Toni Morrison, Sylvia Plath, Margaret Atwood and Alice Walker which all shaped my "womanhood" and how I grew up, how I learnt about feminism and how I learnt about myself. But if we are really looking at books that glare out at me through the years, that I remember and reread. It is this series. From the first book, published when I was 11 to the last which I read proudly at 21, there was ten years of growing up, of fighting with my sister about who got to read the family copy first, of learning. I aged with Harry and Hermione (kick-ass female if ever there was one) and the rest.

There are two main points that I still take from these books, even as I read them now. Firstly Rowling inspires me as a writer because of her ability to tell stories, she is a great story teller, telling tales that span years with multiple characters and plot lines... I envy this and I praise that it can be done so well. 

Secondly, it is the magic. I have always loved the idea of magic existing alongside the humdrum of day-to-day life. Those are the best stories, to me. And at times when I felt adolescent and misunderstood and later when I felt sad and I didn't know why, these stories took me to a world that I wanted to believe was true. Now, older and not wiser and as I still attempt life and still make plenty of mistakes, I like to believe and live in the magic of everyday. And when I read Rowling, she still helps me to remember this.

So tell me please... what books made you who you are?

Books chosen by the panel:

Grace Dent: 

The Pursuit of Love - Nancy Mitford

Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel

Shami Chakrabarti

To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

The Biography of Eleanor Marx - Rachel Holmes

Jane Shepherdson

The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

Union Street - Pat Barker

Aminatta Forna

The  Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

All God's Children Need Travelling Shoes - Maya Angelou

Polly Vernon

Lace - Shelley Conran

The Signature of All Things - Elizabeth Gilbert

All available in good book shops and online.

#The100DayProject, #100DaysofWriting, Day 15

Why I Can't Wait to Be 30

So Lena Dunham is 29 today, which is my age and it made me feel great that she was... and then slightly insecure that she's achieved so much in terms of writing and creating, and I, well, haven't yet...But then I thought about being 29 and what that means, and what it means is that you are 30 next year (Jan for me)... And then I thought about turning 30 and... basically, I'm looking forward to it now.

When I was 25, I had a life-crisis for a week, feeling old and WTF am I doing and thirty is around the corner... and now I've come to terms with it and I am excited to reach the landmark and own it. 

Here's 10 reasons why:

1) People take you more seriously...

I don't think this is just a woman thing... I hope it's not anyway. But when you are in your twenties... a lot of people still look at you and think.. "ahh youth" when you have an opinion or "OK maybe darling" when you make a life decision.

If you went to have an important operation, would you prefer a 28 year-old doctor or a 32 year-old one?

2) I've felt around 30 inside, since I was born.

My mother said I was born 32, that I came out with this wise look in my eyes, forgive a mother;s bias.. it was a compliment. What I remember is my university boyfriend when I asked about the "financial situation" of his best friend at uni who had a gambling issue. "WTF are you talking about..." he said, "Financial situation.". I was confused.  People have always looked at me like I'm a lunatic because I think about things in a way that people a lot older than me would (believe me this is not said in an arrogant way)... I feel at 30, maybe I won't seem like such an old bore anymore.

3) Dating up and down is fine

25 or 35 is OK at 30...

See also, having younger and older friends....

4) I just want to hang out in places where I can have a nice conversation and not SHOUT.

This is an oldie but a goodie. It's true though. WTF the point is in going to see your friends in a bar or club that is so loud that basically you don't hear anything they say all night.

5) Things.... are just not so important

You used to think that things made you feel successful and important. Now you know that actually experiences do... and at 30 it's not too cringe to admit that.

6) I like reading OK... and maybe not just on holiday or the latest "blockbuster".

I mean, I've always liked reading. I read bible sized books at 13 and got teased for it. It's been building up to it for years, but finally at 30, most people embrace the value of books.

7) It's not cool to hate 

Yourself, or people, or things... I feel like being disinterested or dismissive of things is a disease of your twenties.. THANK HELL. I've always loved loving things and experiences and the oncoming milestone of thirty is helping me LOVE myself too. (Yes, I've used that phrase- suck it!!)

8) Decorating and interiors

Do I need to explain this...?

9) Problems are problems

OK, this may seem bitchy of me, but how many times in our twenties are we all ready to deal with a friend's HUMONGOUS  problem before the actual issue is regurgitated to you and you realise it is nothing. As we get older, we realise what is a real issue and worth the attention of that and what is not. I am looking forward to dismissing my minor issues as irrelevant.

