How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - S3, Ep 5 How to Fail: Raven Smith

Episode Date: January 30, 2019

This week my guest is Raven Smith who, as well as having one of the best names dot dot dot EVER is also the funniest man on Instagram (it's true, don't @ me). Smith is a columnist for British Vogue, a guest lecturer at Central Saint Martins and is currently working on his first book: Raven Smith’s Trivial Pursuits, a guide to modern life which covers everything from Ikea meatballs to Ant & Dec and which promises to be just as funny and irreverent as the man himself.We talk about Smith's self-professed 'failure to be straight' at school and what it was like growing up the mixed race only child of a single mother in an English seaside town (he was REALLY TALL too). We also discuss his failure to graduate, the absence of his father in his life, and Smith's failure at marriage, even though he's not divorced. As Smith put it to me in an email before we recorded the interview: 'Marriage is a concoction of failures (and successes). I relentlessly fuck it up.' I think there's something rather beautiful and profound contained within that. Hopefully you'll think so too!And don't worry - there's also plenty of laughs, from Smith's absurd competitiveness in yoga class to his terrible DIY skills which mean there's currently no door on his toilet. How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted by Elizabeth Day, produced by Chris Sharp and sponsored by 4th Estate Books The book of the podcast, How To Fail: Everything I've Ever Learned From Things Going Wrong by Elizabeth Day is available to pre-order here. You can read Raven Smith's 'The Week in Review' Vogue columns here.Raven Smith's Trivial Pursuits will be published by 4th Estate in 2020.  Social Media:Elizabeth Day @elizabdayRaven Smith @raven_smithChris Sharp @chrissharpaudio4th Estate Books @4thEstateBooks    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. This season of How to Fail with Elizabeth Day is sponsored by Fourth Estate Books. How to Lose a Country, the seven steps from democracy to dictatorship, is an urgent call to action from one of Europe's most well-regarded political thinkers. Eke Tamalkaran gives us a field guide to spotting the insidious patterns and mechanisms of the populist wave sweeping the globe, while proposing alternative global answers to the

pressing questions of our time before it's too late. I really need that book right now. You can find out more about how to lose a country at 4thestate.co.uk. Hello and welcome to How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, the podcast that celebrates the things that haven't gone right. This is a podcast about learning from our mistakes and understanding that why we fail ultimately makes us stronger, because learning how to fail in life actually means learning how to succeed better. I'm your host, author and journalist Elizabeth Day, and every week I'll be asking a new interviewee what they've learned from failure.

This week I'm delighted to welcome Raven Smith to the podcast, who is, for my money, the funniest man on Instagram. But he also has a proper job. Smith is a columnist for British Vogue, a freelance creative director, and a guest lecturer at Central St. Martin's. He's currently working on his first book, Raven Smith's Trivial Pursuits, a smart and irreverent take on modern life, which will cover everything from Ikea meatballs, people making their own ceramics, date nights, Ant and deck, and everything that goes

through Smith's head in a yoga class. To give you a hint of the treat that's in store, in a recent Vogue column, Smith described Brexit as the toxic boyfriend you can't get a clean break with, like dividing up a Victoria sponge with your hands. I can't not laugh while I say that. Oh, Raven, welcome. Hello, how's it going? Hi. It's good, I'm so happy to have you. I'm happy and slightly intimidated to have one of the most stylish men I've ever seen in my flat, but it's very kindly to come here. I'm very happy to be here on this slightly chilly day. It is slightly chilly, but you're looking cool and fresh. Great, thank you.

Tell us about your name. I know you get asked this all the time, but Raven is your real name, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the only people I can thank is my parents for that one. I always think of it as like party at the front, business at the back. So Raven and then Smith. People always like, what's your last name? And I say guess, and they always guess Smith.

Do they? Yes, because I was like, think of just any last name and it's Smith so yeah apparently in Jamaica it means free spirit so my dad was keen on it my initials are ras which means prince as in Rastafarianism so it's all very meaningful. Do you like ravens the birds? I think so I think one of those things that I want to look at in my book is what people call their kids because I feel a lot of pressure to give my kids names that everyone remembers and they're completely unique but also not completely made up it's quite a big yeah one Raven is also a good one because I'm imagining not that many people ask you how to spell it no no never I almost have this kind of compulsive problem with remembering other people's names

because mine is just instantly memorable. Yeah. Tell me, who are you again? Tell me what does go through your head in a yoga class because I'm constantly fascinated by what other people are thinking. It's a bit of a nutty one. So I always think about, I think because the great thing about yoga is that you're meant to switch off from your like daily life. And I do it in a hot pot. They zip us in when we go into it. So the idea is that the outside world is physically closed off and you have this yoga practice. But I always think about what do I really think about when in a yoga class? I feel like you're

