Between HRT and the fish oils, I feel younger than 60
AUTHOR MARIAN KEYES TALKS TO HANNAH STEPHENSON ABOUT KEY ANNIVERSARIES OF WRITING, MARRIAGE AND QUITTING BOOZE
SHE may call herself an “ordinary alcoholic” – but there is nothing ordinary about global bestselling novelist Marian Keyes, whose contemporary tales of relationships, family and the ups and downs of life have earned her millions of fans.
In January, she celebrated 30 years of sobriety, feeling “pride, pleasure and delight”, posting a heartfelt Instagram message to those who are struggling with alcohol issues. Today, she openly admits that she still goes to support meetings regularly.
“I’m just an ordinary alcoholic, trying my best to stay sober one day at a time,” she says. “It doesn’t go away. It’s not like, you have cancer and then you get cured and you’re grand. But [meetings] work for me.”
There are other landmark anniversaries and events – a portrait of her was recently unveiled at the National Gallery of Ireland, she’s about to celebrate 30 years as a published author and last year she turned 60, although she doesn’t feel her age, she insists.
“I felt fine at the time because I’ve never minded about getting older. I’ve always felt that, as I’ve got older, life has got easier in terms of what people expect from women. Becoming invisible has definitely got a lot going for it.
“I’ve felt weird in that I feel much younger than 60 and in a way that my life is still waiting to start. I realise that people don’t grow out of this. I think one day I’ll feel like I’ve arrived. Sixty was the age that women were put out to grass, 60 sounds older than it actually is. It’s not what it was 30 years ago.
“You know, it’s youthful now. Between HRT and the fish oils, I feel younger than 60.”
Next year she will celebrate 30 years since her debut novel, Watermelon, was published. Her array of bestselling novels since then
Rachel’s Holiday, Grown Ups and This Charming Man.
Marian has gone through huge peaks and troughs since Watermelon was published, including periods of clinical depression when she was unable to sleep, read, write or talk and tried many therapies – both conventional and alternative.
She’s also gone through the menopause which she describes as “awful”. She says: “I was 45 when the perimenopause started. The anxiety was horrific, like, what was going on? It was the emotional stuff rather than the physical stuff that I found difficult – the mood swings, the fear, the anxiety, the rage. I felt way too young.
“I got HRT, but it took a while to get it right. I was lucky that the woman I went to wasn’t one of these menopause deniers. But I’ve encountered it since, the doctors who are reluctant to prescribe it, telling me, ‘There’s no need for it, women have done this for centuries.’
“Yeah, and for centuries there weren’t antibiotics either, people died from the flu. There was no such thing as an anaesthetic, so if you needed your leg amputated it was no fun.”
Today, though, she feels grateful for all that she has, both in her career and her personal life: “I feel amazed and incredibly lucky to have been published and allowed to keep doing this for so long,” she reflects.
Marian, who lives in Dublin with her husband Tony Baines, seems genuinely flummoxed as to why her novels – contemporary romantic tales peppered with her trademark wit, but often covering heavier themes including addiction, depression and bereavement – have become multi-million sellers that have stood the test of time.
“I can only go on what other people tell me, that I write with warmth and I’m truthful, honest and authentic in my characters and people find that comforting.”
Her latest book, My Favourite Mistake, sees fortysomething Anna Walsh – one of the sisters in the Walsh family, as featured in some of her previous novels – throwing away her dream life and high-flying career as a beauty PR executive in New York and ditching her partner to return to friends and family in Ireland.
Her sister, recovering alcoholic Rachel – as featured in Rachel’s Holiincludes day and Again, Rachel, a nod to Marian’s’ own experience of alcoholism – plays a supporting role in this tale.
In Ireland, Anna tries to help her friend Brigit set up a luxury wellness retreat in the face of staunch opposition by locals and sets out to uncover who is sabotaging the work site. Meanwhile, Anna’s past relationship with her guarded colleague Joey keeps the reader guessing.
Marian admits that she went through her fair share of unsuitable boyfriends in her 20s when she was at the height of her alcoholism: “It’s always presented as something fun, but after I got sober, I thought, why would I spend time with someone who is unreliable and mean?
“Falling in love is not a game, it’s about real life, thinking, can I live with this person? Do I care about them, do I want to mind them, do I trust them, are they kind to me?”
Enter Tony, her husband of almost 30 years, who she knew through friends while she was still drinking. She recalls the moment she realised that he was ‘the one’: “It was eight months after we started spending time together and he came to collect me from work. I remember waiting at the door.
“And he appeared around the corner, right on time. I was looking at him thinking, ‘He’s beautiful and he’s lovely to me and we have so much fun.’ That was it. He didn’t let me down.
“He’s reliable, he’s kind, he’s clever,” she continues. “He is very different to me. He is whatever the opposite of an addict is. He’s moderate in his habits. But in other things, we are very aligned on our views on the world.”
They have both changed, she says, and have accommodated each other’s paths in life. Tony, for instance, loves climbing “Everest-style mountains”, Marian explains and she wouldn’t dream of stopping him.
As for turning 60, she says she doesn’t particularly take better care of herself physically.
“I’m rubbish at it. We’re supposed to be lifting weights and making our bones strong and eating a particular diet. Well, I don’t. I eat far too much chocolate and sweets. The only exercise I do is I run on a treadmill because it makes me feel happy.