10) 29 is just asking for it...

You know what I mean, it is a shifty age is 29, neither here nor there. It's like PMS for 30.

#The100DayProject, Day 7, #100DaysofWriting

Leading Our Own Life

Soooo... I've been a little quiet lately because I've been figuring my shit out, to put it bluntly. You might remember in a post I wrote about reading the signs that life was battering me a bit - or really I was battering myself. The thing is that I was working in a job for some great people, had been there for four years and I just wasn't feeling any joy from it any more, you know. It was becoming something that I had to get through every day and instead of waking up and thinking what can I achieve today I was letting the fear of change and failure crush me, standing still and curled up, feeling lower and lower.

I was preaching all this stuff on Instagram and in my blog posts about how to live your life but I wasn't doing it. I half-heartedly looked at other positions, but I knew it wasn't what I wanted. I didn't want to work for someone else doing the same thing. That wasn't why I was unhappy, it was because I wasn't using my best qualities. I was living a life governed by what I thought I should and it was destroying me.

What Future for Words?

This is the first in a series of posts Ì have written on the Cheltenham Literary Festival. I tried to blog #live-ish from the event, but bearing in my mind I'm rubbish at filing my blog copy when I have a laptop and three free hours...trying to do it between talks and book signings and dinners was a little difficult.. and I was a little lazy.

The What Future For Words? debate was sponsored by Warwick University and asked just asked that questions and furthermore, what the challenges and opportunities facing a new generation of writers in the shifting cultural landscape were. 

Chair Roly Keating of the British library was joined by writer, AL Kennedy, publisher Gail Rebuck, spoken-word artist Amerah Saleh and games writer and novelist Rebecca Levene to discuss the future of writing in the UK.

In Praise of Americana

Friday was the 4th of July, Independence Day, a celebration for Americans across the world. Generally as a fastidious cynical Brit there's plenty of things I like to criticise about our friends over the pond notably language, faux-positivity an geographical ignorance. However really the United States of America is a complex and astounding country that has given the world a lot of impressive objects, laws, celebrations and notable figures. In honour of the 4th July, here is my personal and current top 10 brilliant Yank things or people:

1) Attitude

Yes, yes, yes. Well done. You can. Congrats. The yanks are streets ahead of us in celebrating success. The clichéd and much maligned American dream is still woven into the fabric of the country. Every small town gal and guy can make their dreams come true and America praises them when they do. They're proud of their countrymen's success. 

Whilst there may be a lot to criticise about the American attitude towards various things, they rarely tear down and scorn the successful as we often do in Britain. Surely success should be encouraged (ungrit your teeth).

2) Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Country Music and Hoedowns

Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, the man in black, drug addict, lover, prison reformer and epic songwriter and singer. I pine for his dark tones and languid lyrics. I do not recognise his world and yet I lap up the emotion he conveys. I want him.

Dolly Parton and her hoedown contemporaries are part of a genre that we will never have in GB, despite our recent bout of nu-folk bands. Oh how I yearn to journey to Nashville and dance in cowboy boots all night...

3) Denim

Levi's were the first, hard wearing clothing for the workers which have since become an international unform for hipster teens, weekend dads, chic oligarch wives and everything in between.

God bless America for making our lives easier...

4) Teen Drama TV

Not sure if I would have got through the relative vanilla-mess of my Home Counties adolescence without Dawson, Jen, Joey, Pacey, Ryan, Marisa, Brooke, Lucas, Chuck and Blair. Well in to my early twenties these kids had my heart and the wardrobes I wanted. Why did public school boys from Guildford not have the rippling abs of Ryan or the deft wit of Seth, the sexiness of Chuck. Why didn't we have jocks and keg parties and incredible vocabularys...

In "teen-drama" land if you drunk a few drinks every Saturday, you were probably an alcoholic, the boys next door were cute (they NEVER are) and it was quite normal for close friends to die or have sex with your boyfriends...I bloody miss them and their prematurely 30-year-old acerbic wit...

(*side note: also weird how the actors playing their parents were probably about five years older than some of them)

5) ScarJo

Yes, I know her parents are Danish and Russian or something similar, but she is seen as the modern classic American sex symbol, and she is. At the top of my #girlcrush list... there are little who rival that blonde bombshell look. She makes some good films too... but to be honest I just stare at her face.