not meant to think about how good you are at doing it and how well you're doing it. And essentially that's what I'm thinking about. Me too. I'm super competitive. And I know I'm not meant to think about how good you are at doing it and how well you're doing it and essentially that's what I'm thinking about me too I'm super competitive yeah and I know I'm not meant to be because it's all meant to be your inner yogi and how you feel yourself I'm like no but that guy in the designer lycra is really annoying and I want to be able to do a crow better than him yeah yeah and I will tell you if there are other men in my class I will sweat and work so much harder than if it's all women. I'm not like an alpha male. I'm not competitive with other men.

But if there's loads of them in the class, I will never lie down on the mat. I will be up the whole time. I bet you're really good at yoga. I mean, that's not what it's about. No, I am. Damn you. I honestly feel so great. It just opened up some kind of respite from constantly I was swimming

all the time and I it just became really boring to just be counting lengths I tried it once when I was hung over at my my friend runs a class and I just the endorphin hit was like I couldn't get enough of it and I mentioned in the introduction that you are hilarious on Instagram and that's how I came to know you because a friend of mine saw you insta-storied my book yeah which I and she was like by the way the funniest man on Instagram has a copy of your book and I was like what yeah and then I started following you and every single post is so brilliant and satirical and funny and hilarious and have you always had that capacity to be funny? Like at school, as a child, were you the class clack? Yeah. Oh, that's so cringe. Yes, I was. Yeah. I remember going to kids' parties. I mean, other children's parties, including myself, and people saying,

oh, I don't know why we bothered to get a clown. I don't know why we got a magician. I've always been larger than life. And it's something that I've been conversely love about myself, this idea that we can bring the energy up for everyone. But also the fact that it doesn't necessarily give everyone a voice when I'm talking a lot. So it's always been something that I've been aware of. It's just always been a good and bad thing. And often when I've interviewed people as a journalist people who've become performers frequently stand-up comedians and actors they were military kids so they moved around a lot this question is going somewhere I promise you yeah but they moved around a lot so they had to fit into school very quickly because they used to change friendship groups a

lot and their way of doing it was often to act the class clown. And my question is whether you felt you were doing that to fit in in some way. Oh, maybe, probably. Oh, there's a lot going on there, isn't there? It's definitely like a shield of some sort. But I used to find it so frustrating that no one would ever take me seriously. That was part of the reason I felt that I kind of tempered it a bit, because I just couldn't have a serious conversation and I'm secretly quite serious. And I think what you'll see from my Instagram, as you said, it's not just jokes. It's kind of really peeling away at how

we feel and how we live. And it is an irreverent take on that. I'm really trying to look at the way we interact nowadays. And has it been a surprise to you how popular your Instagram is? Yeah, I think there was a point a couple of years ago when I went to Fashion Week parties and people that I didn't know were saying hello to me. And I found that those early stages were really, really weird. Super, super strange. And I think my husband's had that more recently,

that he has become a quiet archetype of sorts on my Instagram and he's not a quiet person at all. What does your husband do? He is head of strategy at an agency. Okay. So he's got a really serious high powered job. Well, high powered, but important job. And I think people that know him from my Instagram think he is just sitting in the corner rolling his eyes at me doing selfies which just isn't our relationship at all are you an only child yeah I mean yeah there's something yeah I feel like I've got only child on every ring on the way down it's like yeah I'm definitely yeah and one of the benefits of being an only child in certain families is that

you feel that you have all of your parents love and attention so you end up not needing love from other people in the incredibly needy way that someone like I would yeah does that tally no so my mum was a single parent I was an only child so we had a very super close relationship I never had to work for attention from my mum so I actually in relationships just expect it which is a very complex thing I just expect it if there's just two of you there's a lot of unsaid communication so I'm quite good at picking up what's not being said I think that's interesting and I think as I've grown older my husband's from quite a big family the difference between Christmas like my family getting together three of us now my mum's

remarried, it's so easy for us to be together. Whereas it's really difficult when there's eight of you. So there's a different energy to that as well. The actual being together in a bigger family is half the battle. And do you need solitude to recharge? Yeah, I have to be on my own for like a significant part of most days. I'm the same. Yeah, I found it really tough when I have to be on my own for like a significant part of most days I'm the same yeah I found it really tough when I moved to university and sharing house sharing I just have to shut myself away for a few hours but I'm very happy in my own company and I will just often get to the end of the day and be like I've made a joke about it but like last week the only person I spoke to on Monday was my masseuse I was like this is this can't be it's that weird interaction right especially as someone who is I would say a quite a heavy user

