Everything Is Content - Dawn O'Porter - Everything In Conversation

Episode Date: September 24, 2024

In another very special bonus episode, join Beth and Oenone in conversation with the brilliant and bestselling author Dawn O'Porter.Her brand new novel Honeybee is out on the 26th of September and follows 22 year old best friends Renée and Flo as they navigate the adult world of love, work, partying and friendship in the early 2000s.We loved the book and had such a great time chatting with Dawn about love, grief, moral grey areas, fashion, finding yourself and more.Follow Dawn on Instagram @hotpatooties and get your copy of Honeybee here.If there's anyone else who you'd love to hear us chat to, then do let us know on Instagram @everythingiscontentpodFollow us:@beth_mccoll@ruchira_sharma@oenone Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

i'm beth and i'm anoni and welcome back to everything in conversation this week our guest is the brilliant dawn o'porter we're sadly down one host today but we're going to do our best to still put on a great show without our beloved rutera who will be back with us on Friday, thank God. Dawn is a writer, presenter, and the best-selling author of, among other books, The Cows, So Lucky, Cat Lady, and a non-fiction book called Life in Pieces, which came out in 2020 and tackled a lot of the issues that many of us weren't quite sure how to talk about during that very strange first year of COVID. Honey Bee is Dawn's latest novel, which is coming out on the 26th of September, aka tomorrow. It's about two bus fans, Renee and Flo, characters who you may

already know from her books, Goose and Paper Aeroplanes. In those books, they're at school and figuring out their teens. Now they're 22 and things aren't going quite as they'd imagined. Set on the island of Guernsey, the two women navigate the adult world of love, work, partying, hope and friendship in the early noughties. Honey Bee is for anyone who's looking to belong when life stings, we all need a wingwoman. And also just to say it is the third in this series, but you can just hop right in with Honey Bee, you don't have to read the other two. Anoni, I know that you have interviewed Dawn before on your brilliant podcast, Adulting,

and I absolutely tore through both this book and Cat Lady a few years ago. So we've been really, really excited to get to talk to Dawn. But before we get into that, small favour to ask, if you aren't already, please do subscribe to this podcast

wherever you listen, so you always know first thing when we've dropped a new episode this is everything in conversation with dawn o'porter yeah great background you look great i love how you always have your eyeliner on i've just done a pilates class and i did it with my eyeliner on but it's did you i just redid it for you. I wish I had a signature thing. I wouldn't leave the house without it. And if I do and I bump into someone, I just, I'm rude. I have to get away.

That's so funny. Anything you're doing straight away, is it the first thing you do? I just think it's just part of my, it's like brush your teeth, draw around your eyes. Like, you know, it's just, it's just part of, part of getting up in the morning. Okay, well, let's do an actual hello. Hi there. Welcome to Everything in Conversation. Thank you so much for being here.

We are both such big fans of your writing and of you. And we are so excited to have you on Everything in Convers conversation to talk about your brand new novel honeybee which is coming up very very soon we have both read it because we're very lucky and we loved it and we did do a little tiny summary in the intro teeny tiny so to dive in could i ask you to tell our listeners a little bit about the book um who these kind of two main characters are especially, and at what point we're meeting them when we open that first page? So you're meeting them when they're 22 and they, Renée and Flo were best friends at school. They kind of, they bonded over grief and loss of a parent when they were about 15 and they just were

really unlikely best friends, nothing really in common other than this you know tragedy that they both experienced and so they kind of bonded over that became really really close and this very kind of awkward friendship that shouldn't really exist but does that they both depend on completely and then there's a second book in the series called Goose where they're kind of 18 and at the end of Goose they both kind of go in different directions and at the start of Honey Bee you're they're coming back together after a long time and having had a really bad fight they haven't spoken for a while and so Honey Bee is really them kind of recouping their friendship and the trials and tribulations of that but it's also really a book about that moment in your life when you really are leaving childhood and someone else looking after you behind and you're completely responsible for yourself.

And how hard that is and what a slow process that is. And how much you kind of envy the adults around you and then you realize that everyone's a mess. Does that ever end? Because I'm 30 and I'm still sort of like envying the adultier adults around me. I don't think it does. I'm 45. I've got two children.