6) Hollywood and Films

This could be seen to be a tad wide perhaps.. but the USA is the centre of the film industry, the championer of the Talkie, the location of the famous Hollywood Hills. Some of the best movies in the world ever have been made there.. and some more of the best have been funded by money that comes from there.

I can't really write too much about films without being terribly sweeping and I love too many. So I'm not going to, but you get my point.

7) Martin Luther King

 “You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be. And one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid…. You refuse to do it because you want to live longer…. You’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that somebody will stab you, or shoot at you or bomb your house; so you refuse to take the stand.

Well, you may go on and live until you are 90, but you’re just as dead at 38 as you would be at 90. And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.”

8) New York City

  There is something in the New York air that makes sleep useless. Simone Beauvoir

I lived in New York when I was 19 in 2005 for three months with one of my best friends. 

We had a tiny apartment in East Village that was infested with mice, we had no TV and lived on Chips Ahoy and Reeses Pieces. By day we interned at an advertising company and a photography studio. At night and at the weekend, we walked and shopped and explored. We only walked though, we had no idea how to use public transport.. occasionally at night we'd shell for a taxi. We blagged our way with terrible fake ids and the most British accents we could manage into clubs: Duvet, Marquee, Bungalow 8 and then stood silently staring at everyone, impossibly glamourous American everyones. And there we were in our peasant skirts and coin belts weighed down by beads, as was the way.

We snuck into gallery openings and drunk all the free wine. One time we stayed up all night dancing in the W Hotel basement and then later in The Coffee Shop with some boys from New Jersey who bought us club sandwiches and champagne. 

Us in NYC, 2005

We stalked the Olsen Twins, devouring US Weekly and the like to try and guess where we could run in to them. We bought so many clothes that we couldn't afford. We stared at ground zero sadly. We watched live music in little dive bars in Greenwich Village and skipped down the street at midnight singing Downtown by Petula Clark..

The thing is... we just weren't aware. We knew we were lucky, but we weren't aware how lucky.

New York is beautiful city, an impossible city, a city that deafens you and hurls you around. It is in your face you see, but it's also layered and witty and clever. And small enought to really know. And big enough to hide. And you can just walk everywhere, which I love.

9) F Scott Fitzgerald and His Contemporaries

20th Century American literature has always been one of my favourite eras. I just loved what they were searrching for, Fitzgerald, Williams, Salinger, Miller, Walker, Kerouac, Lee and then later, Palahnuik and Morrison etc etc etc. It was so different to everything I ever read before when I started reading it at 16. It was so about the now and the future and little to do with the past... It was so about the pressures of success and who belonged. What made one acceptable or a decent person. Racism, Sexism, Capitalism it was all so exciting it burned me up inside and kept me searching for more from over-the-pond.

This may be another too-wide reaching paragraph. But it's true.

10) Computers and Social Media

Bill Gates; Steve Jobs; Marc Zuckerberg; Jack Dorsey... I salute them all...

England, My Profoundly Bizarre Place

Last Wednesday was St George's day and despite being a proud, patriotic (3/4) English woman, I wasn't aware of it until I went on Twitter at 9am. It was also Shakespeare's 450th birthday, a fact I was more aware of due to the million e-mail newsletters I receive from theatres and cultural blogs everyday. A proud day for England some might say.

Yet, this year, as every year I couldn't help but think about the lack of energy surrounding St George's day. Sure there are celebrations going on.. Apparently there was a parade.. but does anyone really care about this day of Englishness? Compared with the international celebrations that St Patrick's Day brings and the intensely patriotic celebrations of the 4th July in the USA and apparently (according to the Dutch intern in my office) Kingsday in Holland among many others, St George's day barely resonates in England.

To be honest, I'm not sure why it is. Perhaps St George's cross has been hijacked too many times by far-right fascist, sexist arseholes hell-bent on narrow-minded, misinformed destruction. Perhaps the English still harbour guilt over years of oppression of the empire. Whatever it is, we're not really allowed to be English anymore. 

It's not that I'm not proud of being British, I am. My blood is a quarter Irish with streaks of Scots and I've Welsh relatives, but I've been brought up in England. My grandparents hail from Newcastle and Manchester as well as Dublin. My father is a born and bred Saarrff-Londoner and my mother grew-up in Surrey, as did I. 