of Instagram it's constant communication yet it's non-verbal I was about to say you spoke to your masseuse I was like harder that was it um so you've given me three really wonderful failures and I cannot wait to discuss them right the first one that you emailed me was being straight yeah slash normal at school that was a direct quote from your email yeah and you said it was a massive fail but amazing so explain what you meant oh being straight it was a failure for me it didn't fit me very well I guess I've always been gay I mean I assume I don't really know but about the time I turned like 11 I realized I wasn't like everyone else so I just tried to hide the fact that I was gay like I just remember really vividly we had this trip called Welsh Camp, where everyone went to Wales, and I just remember buying Loaded magazine.

Buying Loaded magazine and reading it on the coach and being like, I'm reading Loaded magazine. All these stupid signifiers of what makes a straight man a straight man. I was very drawn to those, but I was terrible at them all. I mean, someone was like, I know you've only bought that, but no one knows you're gay, and I just like cool well it's true you know I think for every gay guy there is a period where you are hiding part of yourself and I think I went through I wouldn't say I was it was a bad depression but I was on my own for a lot I was basically friends

with all women girls until I was about 11 And then those divisions between the sexes became quite noticeable. And I didn't really fit in with anyone. I went to like a predominantly white school. I was like six foot million when I was like 11. So I was tall, black, loud. All of the things that I love about myself now were things that really made me stick out as a kind of young man. And I think made me a target for attention that actually at that point didn't really want.

What kind of school did you go to? Was it a London school? No, it was in Lewis. It's like really quite progressive, really normal. I would say there was a majority of people who are not homophobic that are having left that school. It's not like a culture of that. I just think your sexuality when you're kind of 14, 15, it feels like everything. Clearly you were coming to terms with your sexuality and you felt that made you different. Did you feel different in any other ways? Did you feel that it was an inclusive environment? Secondary school is really just tough. It just tough everyone gets bullied I have this idea that everyone gets bullied and how you react to it really shapes who you are for a lot of years later and I think I was an obvious

target being so tall and so gay and were you because you're very you're very handsome man for our listeners who might not have seen a picture of you or met you in real life. But this is such an awkward question, but were you handsome then? Oh, I don't know. I think that probably means that you were. I think you probably were. I was not fancied. Is that what we're trying to peel away at?

There weren't girls queuing up. And when did you come to terms with that? When did you start realising that you were gay? It's hard to say. There was a big period when I was just on my own a lot and I didn't have a lot of friends. And then something changed. I can't really remember. I just had good friends again. I think it was just a really rocky period. And to be honest, the second I came out, everything just lifted and I went back to being myself again pretty much straight away so that's like 15 and then since

then it's been reasonably plain sailing. How did your mother react? Well it was mock GCSEs so I was in a bad mood when I got home from school didn't go to school the next day went to the local library called my mum and said I'm sorry I was in a bad mood someone called me a faggot on the bus and she said are you and I said yes that's it over the phone yeah my poor mum yeah so I told her over the phone and then she came home gave me a hug and she was like you know I think parents want the easiest route for their kids through life you're mixed race like there might like I want you to have an easy route and this might just be another thing that makes it less easy but it's up to you essentially and was it ever mentioned again or was it just yeah we talked about it a lot and at one point I felt really isolated and she was like well let's look at the

yellow pages at like gay support groups I went along to one there's a lot of great things about growing up in Brighton, which is predominant, like has a big gay community. But for me, it wasn't a haven for me. I wasn't that bothered about it at all. At that point, I was like, I don't really need a load of other gay people. And I don't need these clubs or whatever this culture is wasn't that appealing to me. I recognise that's quite a luxury to be able to opt in or out. Do you think that you are an accepting person of yourself? Yes. Oh yeah. I love being gay. I absolutely would recommend it. Thoroughly recommend being gay.

I think for a long time as well, I was less accepting because when I think about it, I would say I'm tall, I'm black, I'm gay, and they're all the same thing. They're just things that I am. But actually being tall doesn't have a big history of political background. So I think in more recent times, I can see better that being tall isn't the same as, doesn't have the same historic... Political oppression. Yeah, political oppression of the tall. So you identified your attempt at being straight as one of your failures, and obviously you bought Loaded Magazine.

That wasn't convincing. Yeah. Were there other ways in which it was unconvincing and that you failed? Like, did you try and go out with girls? Yeah, I went out with a couple of girls. Nothing really happened because I was like 12. I think it was like, it's just shining out of me. And I was just trying to dim it all the time.