I thought that when I got to this stage, I would be, I mean, many things are sorted, many things that weren't. But as I kind of left my bedroom this morning, I was like, for fuck's sake. Like, I've still got piles of clothes everywhere. I hadn't made my bed. I'm like, there's just so much washing, some dirty, some clean.

The pile of clean laundry that's been sitting there since last Tuesday. And I just keep looking at it and just, you know, there's cups everywhere. And I'm like, oh, I've got this big bathroom cupboard, but none of my stuff is in it. It's all around the sink. And I just, I just thought that I was going to be, I thought that I was going to be organized on the smaller details of life. I'm quite organized on the big, like my work has come together. I managed to keep two children healthy. I've got five pets. I've got a happy marriage and a house. You know, I've got lots of things in order, but it's the tiny things

and I just can't get my shit together. And so now at this age, I presume that by like 80, I'll have a neat little cupboard of cosmetics and only own things that I need. But that's not happening now. No, but I also have to say, I need but that's not happening now no but I also have to say I do think that's a personality thing I think some people are organized and some people aren't and I think you can try and fight against it but fundamentally I actually think it's in your DNA

if you maybe yeah yeah like why haven't I got a specific place to keep my hair dryer why is it just on the floor it's a good place for it to be well it's really useful it's there when I need it but it's stuff like that that I thought I was going to be much more organized about it never quite works out how you think it will it's really interesting you say that about like being 80 thinking you'll be this way because in the book we've obviously got like Renee and Flo 22 years old very 22 years old but you have so many characters at different stages of life so I think you do have that like full gamut of kind of full woman, but you have so many characters at different stages of life. So I think you do have that like full gamut of kind of full womanhood. Like you have a woman that they live

above who is, I believe in her seventies, eighties, you have the women they work with. Like it's, it's a real smorgasbord, which is a word I use at any opportunity. I wonder though, writing this book, going back in your mind to being 22 what was that process like was that kind of like fun nostalgia or was it just like pure trauma and terror well you know when you get to my age and you look back on your life you remember very little really and you remember snippets of time in significant years and significant ages and that summer age 22 after uni when September means nothing anymore no one just offers you this new thing to do in September that solves all the problems that you haven't managed to solve during the summer

you know it's like then you get to be a student again where you just get to be a kid again basically it's all gone and you just have this giant expanse of time. You've got to make decisions that actually have some gravitas now and work out what you're going to do. And the people who have always looked after you are kind of like, yeah, I'm done with that now. You know, this is you, it's time to fly the nest. You've got to go. And I remember that summer so significantly because I went back to Guernsey for a few months to earn some money and I wanted to move to London and then 9-11 happened and I felt as a small island girl smelt felt smelt I really smelt and I felt I felt really scared of the big bad now very scary world it changed everything so it's always been a period of time that I wanted to write about. And because Renée, the book is set on Guernsey,

where I grew up, because Renée, in Paper Airplanes, the first book, it was a fictional version of my own childhood. Now she's moved very far beyond me. Renée's actions are not my actions anymore, but I still feed a lot of myself through her in terms of wanting to write about that significant summer and that significant time I can do that through Renee so um I've just always wanted to get that time in my life out my system I think that's so funny I was going to ask you who I didn't realize that Renee was based more on you because I was going to say who do you relate to more out of those two young girls especially in relation to their relationship with Guernsey like are you someone that still loves and craves that island life or do you love the hustle and bustle of the

city now? Well, I love going back to Guernsey now because it's, although I wanted to get off it when I was younger and when I was that age, now I take my kids back and I realise just how unbelievable Guernsey is as a place to grow up. But I didn't feel like that when I was growing up there. I just wanted to leave. And so now I go back and I just adore it but in the book not to do any spoilers um there is this kind of intention of leaving the island and leaving the island and then that gets challenged when there is kind of almost like a question posed of but where can you be yourself or really where can you say for example for this particular character where can you be a big fish? Where can you be important and make a splash rather than be somewhere where you'll probably be invisible and everything will be

