The Life Of Bryony - 'Life Doesn’t Come with a Handbook, but Friends Help': Dawn O'Porter on the Power of Female Friendship

Episode Date: November 4, 2024

Welcome to Life of Bryony, where we dig into life’s messiest moments. GUEST: DAWN O’PORTER In this week’s episode, I’m joined by author Dawn O'Porter to discuss female friendship, navigating adulthood, and her latest novel, Honeybee. Dawn shares insights from her own life, including the challenges of motherhood, the unexpected strength found in friendships, and how we sometimes need a varied selection of friends to get us through the toughest times. Our conversation covers everything from the pressure to have it all together to the messy, real, and often humorous sides of growing up. Dawn's candid reflections bring a refreshing perspective to the pressures we face in adulthood and how friendship can be a lifeline. Plus, we get into how her experiences inspired her to write Honeybee, a story about love, loyalty, and female solidarity. GET IN TOUCH: 🗣️ If you want to get in touch, I’m only a text or a voice note away! Send your message to 07796657512, starting with LOB. 💬 WhatsApp Shortcut - https://wa.me/447796657512 📧 Or email me at [e-mail] Don’t forget to share this podcast with someone who you think might benefit from it! Bryony xx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Come on, then. You happy? I've never been happier. Nothing like you venting all your rage. I don't have that much rage. Welcome to The Life of Brian E, the podcast where we dig into life's messiest moments and find the joy hidden in the chaos. My guest today is someone I love,

author and broadcaster Dawn O'Porter. Dawn is here to chat about her latest novel, Honeybee, a brilliant exploration of female friendship, adulthood, and mental health. It's like I've been shot. I just thought, life as I know will never be the same again. I've lost her. Wondering how to survive adulthood and come out the other side? This is the podcast for you. Greetings everyone from Torset. I'm here for half term and I've taken myself off for a little walk in nature which is lovely. You might hear though a little bit of drilling and sawing in the background because I don't know how to explain this but I'm staying in this like place that has like lots of holiday homes on it. It's almost like it's all around lakes and it's lovely

and but there are lots of new holiday homes being built Which explains the drilling and the soaring and frankly makes it sound like not that peaceful a holiday and It's beautiful absolutely beautiful. I'm looking out at the moment at a lake and A deer I can see a deer in the distance who is very confused by me It's thinking what the hell is this woman doing speaking into her phone? and a deer, I can see a deer in the distance who is very confused by me. It's thinking, what the hell is this woman doing speaking into her phone? I don't know if they listen to podcasts, dear.

Anyway, it is beautiful and it has been lovely to get away. I am here with five other families. At one point there were 16 children for dinner to cater for. I don't know if that is relaxing but it's certainly fun. It's certainly eventful. Yeah six of us families have come away together for kind of I don't know I guess we're practicing a commune and actually it's been a real example of female friendship which is what this podcast this week is all about so I guess this intro kind of fits with it but there is always a but isn't there? yesterday I woke up and I had

just the nastiest stomach bug like a little 24 hour thing perhaps it was food poisoning I don't know I don't think it was because no one else got it but suffice it to say this always happens when I go on holiday I don't know about you it's like I somehow my body kind of keeps going and the moment you know when I have loads of work on it keeps going it keeps going it doesn't give me that respite when I frankly could do with it and then when I get away, it goes here, have a dose of food poisoning. And it got me thinking about how bad I am actually at listening to my body. I can hear my body. I hear it say, stop, Bridie, stop, sit down, have a rest.