So like baggy jeans skate shoes oh just wanted to assimilate with the young men that I was growing up with but always just got on better with the women always always always like always just got on better with girls but they got to the point where they did not want to hang out with a quite effeminate, quite sassy black guy. I know that's changed now, but they're like desperately trying to reunite on Facebook. They're like, Raven, remember me? No, no, not at all. You know, the second I went to sixth form, I just came into my own in such a big way.

I was just completely myself and it just didn't feel like an issue. I don't think I've ever experienced blatant homophobia towards me in the way that I would have experienced racism as a young kid it was never an overt thing what about now do you experience it now no no I don't oh not in a visible way but I do think if you look at the way I think some of the prejudice is getting smarter in a way I think it's just that job you don't get and you don't know why I think it's more that than someone being racist to you on the street. So I think ever vigilant. But also I got kicked out of GAY and called the bouncer racist and that definitely was not what was happening.

Wait, wait, okay. Why did you get kicked out? Because I was screaming. I was doing, you know in Toxic when it goes, I was like spinning around screaming that the guy asked me to leave that's outrageous I wonder why he's asking me to leave I think we all know and then I woke up and had to delete those stories right so you referred there to a couple of periods when you were at school of feeling lonely and feeling quite down. Would you say that they were depressions?

Yeah, definitely. Just the total isolation and having no common ground with anyone at that point really is how I felt. But I think that made me less nice to more people. My defence was to be bitchy. And that kept me very safe for a long time. That's how I dealt with that kind of attention. Deflection, essentially. And what about now now is depression something you still live with no but I think I'm a real one

for good habits I basically got hypnotized to stop smoking when I was like 29 so like a few years ago now one of the things he said to me was it takes three weeks to build a habit any habit and I was like I just want to build my life full of good habits so a lot of my that I do a lot of yoga I do a lot of moving around I express myself creatively all the time alongside doing work that is less of me and more for somebody else more client work and I think I'm very aware of what my state is a lot of the time so I don't really get depressed. What did you do after school then?

Did you go to Central Saint Martins? No, I went to London College of Printing and I studied photography. So I did a foundation in Brighton. It was the best year of my life, 19, because I went out every night. I had a part-time job and my mum filled the fridge with food. Like I had no responsibility and loads of freedom. So it was great. and then I moved to London in 2003 and I studied photography did a photography degree and that brings us on to your second

failure yeah because you failed your degree oh my god I failed my degree yeah I failed my degree yeah I failed it the first year that I yeah I failed my degree oh I failed it the first year that yeah I failed my degree oh I love the way you're already trying to make it into something that isn't a failure it doesn't I mean what I'm like it's fine because I passed the next year um so I was working in a bar all the hours and I went to like a few in my third year I shot basically around near the bar in the street made this work yada yada and about a week two weeks into like before you get your results my tutor rang me up and said you haven't done this really simple part of this course like you're not going to pass the course and I was like oh no and it turns out when she rang other people she hinted that if it was on

her desk within the next few hours it might be okay but I just didn't pick up on the subtlety of what she was saying so I was like oh that's a shame so then I went to graduation this is what's so embarrassing I went to graduation because my mum was like I'm coming up for graduation so you let's just go and I was like okay let's go I don't know if I've passed grad pass the thing and that I had to sit in the audience with my mum and watch everyone graduate. And then my friend gave me his gown. And me and my mum did pictures in a graduation gown

that I'd just taken off someone else's head. That's amazing. So did your mum know by then that you hadn't graduated? Oh, she knew I hadn't passed it. I had to write a CV of my work. And I was like, I just couldn't be bothered. That's essentially what happened. It's probably the only time in my life I've missed a deadline because I just wasn't foolish arrogant 20 whatever year old do you think you learned from that always to meet deadlines

yeah oh no I always manage expectations and essentially that's my job for the rest of my life it's not about waiting for the deadline it's about saying the deadline's tomorrow and I'm not going to make it or will be the day after and then I think yeah that kind of communication interesting so are you a good communicator in personal relationships as well I hope so most of them nearly all of them I reserve a little special something for my husband yeah but nearly every other personal relationship I think I've got really good email etiquette but I actually got to the point where I was just emailing all the time so I've been breaking out of that as much as possible I think I do have good interpersonal skills but there is something

quite brash about me too that can to be like what I see is quite emotionally intelligent and able to really listen to someone and reflect back what they're saying and help them see something but also I can just be a bit of a dick and there's no escaping that part of my personality that doesn't account for other people's feelings and thinks about myself you see I think you're incredibly charismatic and I think what you just defined is charisma because I think you take interpersonal relationships seriously but you don't

necessarily take yourself seriously except you do when you need to check in on your like how you're fundamentally feeling it's a sort of interesting mischievous patchwork of things I'm always worried about being inconsistent but I just think that's quite normal I hope that's quite normal I'm always impressed by being inconsistent, but I just think that's quite normal. I hope that's quite normal.