a struggle? And actually, if you could go back to your 22-year-old self and say, you've got all of these intentions and all of this ambition and that's all wonderful and that has to drive you but how much comfort happiness self-care in the world we live in now are you willing to sacrifice to try and get to where you think you want to go and I think that's something that no one says to a 22 year old and you probably shouldn't because it's all about trial and error and risk and pushing yourself but if you could if I could go back and just say sort of someone to say to me you know you don't have to it doesn't you don't have to live the ultimate life you can also just have a really nice time like oh well then I think I would have done things quite differently that I thought about having a nice

time um I was so driven by success when I was that age so it's really nice to write about René and Flo who um who are experiencing that and maybe you know when you write fiction and you have a character that's loosely based on yourself it's a bit sliding doors yeah what if she hadn't what if I hadn't done that what would life be like and do you feel perhaps quite protective then over these characters because you are you're putting them in classic 22 year old situations you know and then some i would say you feel quite protective then of you're putting them in situations that are typical heartbreak challenges at work feeling lost hating themselves and their bodies and in ways that are really adult and really relatable um is it difficult then to write

them into these corners um i find that quite difficult. I want to give them an easy ride, but of course that's not good fiction. Are you there kind of going, I'm really sorry I have to do this to you, but you're about to get heartbroken? Well, sort of, but also I think when... The fiction that I find frustrating to read is that isn't truly honest about how messy being a young ambitious sexual

um you know woman is you end up in some really uncomfortable weird positions literally um and you and you you take risks that inspire really difficult times in your life. You do jobs you hate. You struggle with authority. You have all of these mad experiences. And so when I think back on my 20s, that's what that was like. And when I'm writing René and Flo, I'm not going to shy away from any of that. Because I'd like to write about these girls until they're, you know, well, until I'm still writing and if I'm going to make them real and if I'm going to make

them you know like me and my friends who have got to where we are through nothing but trial and error and making mistakes and being flawed um then I have to put them into those situations and they're so fun to write and I love not backing out halfway through a scene as well the flaws and the fallibility of those characters is really central and the relationships often as well are quite flawed some of the themes that in the book are quite divisive like the infidelity and the sexual promiscuity but you avoid moralizing those and is that really intentional because the characters aren't that judgmental and the voices in the book aren't judgmental is that to kind of change the reader's preconceptions because especially around topics like infidelity people can get quite

protective and quite cross but in this book there's very little judgment or moralizing i think i think one of the biggest problems that we've got in the modern age the digital age and the way that we view people is we forget that no one is just one thing. And so you get someone who, for example, has an affair. Look, I'm not condoning affairs. If my husband had an affair, I would lose my fucking mind. But I wanted to just write about something like that, just to just remind everyone that sometimes bad behavior comes from somewhere else comes from a place of deep um unhappiness or you know fear or whatever it is and just to try and just put that thing that I think we're missing a bit in culture at the moment to just

look beyond the surface and just understand people a little better you know the kind of media pylons that we see all the time very often they're deserved and someone's done something absolutely horrifying but very often if we just go all right just take a step back and just who else is this person have they got a long history of being absolutely horrible have they made a mistake can we forgive them of this one thing because they've never done anything like this but we just don't have that capacity anymore we just one strike and you're out and i think you know if I can do anything with fiction is just to remind people that um everyone is fighting a battle that you can't see and just to consider a little bit more as to how someone has got to where they are and it might turn out they're a

fucking rotter and they deserve to be cancelled but it also probably won't and I don't mean just famous people I mean people generally god yeah it. And you mentioned the sort of digital age and this book is set in 2001. So it is just before, you know, it's, it's, they've got the technology, they've got the communication, but they had just before the social media revolution. And I think that's so interesting. And I wonder if you have any insight on this. Do you think it was an easier time to be a 22-year-old then with, you know, the kind of magazines and the things that we're fed as women to hate ourselves versus now with social media? Some things are better. I think some things are worse. I don't know if you've got any insight in kind of that comparison growing up then, growing up now.