But I don't listen to it, I just miss it. And I think that's quite sort of, I don't know, like I feel that this is something that women are quite good at doing is hearing and then just kind of overriding it because the world doesn't want us to feel those things it needs us up and functioning and working and looking after all the kids and all the other things that we are supposed to tick off the list. You know that lovely drilling in the background? I'm ignoring the drilling and I'm focusing on the

lovely deer. So that's what this week's been about having to listen to my body a bit more. I wonder are you any good at paying attention to your body? Do you know what your cues are? For me, I think the moment that I start to feel overwhelmed is a sign that I'm going down an unhealthy route and actually if I'm honest I did start to feel overwhelmed a couple of weeks ago so there you go. I think I'm going to sort of write down a list of things that are my kind of signs for overwhelm. I hope you can hear some more lovely, gentle knocking over there.

I'm gonna return to the, actually there's only eight kids now, so it's very relaxing. Gonna return to the eight children. Only one of them's mine, but we are commune parenting. So they're all mine this week. And what a delight that is. Does anyone wanna come and set up a commune with me?

Should we do it? Let's do it. ["The New York Times"] My guest today is Dawn O. Porter. She's a bestselling author and beloved broadcaster who's known for her candid and humorous take on life. Dawn's work explores the messiness of adulthood, womanhood and the pressure to have it all figured out. Her latest novel is called Honeybee and it explores the ups and downs of female friendship,

the struggle to find purpose and the feeling of being stuck in a life that doesn't quite match up to your expectations. Plus there's loads of sex. In today's episode we talk about everything from the unconditional love of our friendships to the time we went on holiday together by accident. So if you're looking for a refreshing, heartwarming and funny take on life's challenges, you'll love my chat with Dawn. I want to talk to you about female friendship because I just finished your latest book, Honey Bee, which is the third in a series of books about these two friends, Renee and Flo. But also because I feel like the universe really wants us to be friends.

We are. No, I know. But like, I think over the years, it has like really thrown us together because I was sent to interview you. Which book was that? I think you were pregnant with your second. So that would have been the cows. I was on the book tour for the cows. Yeah. Is that which is the one where she like has a wank. That's the cows. Okay. Yeah. And I was sent to interview you. We were in Ham Yard, I think. Were we? In that big hotel.

I think you'd just been on a bender. Yeah. And you were telling me about that, and I didn't really know much about you. You were giving yourself a really hard time, and I was telling you not to worry about it, because I was pregnant but missing benders. And so I was like, don't worry about it,

go easy on yourself, it's fine. And then I remember reading, however long it was later, that you had to go to read. Yes, and that your bender was part of an ongoing thing for you. And I just felt really guilty because I felt like I was just sitting there going, don't worry about it, you'll feel like you just got the fear, you'll be fine. Up until then, I was totally responsible with my drinking, but it was you gave me the permission.

I made you spiral. Yeah, it was all going fine up until then. No, what I remember is it was like, I was definitely at that stage of new motherhood where I was really shocked that I was basically drinking as much as I had drunk before. Like there's something in my brain that had just assumed that parenthood would do for me what I now

know I needed rehab to do. Right. And I just thought, oh, I'll become a sophisticated person who has one glass of red wine a week or something. I don't know why. Is I never drank red wine? And I was so shocked that I had picked up from where I left off. I was in this sort of justification mode, I think.

And I just kept asking, do you drink as much? Do you like a drink? Like, I was trying to get, like, permission to basically carry on drinking. Yeah, I understand that. I think sometimes when there's something that you can feel isn't quite right, I go out for justification too, from people, to make sure that other people are doing the same thing just to make myself feel like it's okay. It's like you're going through those stages. And I think I knew it wasn't, but it's like you have to go through those stages to get to the acceptance stage. But also with your first kid, if you've been a party person up until you have kids, it is really hard to turn that part of your life off because babies don't do that rehab thing

that you think they'll do for a lot of people. And very often they do stop you having the fun that you had before, but in a kind of very kind of resisting way. And so you feel completely not yourself because you didn't really get the chance to say goodbye to that person. And so she comes back again. And then there's the period of time where like, who am I now? I'm a mother. But it's not something that automatically happens. I've seen that with quite a lot of people. I'm still the same person as I was before because I think I want to be, but now she's