I'm always impressed by other people who aren't kind of riddled with insecurity, who seem like they're not. I find that really interesting. Weirdos. Yeah. And then I worry that I seem like that, and I'm like, well, it's just those few hours when you're out. It's not my whole life or your whole life or their whole life. Yeah, charisma's a funny one because I think it's something I talk to my mum a lot about

because I don't think you can learn it. It's a funny one. It's magic. It's like love. You can see what you think it is, but you can't really explain what it is. So the failed graduation. Yeah, the fake pictures.

You borrow it. I love that you took fake pictures. Yeah, it's quite Piers Morgan front cover, fake pictures. Me and my, holding my friend's scroll. What did your mother say to you? I was at a point where I was just kind of quite wayward and invincible. I just thought I was invincible. And I think I'm surprised how little time I spent thinking about her and like checking in with her.

I would go like three months without going home. I just was in a head state where I was quite I don't know it's I think everyone has that when they finish their degree that what next that gulf of that was overwhelming maybe maybe in retrospect at the time I just wanted to go out and drink and stay up all night and get the free there was a free bus that went from my house into Shoreditch and I used to just get on the free bus and party she sounds really great your mother oh she's fab yeah she's really good what's her name debbie debbie smith no sorry actually sorry i don't know why i like her whole name and what's her address yeah she lives where now she's really good you know she was aware that

i wasn't like other kids and i think she assumed that was because of my mixed parentage and it turns out i was gay you don't have to answer this because it's a really interesting question. But is your dad still on the scene? Do you know him? My dad lives about 20 minutes walk from me. I haven't seen him for a couple of years. We have like quite an amicable text relationship. That's kind of it.

It's a very, I went through this weird phase where I was like, he is a great guy, but he's not a great dad to me. And accepting that just made our relationship really much easier because I had all these expectations of him to, I remember really vividly being six and going to stay with him for a week. And I was like, I've got my swimming trunks. And he was like, why would you bring your swimming trunks? He's not about activity. And actually my whole life is about activity. It's about filling the space with stuff, stuff to do, stuff to see. I always think of creativity as someone who is a creative. I always think creativity is connecting lots of different dots.

So for me, reading a book, reading a tweet, going to the cinema, they're all dots that you can then connect in different ways so when I'm teaching at St Martin's I'll say you should watch this film because it's amazing and it might not help you at all but then it's in your head forever and maybe you'll draw on it at a later date. I love that so much because I think that a lot of people are quite precious about what they perceive to be culture and I'm a massive high low brow proponent like I love the Real Housewives franchise as much as I love a Thackeray novel or whatever yes and I think people feel that they can fail at culture yeah oh yeah I don't think of it as high I think of it as a flat line it's all happening

at the same time you can be very happy eating a donut at the Tate I think you know taste and culture it was invented by the French obviously it was invented by the French, obviously. Taste was invented by the French so that people who could afford nice things were still outsiders because they didn't have this inner sense of culture and taste and what was right and wrong. It wasn't about money. It was about this kind of rarefied way of being. You know, as someone who believes that everyone should be able to excel at stuff and we don't need stuff, I still have massive attraction to stuff. I still want to go on the Orient Express again. I still want to do all of those really nice, rarefied things that make my day feel incredibly special.

But I also realise that it's rubbish. It's glitz. It's glam. It's something Andre Leon Talley said about he lives in a gilded cage like it's this beautiful thing but it's a trap do you think that experience so a lot of people again bemoan the Instagram generation and say why are you taking photos of everything and why aren't you just experiencing the moment yeah but how do you combine the experience and the capturing of it I'm really awful when I go to restaurants I just re-gram people that have already taken nice pictures of the food. That's genius. Yeah because it's just a

time-consuming it's just rubbish it's such a waste of time. I don't know I think what makes me and the way I communicate so like open to people is the fact that I can when I was on the Unior Express I was laughing at the fact that I was on it because I can see that it for what it is it's silly that I'm so dressed up and I'm on a train and there's like three women falling over because they're wearing the most ridiculous heels it's like and the train's rocking from side to side that I can see it for what it is and that doesn't mean I don't want it anymore I just see it and I can express that to other people you can orient express it to other people. I can orient express that to other people.