I'm proud of being English as well as British and I think we should be. So I thought I'd round up my 11 reasons I'm happy to be English today and what we should cherish and celebrate. 

1) Accents

Is there a place that per square mile has as many different, strange accents as England? From Geordie to Sarf-London, from Manc to middlesborough to the West-Country. From Cockney to Scouse to Yorkshire. I love it and I love them all.

2) Music 

The quote in the title of this post was from Gene Simmons, of Kiss, an American who said:   

"England is a profoundly bizarre place that has produced thousands of bands the world has worshipped."

This is something we continue to do. Producing an eclectic mix of great music, talented musicians, internationally adored bands and fantastic producers and DJs. All with that hint of humour behind them that is ever-present in English culture. 

Glastonbury is still the best festival in the world.. despite Coachella's posy pretension and fucking sunshine ALL THE TIME. In 2012 four out of the top five best-selling albums in the US were British (English actually except Niall from 1D). I'm not saying you have to love all our exports, but appreciate what the country can do.

3) Sports

Yeah we never win the football, yet still we soldier on believing . The English invented many games that they are now rubbish at. Yet still we back our own, still we stoutly support sports that we would generally never watch or understand if our own are doing well.

We celebrate very Englishly too, quick celebration, the pub and back to work the next day. Not like other countries I could mention...

Recently the Olympics has been our greatest achievement, the (British-I-know) team and the great English city of London showed the world. However one of the best days of my life involved Johnny Wilkinson and the England Team against Oz, a fabulous drop-kick in extra-time, all on one miserable November day in 2003.

I went to a very good party the evening of this match back when I was 17.. I remember we worried for weeks that if England lost, no boys would come and we'd be left drinking Breezers and snogging each other. Luckily it ended up being a night to remember and one of my friends even lost her virginity; poor lad was full of beer and emotion and dear sweet Johnny, so she got rogered against a garden shed... it was like the summer of love all over again.

4) Fashion

I just love the creativity of the English with their fashion. I love how they are not scared to look a little scruffy around the edges. We're not as chic as the French or Italians, we're not as glowy and blowy as the Americans, we're not afraid to clash or dress something up or down or layer or over accesorise.

Also, every town in England has a slightly different style and I love that and I love noticing it as I travel.

I love our designers best of all. If I could live in Williamson, Dame Westwood and Burberry, I'd be fine. Throw in some Hunter Wellies, M&S, Sweaty Betty and Topshop and a a lot of Vintage and who needs anything else. And yes, I do mean all together.

5) Laugh English

I altered this myself.. The English humour is the BEST. Will never be beaten. Look at comedy, look at literature. Look at our attitude towards life. All with a pinch of salt and a derogatory comment or a harmless joke. Love this.

6) Blitz Spirit/English Attitude

I really don't need to write much for this... it's the small things and the large. Call it what you will, if you find the Blitz spirit thing too much of a cliche.. It's putting ones head down and getting on with it, cracking a joke here and there, supporting others without asking for any reward. Sometimes we think we've lost it, but it's always lingering under the service there.. ready for use.

7) "A Nation of Shopkeepers"

The origin of this phrase is a little misleading as thought it is always Napoleon who is quoted:

"L'Angleterre est une nation de boutiquiers."

Belittling the English in one fail swoop with his dismissal of our commercial-based power. He believed the English would be weak in the war as they had no land power, only naval and commerce. However, it was in fact used first by Scottish philosopher and economist, Adam Smith, often sited as being "the father of modern economics", he extolled the virtues of the free market.

Either way, it is in this I am proud, we are resourceful and entrepreneurial and we like to buy and sell things... it is what we are good at. From little village shops, to great department stores to international brands and web based retailers. I am not saying that a completely commercial world is a great thing, but this need to consume and sell and find another little niche is just so English. It does upset me when I see great chains destroying village high streets, but we need those as well. Again, it is the attitude.

8) English Country Garden (and Village)

Idealised in the Victorian period when the cities finally overtook the countryside in terms of population in Britain, an English Country Garden became the rural idyll for town folk. Nowadays we still love the picture of England's green and pleasant land in our heads, even though that is rarely what we see.

Similarly with village life, we love the idea of the English village full of strange people and their dogs. Broadcast has covered it since it started, from the Archers to the Vicar of Dibley to the Great British Bake-off.