Yeah, I think it was undoubtedly better like it was and I am so grateful that I was that last generation of teenagers before mobile phones you know we didn't even have phones which is insane when I say that to my kids they're like what you just had one phone I had to I literally pointed at a phone box the other day I was in Guernsey a few months ago and I pointed at a phone box I was like to the kids do you knowsey a few months ago and I pointed at a phone box. And I was like to the kids, do you know what that is? And they were like, no. I used to have to, I run in there,

I put Tempe in, I called my auntie and I said, can you come and pick me up by town church? And then I couldn't move until she got there because if I did, then we'd all get lost. And there was something, it's so wholesome. And it was so, I think what we've lost now what we had to do back then is we had to communicate face to face conflict resolution happened opposite the person that you had the conflict with and you know I now even though I got brought up in that way I would

still dump someone on text I would still have my awkward conversations on email. I cop out constantly because it's available to me. When back then you just didn't have that option. And I think we were better for it. And sometimes I've got so many different friend groups, so many different friend groups, people that I meet there. And then suddenly there's another WhatsApp group, another WhatsApp group.

And I love all that. And I'm like, if I was paid to be on WhatsApp, I would be worth so much money because I'm on it all day but back then friendships were stronger and you had less of them because you would just bump into somebody that you saw once every six months and have a nice moment and you'd actually connect with them properly and now you don't do that because you'll just throw a text and it's I so I think and in terms of being a kid it was hard back then and there was you know there was I went to an all-girls school it was very bitchy sometimes I was the one bitching sometimes I was being bitched about it was like that imagine if you got home and that

was all carrying on on Facebook that was all you know carrying on on Snapchat and you knew there was a WhatsApp group somewhere bitching about you all the time the reason i call paper airplanes paper airplanes is because it's the physical notes that we used to send to each other in class that we would fold up into a paper airplane and throw it at each other so it got there and if someone intercepted it they read the note and life was over so you it was just we were just kinder we were just kinder. We were just kinder. But it wasn't like it was always kind. That's what I mean by it was always bad enough. I really, as a mum, my kids are a few years away from certainly phones

and certainly social media. But I know it's coming and I feel like I'm just like no idea how to, how to, how I'm going to manage all that. And just, there's a lot of work being done at the moment, like, you know, smartphone free childhoods and all that stuff. And I'm just hoping that by the time my kids get to like 12, it's like illegal to give your kid a phone. It would just be done for me. One of the relationships I love in the book is between auntie joe and renee and especially there's a conversation where auntie joe's suffering with perimenopause and she's talking so openly about her sex life with her partner to renee and I found that really refreshing I really like it

when you see that dynamic between an adult and a child her niece I guess talking about sex is that something that you think is really important is that something that you do in reality reality, have these kind of open conversations? It kind of shocked me. And I was like, God, that is how we should communicate with each other in a way that's just, again, there's no shame. Well, this is the difference between an auntie and a mum. And that was really important to me in the books. My mum died just before I turned seven. I was raised by my auntie. And so Renee's relationship with Auntie Jo is, it's not my relationship with my auntie at all but you would speak i would speak much i used to always say you live a certain kind of life when you never have to worry what your mother would say it makes you when you've got and i didn't

even live with my dad so i've got no actual parents around me which made me incredibly um kind of looser i suppose with the way that I spoke to my auntie and we um and I think that communication is different when it's one step removed from parenting so I don't ever kind of pinpoint that in the book but it's very deliberate that Renee and Auntie Jo have this kind of very open communication and yes of course we all should but obviously it's very difficult to talk about sex to your mum which is why aunties are so great. It's so true. I do have four nieces. They're a bit young for that, but I can't wait for them to talk to me. No, I know. It's really, it's really nice.

Something that I really liked in that relationship, again, is that humor. It's shot through with humor. They're talking about grief. They're talking about the really painful parts of of life but they are constantly cracking jokes dark jokes and and whatever else and i i really love that um and i wonder kind of do you think it is important that we do that that we force ourselves or maybe not force ourselves but that we laugh about the terrible things as a kind of way to cope or just, you know, a way to see them from a different angle, you know, like grief and the change in... Yeah, I think you have to bring humour into whatever situation you possibly can. And also that's the thing with writing fiction. Like you can do this, you can be writing a really sad scene and then write a funny bit in that scene. And I can't remember what book of mine it was but I remember reading a reader review who was so upset about me trying to inject humor into