really hard to be. Yeah, I don't have the time to be her. Yeah, it's too exhausting to be her now. I might be arrested if I'm that person. And racked with guilt. Proper guilt for the first time ever that isn't just about you. And that's a, you know, being hung over around your kids. I mean, I'm still singing that song very loudly, but being hung over around your kids is a

horrible feeling. And yeah, I think you were probably just in that time. You were great, by the way. I absolutely adored you. Really? Oh, that's so nice to know. So then like we followed each other on Instagram and then, you know, life went on and I got sober and you had your other child and you have this incredible successful career as a novelist and you were living in America and then you moved back and then our paths were thrown together last summer 2023.

I just love this so much. I was going on holiday to Majorca with my husband and daughter and we got to Gatwick Airport and they were like, no, you're not going on holiday to New Yorker because someone's pressed the wrong button on the air traffic control and the whole system has gone down. And little did I know that in New Yorker at the time Dawn was there with her two kids. We just moved back from America last summer and I just had the summer that it would always be the summer that nearly broke me of parenting. I was so exhausted. I had two quite emotional kids coming back. I was emotional. Chris was filming. And my friend at the end of the summer just said,

he's got a house in New York. Come out for the last weekend of the summer holidays. Just do your flights. I'll take care of you. Let me look after you. I was like, okay. That sounds lovely. It was so kind and so lovely. That sounds like just what I need. So I go and there's another kind of a few families, friends, all my old uni friends that were there as well. And on the day that I was supposed to leave, all hell let loose at traffic control. And my friend got out on the flight before me and weirdly my friend got out on the flight after me but my flight got cancelled and they said the soonest they could get me out of

New York was 10 days later. And I'm at this point just a broken mother, like just so tired, so done. School starting in, you know, in that 10 days, all this stuff, I hadn't got the uniforms, I hadn't done anything. So you'd literally picked up these children from America and moved them back to South London and you're like, no, you're not. And then it was just all just, anyway, the point is, you know, look back with, oh, poor me, whatever. I was stuck in New York for 10 days.

I wish that I had more enthusiasm for it, but I was just on my knees and just needed to get home. And I was also moving house that week. While I was in New Yorker, the house move had to continue and I had to direct it on text. So I got home to just absolute mayhem the week after because everyone did great, but there's only so much you can do when it's not your house. Anyway, you saved the day. I had where I was staying in Majorca, there was no internet reception.

I managed to get a post on Instagram that said, I'm stuck in Majorca. I've got no internet so I can't search because people just like tell me a hotel to head towards and I'll just get this train across Majorca and end up at this hotel. And you were one of those messages. You DM'd me and said, I'm here. It's not fancy. There's a chocolate fountain. Just get here. And I don't think you were expecting me to turn up a few hours later. So we got to this hotel eventually. I just want everyone listening to know that this was like, I think I'd booked it through like 2E or something. Like it was a real no frills, all inclusive sort of, and I love a holiday like this. It was like,

easy come, easy go. And I had said, oh, you can come to this hotel if you want. But I really thought because you're, I think of you as like living this very Hollywood life because you lived in Hollywood. Yeah, that's literally it. And your husband's like an A-list actor. I thought, oh, someone really famous will come in and rescue her. Like Richard Branson. He's got lots of properties. He probably owns Mallorca. But if not, I'll just tell her about this little three, four star.

I'm not sure it's four star, Briony. If there were any stars, it was great. I don't know if there were many stars. I was like, just I'll let her know. And then you were like, I'm here. And I was like, oh, no, this is so mortifying. Because like, it was like this whole hotel, which was basically like a tower block on the sea. It was like in that very codependent way. I was like, oh, no, it's a terrible reflection on my character. It was so perfect and exactly what I needed. Bear in mind, I'm at the end of the summer holidays. I don't want to spend any money anyway. So the idea that I was then stuck in New Yorker and was going to have to like, well, that was the perfect budget, the perfect

place. My kids, my eldest and your daughter got on so well, which was a godsend because they could go snorkeling together. That was the real savior. And then you basically just said to me, stay with us for the entire week. Like come to the dinners. We'll meet you at breakfast. We'll meet for lunch. We'll go snorkeling. We'll go to the beach together. And I was just so overwhelmed because I was quite broken at the start. And by the end, we'd been to water parks and we'd had the most amazing time. You remember when I nearly died on the water? The cobra. Oh, the cobra.