“And every time I do it, I say that the next time I exercise I’m going to be doing the weights, the sit-ups, the whole business with the bone strengthening, but when it comes to it I think I’d rather just run.”
She runs around 8km every other day, having started during lockdown: “It kept my head straight and my body anxiety-free.”
To maintain her mental health, she’s careful about not taking too much on: “I don’t have the energy that I used to have and I find it unnatural to talk about oneself at length. It makes me feel not good and then I start worrying about what I’ve said.”
Marian says she no longer feels herself slipping into depression: “I’m not going there again. It was awful and I don’t think I’d have the stamina to survive another go.”
My Favourite Mistake by Marian Keyes, (Penguin Michael Joseph), priced £22
I’m just an ordinary alcoholic, trying my best to stay sober one day at a time
IF there’s one thing that Clarkson’s Farm has taught us, it’s that rarely do things go to plan in farming.
The Prime Video series is a warts and all portrayal of life for British farmers, from the limits of regulatory red tape to the catastrophes that bad weather can cause, but amidst the calamities are moments of joy: beautiful, sprawling Cotswolds countryside, plenty of laughs with Jeremy Clarkson and his farm manager Kaleb Cooper, and the fun and games that come with owning livestock.
Ahead of series three coming to Prime Video, let’s hear from Jeremy, 64, and Kaleb, 25, about what is going on at Diddly Squat Farm.
Tell me about series three: What’s your focus this time around?
JC: We have a 1,000-acre farm, but since I bought it in 2008, we’ve only ever farmed 500 acres of it. The other 500 acres is wildflower meadows, streams, woods, and rough ground. There are no crops growing, no animals, just countryside, because the state of farming is so parlous at the moment.
I bet Kaleb that I could earn more money from doing little projects on unfarmed land than he could from farming 500 acres. So, while he was stuck with the traditional wheat, barley, and arable farming, I started harvesting blackberries, planting mustard, and using tiny little pockets of unfarmed land around the place.
KC: It was pretty wet over the summer, and we had a very wet harvest, so when you first see us, it’s a bad start. But we changed things up a little bit: Jeremy made me farm manager. I don’t know why he did it this year because I’ve been doing it for the last five years, let’s face it, but I’m farm manager on paper now ...
What sorts of things did you use the unfarmed land for?
JC: We harvested the nettles which normally are just a nuisance and tried to make them into soup. I got pigs into the woods: woods are normally empty of cash, no money comes from them, so I just did little bits and bobs like that to see if I could make more than he did ...
We grew mushrooms at the top of the farm where there used to be an American bomber base; the underground air raid shelter is still there so I thought: “We can grow mushrooms in there.”
Jeremy, your new pigs sound fun, but I hear it doesn’t go to plan?
JC: It turns out that pigs aren’t great mothers as a general rule, but the Sandy and Blacks breed that we got makes for a particularly poor mother ...
The sows were giving birth, but it was always in the middle of the night, and it was bitterly cold. When you’ve got a sow that’s in trouble, you have to help out, and the fact is that (my girlfriend) Lisa’s hands are smaller than mine, so she was the first to say, “It has to be me, it would be ridiculous to put your big old, boxing gloves up the sow”.
She went literally shoulder deep. She did say afterwards at least it was warm up there.
Why is it so important to try and make the most out of every available bit of land?
JC: It’s a way of trying to earn money from every little postage stamp of land without spoiling the countryside, so it’s not tearing up the land; picking blackberries and nettles doesn’t do anybody any harm.
This year, the spending was truly astronomical because prices were so high. You spend a huge amount of money then you hope that the weather is right and that the prices are right when you sell.
Kaleb, how has farming changed since you’ve been in the industry?
KC: I started at age 12 and I’m 25 now. I was really young and I picked up on what the farmers were saying, and it was difficult, but they were making money and business was thriving.
Certainly, I’ve noticed changes since in my own contracting business, that we have to be extremely careful and efficient and creative.
These days the government don’t seem to know what they want. There are no schemes anymore: schemes and grants and funding from the government keep food cheap for the public.
Our red tape is much worse so we’ve got to spend more money to produce our food, but are in competition with cheaper imports.
This is exactly the sort of thing that I think people are waking up to and seeing on Clarkson’s Farm.
Are the two of you still having tiffs along the way?
JEREMY
JC: I struggle to argue with him about farming because he just knows more than I do... but when we do things like trying to repair the dam, that’s construction, and neither of us really know what we’re doing there. So that was one of our big arguments.
KC: I think in this series we have probably our biggest ever argument. But don’t get me wrong, I love the man. I think when you’re good friends with someone, and you have that amazing chemistry, it makes everything easier.
Yes, we can argue, and yes, we can shout at each other but, at the same time, we’re friends. Two minutes after an argument, we can just agree to disagree and go for a cup of tea or go to the pub and have a pint.
Would you say that you’re good mates?
It turns out that pigs aren’t great mothers as a general rule Jeremy on his new venture
KC: We have a good friendship and a good bond, I firmly believe. We treat each other to dinners, we’ll go out and say, “Who’s paying for this one?” and take it in turns.
When it’s my turn we go to the cheaper restaurants.
Clarkson’s Farm series 3 launches on Prime Video on Friday