a really sad moment and I was like I just wanted to kind of call them and go it's okay to find levity in sadness and that person has maybe never been able to do that and that actually rather than take offense at the bad view I just felt genuinely really heartbroken for that person I was like that's not my existence at all I've never been surrounded by people where even in the darkest times someone won't at least try to kind of you know make make some sort of joke and not not to be um rude or in you know inconsiderate what's the word i'm looking for uh just oh fuck it doesn't matter anyway no one's cracking a joke to hurt anyone's feelings they just you know it's just especially like if someone dies so do we just

pretend that that person never laughed and it's you know I so I think with writing if I've ever I always try to bring some jokes into those moments I I remember being at a bedside of of someone I loved who our relationship had been so funny and we you know the family around we oscillated between we were laughing then we were in tears we were laughing and I was like this is precisely not to speak for this is precisely what it was like when we were in tears we were laughing and I was like this is precisely not to speak this is precisely what it was like when we were all together in a room as normal it was so nice to do that final time so I just think I think it's totally you know to each their own but I darkly hope that people are cracking a joke if I make it to that kind of final room I yeah I just think it's such a great blend I mean I was also going to ask what's it like writing that do you kind of find yourself having a little chuckle at your own joke and then being like oh god I'm kind of weighted by the

human like the whole like is it a real roller coaster to write a book like this I suppose is what I'm asking um sometimes and I do I found like I found with Honey Bee because the big grief in their life is done and then you know it's there's repercussions of it and they ways, Flo particularly, is still really struggling with the loss of her dad. But when I wrote Paper Airplanes, and I was dealing with like, for Flo, the actual time that her dad died, and Renee as a young girl looking back on her mother's death, I cried so much writing that book. It was so emotional. And I also, when I write a funny scene, really laugh. And I think, if I'm not laughing, you won't laugh. So, and if I'm also not turned on in a sexy, sexy, and then you won't be turned on in a sexy. And so I really try to go through a lot over the course of a day at my desk,

but I really, um, I really try to make sure that I can, I can feel the thing that I'm writing about. And I love it because I'm, I'm very emotionally dynamic person and comfortable being happy and sad. And so when I'm writing, I just like getting stuck right into what I'm trying to get across. Emotionally dynamic is such a good phrase. And now I'm trying to decide if I want to ask you about the sex scenes or the grief. One of the questions I was going to ask you is you've spoken about sadly losing your mum. And I've read you read about that before as well. But I do think, and obviously both characters, Renee and Flo Flo have lost a parent in this book but there is something about parental

loss in society I don't know if it's British culture or if it's universal where we really struggle to talk about parental loss and know how to deal with it and know how to speak to people who've been through that what do you think what is that about why is it always such a jarring thing so many people do experience this and it is a huge trauma. The people that in my life that have lost a parent, it's just one of the most wounding things I think that can happen to anyone. And I think that's why,

and people don't know what to say. I think like people say mad things, like when you're going through something really hard. And I think everybody knows that for most people, the loss of a parent is the most significant loss they'll probably, hopefully ever experience. And I say hopefully because we're designed for that to happen and anything else would be a tragedy. But I think people just don't know what to say. I would say that from my experience, I was so young.

It was Guernsey in the 80s. There was no support. There was no counseling. There was, it was just that thing has happened on we go, you know, and it was, um, and that was very hard. I do feel that now there's, you know, I was talking to a mom at the school gate this morning, who's, um, going through something awful at the moment. And, um, someone that she knows has died and left two girls behind and I was just like right you need to get on it with them like there's amazing charities like Child Bereavement UK that will step in and be there for those girls and prevent this feeling of burying trauma and no

one will talk about it that has been such a big part of you know know, my life. And you're right. And it's, it's how it feels. Also, the mad thing with grief is, you know, you've got a few weeks, maybe a few months of being, you get a couple of days with a dog, you get, you know, you know, a couple of weeks with your parents, maybe, before people are like, come on now, back to work, move on, get over it. And I think anybody who's lost anybody knows it just doesn't work that way. So what you do is you have to bury it to get back to the life that everybody else needs you to live. And the only way that you'll be able to do that is if you've got your own outlook going on somewhere, your own place that you can just open that valve. And that's generally probably therapy or having, you know, just someone that you can talk to constantly about this thing and never feel like you're

boring because otherwise it's just devastating I kind of want to hear your sex question now but what is it so it might be well also I just really fancy Ben and then I was like I was like interesting maybe I want to have an affair with Mary Banks from recently singles that could be something but no I'm not going to I won't any wives out there I promise I won't um yeah I just I don't know it was really interesting because I felt really felt their sexual chemistry I mean the whole office is just completely horny the night that they have this night out after the um they have a go for work drinks and everyone kind of wakes up in the morning very foggy head and can't really remember those scenes were really traumatizing for me because I've in my early