That's why they don't pay me the big bucks. But the Instagram generation, I just, I mean, I'm assuming like most things, the bubble will burst. And I don't know what happens after that. Paradigm will shift. It always does. I mean, we just can't see what's around the corner. But I remember like I lived for MySpace

and I don't remember the last time I went on it. What does your mum think of your Instagram following? My mum and my stepdad, they're impressed by the numbers. My mum doesn't have Instagram. She was with her friend at lunch. This is so funny. She was with her friend at lunch and they went on the Instagram and I'd done like a jokey post about mums.

And it was like, if anyone wants to listen to an hour-long podcast just my mom's just left one on my answer phone and she was like but I I hadn't and I think she just I think there's a literalness and I think she's from a generation where you don't throw out a line that isn't true essentially that doesn't isn't a joke about all mums yeah So I think she likes it. I think the only funny part of it was my mother-in-law does follow me on Instagram. So she was getting like quite a lot of updates about how I live. And my mum was like, I didn't know that about you. So now I actually send my mum pictures all the time in a way that I just didn't think about before. That's so sweet. Actually, my mum follows me on Instagram

and the reason she does it is so that she can see what I'm up to. And I do think that that's something that gets really underplayed. It is actually a really lovely way of keeping in touch with people who you don't see all the time or who live abroad.

Yeah. So now I send the pictures to my mum and she's very happy. Do you text them to her? Yeah, WhatsApp my mum. That's so sweet. What, like your Instagram posts or just pictures of you? The posts I put on Instagram, right?

So like me in Clevedon House standing next to a coat of armour without any funny captions. She doesn't get the funny captions. I think they understand that it's everywhere, but they're not that bothered. I'm going to go on to your third failure and I'd actually like to read out loud the paragraph that you wrote to me because I think it's such a beautiful thing that you have chosen how you've expressed it okay so Raven chose

as his third failure my marriage even though I'm not divorced and he said marriage is a concoction of failures and successes I relentlessly fuck it up process not a destination it's constant failure and checking in on those failures it's saying i will be more chill i will not mention the mess i will not make every situation about how i feel i will not keep putting pressure on my husband to be more like me failure across all of this i just think i love that it's such an encapsulation of a long-term relationship yeah it's a constant compromise and navigation failure it is when you look back at it oh it's just there's something so fortifying about all the stuff that goes wrong in

a relationship that you survive together and that's not to say that my marriage isn't full of its majority we're laughing the majority of the. My husband comes home and he will dance and we'll dance together when he comes home. Like it's like that we are sappy and very involved with each other. But also it's like two stones bumping together down a river. We're just bashing into each other all the time.

That's just big personality. How did you fall in love with him? Oh, we met on the night bus i remember a guy on the bus that i wanted his attention he was on the bus already he said he was with a load of people going to a party and i came upstairs and everyone on the top deck cheered which i love to tell people that's what happened wait why because i was on the bus they recognized you yeah so i was going to the same party as all of it oh my god that's so they all cheered and he was like, who's that guy? And then I remember wanting his attention

and I sat on the lap of the guy he was next to with my back to him to complete... This is really weird because so many people I meet think I'm off. The people I really, really, really like, I find it very hard to just chat to them. I'm more likely to completely ignore them. So I completely ignored him. He had a beer, I turned around, said I'm'm thirsty drank some of his beer went to the party it sounds suave but I was

you know still quite kamikaze then I was still a lot more kind of fiercely independent I would describe it as wore that as a badge of like I don't need anybody. How old were you? 27. Okay. And he was 22. So he had just left university. And I remember the first time we were going to go on holiday together and I just booked my flight. And I was like, I booked my flight to New York.

And he was like, what? And I was like, yeah, because I had to get it off the list. Like I'm kind of hyper-efficient like that. And he was like, that's so weird. And I was like, oh, oh right. You don't't that's not what people do wait when did you booked a flight saying to him come with me to New York yeah we were gonna go together and I just put my flight I put my flight okay and he was like right cool and then smashing did you want him secretly you wanted him to come with you

I wanted him to come I wasn't trying to divide. I just had to get on with booking my ticket. So it's that independent, only child. You know, it's the same as when I worked in an office, everyone was like, you never offer anyone tea. And I was like, no, because I come from a family where if you want a cup of tea, just get up and make a cup of tea. I never thought about it of like, does everyone want a cup of tea? It's just not part of my makeup.