So you go down on this donut, this inflatable donut, and I'm just, I hate things like that, but I'm doing it to some of my kids like me. And I go down on this donut, bounce on the water and my neck like jammed back. You look like a rag doll. And I thought. We thought, oh no. I thought, well now I've killed dolls. Yeah, pure like neck snap death nearly happened, but didn't die.

Then 10 days later, I never managed to get an earlier flight. It was always, I tried every day to get on an earlier flight. So 10 days later, I left Majorca broken, but full of love and all because of you and your gorgeous family. And it ended up being like Art had the best week of his life. It was really fun. Edie really enjoyed it too. You saved the day.

Well, you saved the day. So female friendship because I was thinking when I was reading Honey Bee, Renée and Flo and it's set in the early noughties. I mean, that took me back. So sort of like our age. They would be our age now. I was thinking about it as I was reading it and I was thinking how when I was in my 20s there was like no fiction that was centered on female friendship. It was all centered on romantic relationships. So true. I remember later on probably around age like early 20s when I moved to London I'd lived I've gone to university and I'd lived in a big house with seven boys went back to Guernsey for a bit then moved to London, I'd gone to university and I'd lived in a big house with seven boys, went back to Guernsey for a bit, then moved to London and lived in a big warehouse conversion in Hackney with seven boys. And I was just always like one of the lads. And that's what my identity

was for so long. It was just like, you know, the one with all the kind of boyfriend, not boyfriends, not all the boyfriends, with the male friends. All the friends that happened to be boys. And I remember kind of remember around 24, 25, just having this revelation of like, oh, I love them all very much, but I just want to be with my girlfriends. And it felt kind of almost like this breakthrough, cool thing to be like,

I just want to be with my girlfriends and putting all of that effort into that. And I think that's because what we were consuming was changing. That there was more shows and more stuff about female friendship, making it way more iconic than being one of the lads. And it just started to feel really, really, really good. But yeah, we didn't grow up with great examples

of female friendship at all. Or even like it was very much. I remember just my focus was like, I need to get a boyfriend. It feels like really embarrassing to say now in the year 2024 but also because as I've got older I've realized that the most true and most unconditional love that I've experienced has been with my female friends. Yeah. I think you realize especially you can have a really happy marriage and be really close to your husband.

But what's going on beyond that in your WhatsApp groups, in your girls nights, in your lunches, that almost is what holds you up constantly. It's a different kind of conversation. I can't imagine a day without connecting with the women in my life. It's almost like an addiction. It's so lovely. I've got all these different WhatsApp chats. Like, you know, I've got the kind of school mum chat

and then there's the spin-off school mum chat. What's that? It's really nice actually. It's not like it's a bitchy spin-off chat. It's not like the chat about the chat. No, it's not the chat about the chat, but it's just the kind of the constant chat. So it's not really about school.

It's about just all day. We literally, it's basically what Instagram, but in WhatsApp, what we have for lunch, what we're doing doing if we just open Some wine if we didn't open wine if the kids have done our heads in whatever it is It's just this constant like support network going on in whatsapp And I've got a few of those different chats with different groups of friends my friends in America or my mum friends in America I'm not living with anymore

We've got one as well that kind of kicks in in the afternoon when they all wake up whatever you know It's like it's, it's really lovely. And I feel like I've just, Chris is always saying to me, you're always on your phone. And I'm like, yeah, but I'm really connecting with people. Not in a mindless way. No, I'm not like, I'm not really on Instagram that much anymore.