20s had those blackout nights where you just cannot remember that also I was thinking of saying about the phone the night when Flo kind of goes out how the hell were you guys getting home like we just get in an uber and then you wake up and you check your phone you're like oh I got an uber home but like what how was that happening remember any questions just remember they were on a tiny island you just yeah if they were in town their flat that they lived in it's in town it's a five minute walk home right okay if they could be on the other side of the island and if they needed to walk home in an hour so it's that's that's the other lovely thing about writing about um the 90s and early

2000s and guernsey is that so much of the logistics that you have to put into a book, I just don't have to bother about because they're just, it's tiny and they've got no technology. Yeah, they kind of end up in London as well. And despite I lived in London for almost a decade, but I read the Guernsey bit and then they go to London and I feel as discombobulated as Renee, who hasn't been there before. And I'm like, oh it's this big scary place I am you know I think that bit was so um relatable though I you know I know it very well now I really loved that uh kind of contrast you you really get settled into island life as um yeah as a reader I had no working knowledge of Guernsey and I think that will be true of lots of people I think people will be flocking there for a holiday I know they do already but I was like let me let me add it it sounds absolutely gorgeous um I did not have

a question I just wanted to give you a compliment I am going to put it slightly away from sex and things I loved about the book um Renee's personal style her discovery of that her character her confidence her courage can come out through clothing um and I mentioned this because you are fantastically dressed is this based on a kind of journey that you went through in your early 20s or teens um when you went oh hang on this my personality is here or were you just always very well dressed um no I wasn't but I always wanted to be so I was never one of those I was never one of those girls who was like I don't really care I just wear the obvious thing I was I would I would in my head I was really trying and never quite hit the mark I I just believe that any woman truly when she finds

her style even if that is tracksuits and trainers or whatever it is when she truly finds the style that is in synergy with your personality. You like, just like, you just such a weight lifted off your shoulders in terms of who, how you feel about yourself is I think the two works so closely together and anyone who says that what you wear doesn't matter. It's just not true. It's such, it's such a betrayal of who you are as a person. And like I said, it doesn't have to be about you needing to be glamorous you wear no makeup loads of makeup flat shoes high shoes whatever it is it's just about when you truly dress for yourself it's very life-affirming moments and I remember mine I was I spent most of my teenage years my early 20s just doing what

anybody else was doing I was like you know skirt mini skirts over trousers at university I just I any phase and had a shell suit for about 20 minutes. I just did whatever anybody else was doing. And then there was this one day and I'll never forget it, early twenties, when I first moved to London, I cycled everywhere and I was cycling my bike miles away from where I lived. I was in Putney somewhere, you know, Parsons Green. And I saw this tiny little shop and I went in and it was a vintage shop, first ever vintage shop, I think proper one that I've been into. And it was just an absolute treasure trove. And there was this kind of very little, slightly angry lady who sat at the back and said, you know, what? And every

time I picked something, picked up something, she'd like say something judgmental. And then I tried on this one dress and I came out, it was like this kind of 70s wraparound white dress and I put it on I came out of the changing room and I was like I feel like I just stepped into my skin like I feel like I just stepped into my body I'd never worn anything like that before and then she just started handing me things I didn't have much money at the time. Rode away on my bike with my pannier, like exploding with vintage clothes, all put on whatever credit card I had at the time. And that was the start of my love of the stories behind vintage clothes, the idea that someone had worn them before.