I would just look after myself very happily so learning to be in love with Richard and being able to make as much space for him within that was more difficult at the beginning do you think you're quite like a cat in what way in that you're completely comfortable with your own space and sort of need it and yet you like being strokes but you don't want to admit that you like it so you're a little bit standoffish yeah that would be me okay yeah poor richard my cats are special but yes sure i'm like other cats you're like a generic cat yeah i'm like a normal cat not like my very special full of personality that i haven't projected onto him at all cat what. What kind of cat is it?

He's a tabby, which obviously the friendliest cats on the planet. They let you tickle their tummies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he is, he's basically like a little dog that looks after himself. I would think my husband's probably a dog person, but it was my 30th and I was like, I want a cat. And we just ended up randomly with one of the most friendliest cats on the planet. I remember my grandma's cat scratching me, my legs.

I remember my dad's cat scratching my legs and him being like, it's your fault. And it was, I was blindfolded, just running around in his flat and never really had a good relationship with cats. So we have a great one. Because you're too similar. So have you been with Richard ever since that night

on the night bus? No, we went to home together that night. And then there was about a year where we would just meet at night and neither of us was into it at all. He was 22 and he I was like that guy's an idiot and he was like that guy's a dick and then very gradually it just became he sort of called it off and essentially saying no to me is the one way to really get my attention. So after he said no, we met at an acne party and I gave him like a lecture about how I just wanted to be his friend. And I felt offended that he thought I was like some kind of man-hungry man-eater.

And then we were together straight after that. Yeah, we went to the cinema and it was just, he balances me out. I think we both made each other a lot, lot, lot better. Definitely. So how did you fail at marriage this weekend? This weekend, I definitely made it about myself. We were going to a Christmas party. I just let him manage all of the organisation of actually getting us there.

There's part of me that is about vision. So I'm like, this is the vision. And then he has to come and kind of manage. I'm like, this is your thing to manage off the vision I think sometimes it's like that and it's definitely like that with like if we're going somewhere with the cat I would never pick up the cat and put him in his box and carry the cat on the train it would never happen we've fallen into this quite clear that's what Richard does how did I fail what did it say on the list I mean like I have a problem with being 10 steps ahead with my thought process and I think sometimes I need to just make more space for him to have his

thought process as well and I think I fail at that all the time he just is like why are you talking about three years future yeah and he's like we need to just go around the house and mark up where we want all the light switches and I'm like what's gonna happen in five years when we outgrow this house so it's very I'm you know really focusing on the future and I think he he does too but he also needs to do the steps and how do you think you succeeded at marriage this weekend? Oh, we had a fight. And I was like, I don't, I think we should just put this down and go to the party and then pick it up another time. I think also, you kind of have to give up your control, whatever control you want, which means it's always chaos. I find it quite chaotic. And I have to just let the chaos in. always chaos. I find it quite chaotic and I have to just let the chaos in. That's the only way to be. Yeah. And do you think that you're learning about yourself through this? Yeah. I want to be

a better husband to him, but that takes a lot of, I have this thing at the moment about driving, like we're both in the car and a big part for me is making sure we're moving forward but he's allowed to steer it's that chaos and control of like I get really stressed out when I feel like things aren't moving but I also don't want to be in control of the destination I want to work with him with that so it's a little bit like sometimes we'll sit I'm like oh we should have a sit down and talk about this thing and he's like i know you've already decided what's going to go on so why don't you just tell me and i'm like no it's like i actually don't know what's going to happen i want us to just decide what happens next but i want us to move so it's that kind of balance but

and also it's so easy to say outside of the moment this is how it goes. And like, I fall into bad habits all the time. I can see why yoga is good for you. In terms of concentrating on the present moment and not overthinking. Yeah, and I've taken a lot of the stuff from yoga and applied it to my life. That idea of like tension and release and like not trying to be the best at it, actually.

It's a weird one though, because I feel like I occupy such a unique space in the fact that I'm black, I'm gay, I'm mixed race. It's like all of these different things. I don't have anyone in my life that I'm that similar to. Like no one's really jealous of the queen because she's so removed. I don't have this competitive closeness with,