I'm literally connecting with my friends constantly all day. The only place it falls apart for me, if someone does an actual call, I think they've lost their mind. Really? And not answer the phone. What would happen if I was to phone you up? Do you know what if someone calls me and then they call back immediately I always pick up. If someone calls me and they call back immediately I go into a spin cycle of like what terrible thing

has happened. So I'll always pick up. Presuming it's an emergency. But if someone just calls me I'll just firstly give them some grace and presume that it's a bomb dial. I will accept that everyone makes mistakes. Yeah. I'm probably lying in bed doing nothing and I'll text them and say, sorry, I'm in a meeting. Can't chat right now. Is it important? And if they say, no, just calling for a chat, I'd be like, are you okay? What is happening? And then I'll leave them a voice note and hope that appeases the need to fit in. Am I your therapist? Yes. Leave them a voice note, hoping that thatases the need to fit in. Am I your therapist? Yes. I'll leave them a voice note hoping that that calms them down and then see if we can go back and forth a bit. The only person I really answer the phone to for a chat is my sister.

Right. Anyone else, I presume it's an emergency, so I'll wait and see if they call back again. I don't mind talking on the phone so much, I'd just like a heads up. So I'd like a text first saying, you're around for a chat, and then I can say, I don't like being caught surprised by a phone call. So I'm just very glad that modern technology allows us to reject and that there's not just a phone ringing on the wall. I think that would set me into a spin.

But it didn't used to. Because when we were teenagers, I remember I used to spend hours on the phone with my friends. Hours on the phone. It was so fun. And my mom would be like, get off the phone, Briny. Because that'd be the the engaged tone. Yeah. My uncle would just be like, Dawn, it's for you.

And then just kind of stand there staring while I was on the phone. It was so annoying for everybody when the kids were on the phone. And I suppose there is something sad about the fact. Art doesn't have a phone yet. I don't know if he does. But they're texting all the time instead of talking on the phone.

That is sad. But yeah, I like a warning before a phone call. But apart from that, I'm just in constant communication with my girlfriends all the time. And it's just this kind of invisible support system that just never fades. It starts at 6 o'clock in the morning and ends at 10 o'clock at night.

It's just always there. There's a great quote in the book, which is, women need their women. Yeah, I love that. And especially in the context of what it's about, there's an affair. There's alcoholism. But it's a kind of unexpected bit of sisterhood between two people you might not necessarily

expect there to be some. Yeah, but I think that's it. Your wing woman can come from anywhere. And sometimes, what I love about female friendship is sometimes when you're in crisis, it's not necessarily your best friend that gets you through it. It's the woman that is most relevant from your life that might get you through a certain thing. Or sometimes it's just the woman that was in the room. And, you know, I've looked back through my life and things that have happened. And I've got my best friend

in the whole world, Louise, but she lives in Australia. She's not the person who I necessarily always call, text, when I'm in crisis. When I'm in crisis and I just think sometimes it's who's closest or who you know you can relate to, and that's what I just love about. When women really look after each other, the support is just unmeasured. I remember when my dog died and it was so traumatic,

and my friend Rebecca came and sat with me for two and a half hours and just listened to me talk about my dog. And she left and I was like, my God, that was so generous of her. That was so kind. I wouldn't call her one of my best friends. And yet she knew that the dog had died. I must have. I can't remember how I think I bumped into her on the school run or

something. I just came around, just sat with me for two and a half hours. Just a very she loves dogs. She got it. She got it. And I was like, wow, that was just such a powerful moment. I just love the way that you can step in. You can step in and be someone's wingwoman and get them through something at any point. It's like, I think it's almost like a karmic thing. Like it's how it's what you put out into the universe. And I have a very dear friend who's she's been going through some really hard stuff recently.