I love this about England, love the ideal of it even if it's not true. Love a village and a garden.

9) Travel

Sir Ranulph Fiennes, one of England's Finest Explorers

We may not bother to learn any other languages as we simply assume that English is spoken the world over, but we do know how to travel and we are good at it. (Brits Abroad not withstanding). Travel broadens the mind and as we live on a very small island it is important that we do this. We have forever, not always with the best results.. but we're better at it now. You can't be proud of your own nationality if you don't go and see others and see what's great about theirs too. And no, most of Spain's beach resorts in the summer-holidays do not count as a trip abroad.

At the least travel round Great Britain and see all the wonderful places there are to see.. yeah

10) Literature and Poetry

Sure we're the nation of Shakespeare and Byron and Keats, Dickens and Mary Shelley, Austen and the Brontes. However, our modern offering is just as impressive: Abi Morgan, Hilary Mantel, Mendelson, Ishiguro and McEwan. It's an endless list. 

A pride in both the past, present and tentative future of our writers and poets is still very much part of our heritage.

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

From: The Soldier - Rupert Brooke

Hurrying to catch my Comet

One dark November day,Which soon would snatch me from itTo the sunshine of Bombay,I pondered pages BerkeleyNot three weeks since had heard,Perceiving Chatto darklyThrough the mirror of the Third.

Had made my taxi late,
Yet not till I was airborne
Did I recall the date -
The day when Queen and Minister
And Band of Guards and all
Still act their solemn-sinister
Wreath-rubbish in Whitehall.
These mawkish, nursery games:
O When will England grow up?

Crowds, colourless and careworn
It used to make me throw up,

 From: Naturally the Foundation will Bear Your Expenses - Philip Larkin

11) Art and Expression

Just do it. Most of all what I love about England is its ability to move forward and adapt and enjoy the times. We begrudgingly moan for a minute and then embrace a new culture, just like that and our Englishness is about embracing the subcultures and the new creative movements and celebrating the diversity. We've always been a small country that has filtered our experiences of the world and its people into our own ethos.

And that's it my little eccentric English friends and others... love England being English and British and I love the world... 

Please note as well... these are my prides.. yours could be totally different...

All images are not (c) me - except a couple of Instagram ones

Literary Role Models for Girls 1: Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lingdgren

This is a new series of posts that looks at literary icons for children, teens and tweens. Fed up of the idolisation of pop-stars and celebutantes who aren't always the best examples for the nations daughters (though I'm not saying they should be), I wanted to look at the girls and women that inspired me as a child and taught me that I could be anything I wanted.

Before Lisbeth Salander made everyone Scandimanic, there was one Pippi Longstocking; a nine-year-old with super human strength left to live alone by her sailor father with a horse and a monkey. Recogniseable for her ginger pigtails and freckles, she is rude and adventurous possessing little formal education, yet having all the necessary life skills to look after herself.

Whilst living alone in a multi- coloured mansion with only animals for company and no grown-ups to tell one what to do may be every child's dream, it is the spirit of Pippi that stays with you to adulthood. Sparky, prone to truth stretching and the antithesis of the traditional little girl ideals of dolls and cooking, she has been encouraging fun and good clean mischief for over sixty years.

The children came to a perfume shop. In the show window was a large jar of freckle salve, and beside the jar was a sign, which read: DO YOU SUFFER FROM FRECKLES?

"What does the sign say?” asked Pippi. She couldn’t read very well because she didn’t want to go to school as other children did.

"It says, ‘Do you suffer from freckles?’” said Annika. 

"Does it indeed?” said Pippi thoughtfully. “Well, a civil question deserves a civil answer. Let’s go in.” She opened the door and entered the shop, closely followed by Tommy and Annika. An elderly lady stood back of the counter. Pippi went right up to her. “No!” she said decidedly. 

"What is it you want?” asked the lady.

"No,” said Pippi once more.

"I don’t understand what you mean,” said the lady.

"No, I don’t suffer from freckles,” said Pippi.Then the lady understood, but she took one look at Pippi and burst out,

“But, my dear child, your whole face is covered with freckles!”

"I know it,” said Pippi, “but I don’t suffer from them. I love them. Good morning.” She turned to leave, but when she got to the door she looked back and cried, “But if you should happen to get in any salve that gives people more freckles, then you can send me seven or eight jars.” 

― Astrid Lindgren, Pippi Longstocking