If they were made at a kitchen table, I could tell turning inside out, she made this herself. That was better than anything. And I just suddenly felt this connection to clothes it's just suited my love of stories it was the style really suited me and I was just off my I was I found myself it was so wonderful and I realized that for not all women it's that you know specific but um oh it was it was just a really like a real game changer of a moment and and so I wanted Renee to have that moment as well because you can tell right from the start that she's got a lot of individuality and she's not quite working out how to express it she wants to be different but she

doesn't really know how to be different her difference kind of makes her feel a bit shameful and a bit dirty and gross and so I feel like by the end of the book, she's been kind of given this opportunity to dress in this way that she's like, oh, this actually satisfies all of those things about myself. I thought I had to travel the world to do, fuck everyone to feel, whatever it was. If I dress for myself and present myself in this way, so much of that work is done. And so it was really fun to write that I love that I completely subscribe to that as well like that's I think we're losing a little bit of social media and such trend-led fashion and fast fashion where everyone is sort of constantly buying like a

revolving door of outfits to fit in with the trend and sometimes I'll try and wear something that I think's in fashion and even if it's really plain and basic if it's not me I'll feel so embarrassed all day even if I'm wearing like a white t-shirt and the wrong type of jeans or just something I wouldn't normally wear I'll sit on the tube and think people are looking at me even though that is no one would look at anyone wearing that but because it's not like you said my synergy I completely feel that entirely yeah I think that's a lost art in a way it is also I feel like I'm waking up every day at moment to another post from one of a really cute small business, an independent clothing brand just closing down.

And I wish that there was more, that more people understood that cheap is great and you can have loads of things. But if you actually just like bought the one thing, one really good thing from a small independent brand that is way more unique to you, that loads of people won't have, that children didn't make, you know, it's going's gonna make it's just better for everybody it's better for you also this and I've got I feel very emotional about clothes and I know it might sound silly but because my mum died so young what she wore I can remember her red fingernails the smell of Chanel number five and what she wore her image that photograph of her that I've got in my mind is

so important to me and so I even dress like I wear my kind of bonkers clothes around my kids because I want their image of me to be me and so I don't really very rarely unless I'm um doing some sort of exercise kind of flop around the house in you know leggings and a jumper I kind of usually have something that represents me even to them and um and I love that and it might sound like I'm making loads of effort but it's not because the clothes in my wardrobe are that so you just literally put something on in the same way that you would put on a tracksuit but it's really important to me and I think that's and I also kind of extend that into the world like how do I want the world to remember me when I'm gone a little bit morbid but I this is the snapshot that I want them to have it's colorful it's unique and it's um

yeah it's fun I love that and I love it do you have a specific small brand that you love that you want to give a shout out to sorry that's my baby I have uh I love I'm big into caftans I love caftans and the reason I love them is because they're really flattering. And if you're like me, my weight fluctuates constantly. I'm sometimes a size 10. I'm usually a size 12. It just goes all the time up and down. And caftans, it doesn't matter.

Because I have to do quite a lot of events and very often be on red carpets and stuff with Chris. If I've got loads of really sparkly caftans, I never ever got that nothing fits nothing to wear thing and the place where i love to get them from it's called fumbleena's fumbleena you can find her on instagram just brilliant do you know it's sorry i've just got my period but when i was reading it it was at the bit where one of the characters talking about how when she's coming on her period i get i'm the same i honestly think i gain like a stone i go up about like three dress sizes and the characters that I just have things in a bigger size. I was like, why haven't I thought about that?

I taught myself yesterday, I tried to get into these jeans and they were so tight. And I was like, I knew it was my period, like making me really busy, but I just couldn't get them on. And I was like, I should just have clothes that are bigger for when I'm bigger.

Just, I don't know why I'd never really thought about having that available to me rather than torturing myself by trying to fit into something that I don't always fit in. Totally. I've got this one pair of trousers that I love, but I can only wear them for about five days a month. They just won't fit. And now I've accepted that. I really enjoy wearing them during those five days. The rest of the time, I can't get them done up. I have three days of the month when I'm like, I am so fit, probably when I'm ovulating. And then

the rest of the month, it's all a bit touch and go. Oh God, I could talk about ovulation for days. I love, I love, I love how when you start trying to have a baby, you start to get in touch with your body in a way you haven't before. And you're like, oh, ovulation is the whole thing. And I remember this one day that I first realized about ovulation. I was trying to conceive my first baby and I did tests and I was like, I woke up with that morning and I was just like, God, I just feel so fuckable today. I feel so pretty. I just feel so pretty. And then I did this ovulation test and I was like, wow.