And in the summer she texted me, you know, I was like, how are you doing? And she was not well. And she was like, I'm really sorry. Like, this is just endlessly texting you bad news. And I was like, I'm so sorry, darling, but that's not how friendship works. Like, I don't just get to be here for the good bits. Yeah. Like, that's unconditional love.

I want you to be able to tell me the shit bits, because that's what friendship is. It really is. And it's almost like that's what, in terms of writing, I find that way more interesting to write about than romantic relationships. Yeah. I really loved writing the love story in Honeybee.

I really wanted to, because I think the girls are 22 and they're getting to an age where love takes on a whole different meaning. And there's way more at stake in your relationships when you officially enter adulthood. So it was really fun to write about that relationship with them because up until then, you know, boyfriends and whatever. Female friendship is a theme in all of my books and always will be, just the way that

when women come together that gives you such power. And we should all just be reminded of that all the time and do what we can to stay together because it's an incredibly powerful force, female energy. But the thing I love about writing about Renée and Flo is they met when they were 14, well they became friends when they were 14, and I want to write about them until they're old ladies. And I find that so much more interesting, complicated, challenging to write than a romantic relationship that lasts 60 years. Like in terms of having a best friend from school, which I don't have lots of friends, but they've not had that one person all the way through.

How do you stay together? How do you stay together when you're entirely different people? When you're both gonna meet other people, you're both gonna probably move to different places. Some of you might have babies, some of you might not have babies. Like what, you know, all of these massive life things. How do I keep these two women

together until we meet them, you know, maybe when they're 90 one day? And that is such a journey. And because friendships are complicated and sometimes you have to turn a bit of a blind eye, but at the same time have to still be there. In a romantic relationship, difficulties cause major problems. In a friendship, you can work with it a little bit more. So I just I love that. I'm so enamored by people who have had their same besties since childhood. Yeah. When my best friend called me, we've been best friends since, I'm one of those people that say they're one of my best friends, they're one of my best, I've found loads of people, but there is Louise who is like my you know ride or

die. She's the one that lives in Australia. And we met when we were kind of probably 19 at college. I was at college in Liverpool and she'd gone to school with the boys that I lived with. And so she used to come up at the weekends and we just completely fell in love with each other. When she told me that she'd got engaged, I hung up. Really? I was, it's like I'd been shot. I was just like, okay, great. And I just hung up the phone.

And I remember standing in my kitchen being like, that was an awful thing to have done. That was an awful thing to have done. Oh my God, oh my God. And I just took like 10 minutes of, okay, okay, okay. I just thought life as I know will never be the same again. I've lost her. I used to love it when we were like,

always sleeping in the same bed. And we just, you know, we could, we shared a flat for a year where we slept in the same again. I've lost her. I used to love it when we would like always sleep in the same bed and we just you know, we could we shared a flat for a year where we slept in the same bed and I was just I said did we not get to do that anymore? Because now you've got a husband. I just didn't understand. I thought everything was gonna change and I thought I'd lost her after about 10 minutes. Call her back. Really, sorry. I'm so happy for you. And really I got engaged a few months later and And all that, you know, and- And she hung up the phone. And she hung up, no, but nothing really changed. She's still my ride or die. Everything's fine. But at that age, I found the idea of losing her

absolutely terrifying. I just didn't understand what marriage would do to the friendship. That will absolutely be a part of Renée and Flo's future. Like I can kind of write all of those moments from my own life being challenged in that way into this friendship, which is a really fun thing to do. But I think if lots of people were honest when you find out your best friend is getting married, if you're single, it is

like a gut punch. And then everything's fine. But it can be really shocking. I'll never forget that reaction I had. I felt terrible. Luckily, she's very cool. I think she would have probably done the same thing. There is something about friendship which is in a way much more unconditional. Well, it's just less at stake. So you can be the thing I always say that Louise is just she's in terms of my life just unshockable. Yeah, she's never said anything to me that she's done when I've been shocked or made her feel bad about it and vice versa. And that's just this really kind of lovely safe thing. There's never been an argument because our lives aren't that entwined. We can just be there for each other. There's this moment