I don't have it with my husband with I don't have it with my husband I don't have it with anyone so I don't feel like I have to be and do more stuff I just feel great when I'm juggling lots of stuff actually that's when I feel most satisfied you've got such insight about yourself honestly it's very rare to meet someone I mean that in the best way it's completely fascinating too yeah I know you did just compare yourself to the queen, but I'm on board with that. But I know you didn't mean it that way. It's hilarious. Why did you get married? My husband asked me and all I could think was, why would you trap me? I'm such a free spirit. Why would someone want to pin me to the ground? That lasted a really short amount of time,

like two days. I think we both understood completely what a marriage would be for us. It was the wedding that we found the hardest to work out. It just felt so contrived. For someone who loves attention, I would never have a birthday party. I'd never make an event about me. I'm much better at your birthday party than mine. I just find the kind of orchestrated eyes on me very difficult. And Richard was like, I want to go to Scotland for a month

and have a party in like a druid circle. And I was like, we can't organise that. We'll never be able to organise that. So we spent three years arguing about what the ceremony would actually be. And then it all came together. We still argue about who picked the venue. I'm like, I'm so glad I came up with it. And he's like, that was me.

It was just our mums as our witnesses at the end of our road. And then we went to Rochelle Canteen and took that place over for lunch with 40 friends. It was great. It was one of the best weddings I've ever been to. And it could have been complete chaos because I was resisting organising it too much. I didn't even tell them we were

getting married at the canteen. I was like, it's just a lunch. So it ended up being fantastic. It's like you had the vision for five years hence. You were kind of like, I can see where we are in five years and we're surrounded by chandeliers and I don't want to think about this right now. And your relationship instantly starts to plateau when you get married, like straight away. Because my husband was like oh phew oh we're in now and I was like what next what next what next and that's my stepdad completely he would always be what next he wasn't like well done he's not a well he does say well

done but he's a what next guy yeah that's learned behavior and I I love the what next so where will you be in five years time oh such a think? Oh, such a good question. We will have floors in every room of our house because we don't at the moment. Basically what happened was we were living in a flat that we loved. It had really, like really good energy. We were so, so happy there. And I was like, if we have kids in the next five years,

we have to move out of Camberwell. And we love Camberwell. And I was like, we should probably move now and get enough room for that. So we now live in a house that we can't afford to do up that will be ready in five years when we're gonna have kids for me it's huge i grew up in flats right i never lived in a full house so for me it feels like this like cavern but it's really not nice place it's like a bit down at heel i don't really have an

oven you have to squat in the shower to shower yourself. On a whim, on a freelance day, I knocked down one of the walls upstairs. Richard came home drunk from the pub and opened up the door to the bedroom and it just went all the way back to the bathroom. It was one of those. And someone was like,

you don't know what you're doing. You shouldn't have done that in Birkenstocks. And I was like, right, okay, cool. It's part of that drive to move things forward we wrote this quite extensive list of stuff to do it's going to be great when it's done but I think it put pressure on the relationship we got a new roof which is like the most expensive thing you can do that you can't see from your house it's like we were all we can see is the hole where the guy fell through into the bathroom it's a long burn and at the

beginning of that we knew that and we were fine with it and now we're like halfway not got the cash that we needed and not really willing to give up all of the nice things in my life to do it I still want to go eat nice food out and stuff so it's a longer term so that will probably take five years and you're also writing your book I am writing my book so one of the challenges of writing the book was that I couldn't really sit in my house without doing stuff so I've just taken a studio and I go there and write and then I'm going to Berlin for a month to really go underground January in Berlin in the freezing cold it's a numbers game yeah it's a numbers game it is you just need to sit down nail the 1000 words a day you'll be fine yeah yeah yeah so gonna try

and do that and then yeah I am writing a book that's terrifying it's genius I can't wait to read it I really can't Raven Smith what does success look like to you? Do you feel that you are successful? I think on paper, absolutely. But the what next part of me will never be fully satisfied. I don't think it will be. I think it will. I'll always want that kind of idea of something more. That's like a life of disappointment that I've just described.

No, I think it's a life, I relate. And I think it's a life of drive. Yeah. It's a life of questing, but it can be a great thing. Everything is fuel. Yeah, it's rewarding as well. That push to not just luxuriate in the status quo. I always want something other.

There's always another thing to, like I think of all of the book. I mean, my reading pile is like this pile of judgment that's like of unread, brilliant writing. So I will always have something to read I'll always at least even if I get all my wildest dreams come true I'll there'll still be a New Yorker that's still in its plastic I mean everyone has has thousands of New Yorkers that they've never read oh it's so tough no you can't keep ahead of yourself with New Yorker there's too many words in it and I keep thinking I'll just read a bit of this and then I'll and then I and then I'll know if I like it yeah yeah Raven Smith

your to be read pile is expansive your charisma is immense I am so thrilled that you've come on how to fail to talk about your not so significant failures but you've been a real delight thank you so much and everyone everyone must follow you on Instagram. Yes, thanks. Thanks for having me.