7. A Party In A Hurricane (or How To Get A Boy)

The Obsessive Diary · Aug 29, 2025 · 2m

Home was a tall, cold house in London; intellectual, artistic, my father a writer, my mother an architect, guests, lodgers, friends and strangers, the bedrooms full of us and them, paintings on the walls, politics at the table. I moved amongst it all being pretty and clever, a seventies childhood of lentils and greens and feeling unseen, the house too full, my mother too busy, my father rarely there. I went to the local ILEA, The Marlborough, my mother was a governor. I was the only pupil in my year who lived in a private house. Everyone else came from the council flats across the road. I…