We're just animals. So funny. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe that I never knew that was a thing until I was 35 that those days when I went out there like swishing my hair feeling just so fit it's because my body was just gagging to get pregnant by somebody I had this kind of unawareness that I was just out there searching for cock without realizing I know and also like your pheromones like men will actually look at you more when you're ovulated I actually know when I can actually feel an egg being released from my fallopian tube is that mad I got like pain

no I think I've had the same I don't think I do I don't think I release many eggs anymore but I can actually feel an egg being released from my fallopian tube. Is that mad? I get like pain. No, I think I've had the same. It's so mad. I don't think I release that many eggs anymore, but I can remember it's half of the day. My taste in men also changes. I can tell. I'm kind of like, I don't know what it is. I'm kind of like, that man looks like he could, you know,

protect me from a bear attack. And it's like really not my type usually. And I'm like, I know what like I'm like I know what's happening here I know what's happening it's so and like the connection with the bodies it's so interesting and like all the characters in this book like they are they are at various points been I'm a few days after my period or like my body's changing because of perimenopause or you know I'm getting older and things like that and they're all sharing this wisdom which I thought was such a nice point it is the sort like, that's how we are best allies to

each other, even sitting here. And I'm someone who dresses like Homer Simpson and in my thirties, I'm finally like, I'm allowed to have a style and I'm really excited to do that. And it's like this kind of shared wisdom between even just the three of us, I think is so nice. And I wonder, is there a way that we can be like better allies to one another, like across generations and across, you know, just out in the world, I think when women need each other more than ever, is there any kind of little ways that we can just show up for our fellow women? That takes us back to what we were talking about earlier about not taking someone's face value and their bad behavior as who they are as I hit this

age and I see a lot of my I'm not quite there with menopause yet but obviously it's kind of you know my body's slowing down in many ways and um I've got a few friends kind of that you know are in the kind of 10 years above me and I've seen some pretty shitty grumpy behavior and some like really you know not wanting to go out anymore and I know their sex lives are shit at the moment and there's all of these things that I think you know five years ago I would have just gone oh god you're turning into such a bitch or you're just like this and now I'm like no you're going through something like you maybe maybe you are just turning into a bitch but you're probably going through something incredibly physical your hormones are all over the place.

It's really hard. The world is still demanding just as much from you. And you're still going to kind of show up to work every day, look good and, you know, be a wife, be a mother, do all these things. And just like, I think we can help each other out by just going, what's that behavior? What's that behavior because of?

And I think that would just do so much, especially when it when it comes to you know of the women in our lives men can fuck off and sort themselves out but if we did that if we really really did that for the women I think you know you see like the media pylons against women it's all women doing it it's all women doing it every single time and then when that media pile on is over the same people would go women get such a hard time like stop I'm like, we've got to stop doing it. We've got to hold each other up more and understand what we're going through. There is no period of a woman's life that doesn't feel fucking relentless. It's because you go, teenagers hard, we've got periods to deal with pretty much until middle age. Then we've got the menopause to go through and then whether you had kids or not then that next part of life is very kind of dependent

on that then we age our weight changes it's all just really really hard yeah so we need to just you know big each other up and support each other i love that and i love that you said you want to stay with these women well i'm excited now that because that was going to be one of our questions like do you think that you're going to revisit them again but you think you will but we don't know when no well so that's been 12 years since I wrote the last one I also must say to your readers if you've not read paper airplanes and goose you don't have to it is the third but you can come in straight with honeybee but I when I first started writing novels um I thought all I would ever do was the René and Flo series I thought that was

going to be my my thing and then I you know I was very lucky and got this kind of other book deals along the way and now I'm back with them I I'm already thinking about what happens next I really want to I feel like they'll all be always be about 20 years behind me you know and I'll keep going with them if people like it that's so sweet we loved it this i think they'll love it we really enjoyed it i was very emotional at the end thank you so much for joining us and thank you for all the chat and coming on so many tangents with us thank you for having me i loved that it's so much fun it was a it was a journey we covered some ground honeybee is out tomorrow in hardback ebook and audiobook so grab yourself a copy and maybe get one for your best friend too you can follow dawn on instagram at

hot patooties and there you can hear all about her upcoming honeybee related events thank you so much for listening and we'll see you on friday bye