when you meet, you know, I met my husband and it was just like, oh, he was the most important person. He still is the most important person. And that's that. And then you kind of settle into married life and the friendships kind of come back again in a really mega way. I think when you meet the love of your life, you're supposed to disappear for a bit. Yes. And I think a really good friend will understand that. That's it. So they understand that. I'm sure you go do your thing babes. Yeah. But I know I'll be here when you get sick of him. I give you 18 months before you're saying can we book a spa break.

The other thing about Honeybee is it's about young adulthood as well. Reading it I thought, oh my god, this stuff is still actually as relevant now that I'm in my forties as it was in my twenties. And there's this bit where either Renée or Flo, I can't remember which one says this, but they say at least at school if you're shit at something you just go into the lower set and you know you will eventually get better at something or but being grown up means you have to stay good at things you can't just be shit for a bit because if you drop the ball then it all falls apart. Yeah. It's so true. Right when you're writing about people of that age of 22 they really think that at some point something's going to click and adulthood's going to kick in and it's all just going to get easier from there and I think what we know is that's not really

the case but there is a sense of before the age of that before when you've been going to university and going to school every September someone offers you a new start for your whole life. New year is September. Yeah every September it's okay this year you can do better don't worry there's a whole new syllabus a whole new thing probably new friends in your class. Yeah. You can win the Progress Prize this year, right? Everything's different. And then suddenly that stops. You're like, fuck. Well, it's like there's no break. You're just looking at, so wait, so I'm going to sit in this office every day apart from four weeks of the year. And if I get here at five past nine, I'm in

trouble and I can't leave before five o'clock on the dot. And what if lunch takes ages to get? I still only got an hour. Like it's all just so hard and it's never going away. That just feels like that's it now. And I remember feeling quite terrified of that. I remember finding out things like council tax. Yeah, I know. What? I have to, what? On top of the rent rent I have to pay this. All of those responsibilities were really stressful and something else I talk about in honeybee that I remember hit me like a ton of bricks because I'd worked. I had a Saturday job since I was old and old enough to have one. I always had to work. That was my pocket money. I didn't get given pocket money. So I was I was I was not like work shy at all. Always very motivated and always had a good work ethic.

But I was still living at home because of my parental situation. I got a really good grant to go to drama school. So my rent was covered there as well. So I was earning money to live off, but my rent was covered. This sudden thing of having to like sitting at this reception desk, because I tempt just like Renee does in the book, going, right, if I get paid £12 an hour, you actually break that down for how many hours you have to sit there to be able to live in.

So one hour is lunch, you know, a sandwich from Boots and a Coke and a packet of crisps and a Mars bar. A Boots meal deal. A Boots meal deal. That was literally all there was in terms of lunches. Exactly. In the noughties and the nineties. And then you think, oh, I need to buy some new office clothes. That's four hours worth of sitting at this desk for clothes

that are going to fall apart by next week. And all of this stuff is so new. And it seems like such a long time ago, but I can still remember it so clearly. That's life now. We're used to that. We're used to the money that we earn getting us the things that we need.

And suddenly, you know what you can and you can't have and all of that stuff. That comes eventually but I remember being totally flummoxed by it back then. I think also it's really nice and I don't think we get the opportunity to do it very often and what the really the sense I kept getting as I was reading Honeybee was like you know I was reflecting on my own early 20s and how fucking chaotic they were. Like my flatmates were humans and also silverfish, do you know what I mean? And I was like, Father Time will pay the council tax, do you know what I mean? Like I didn't really understand what was going on. And I was reading it and I was like really kind of, you know, that's what books do, isn't

it? You go into, you know, you go on a bit of a holiday, but you also can time travel. And I was thinking about my own twenties and I was thinking, God, you've come a long way, babes. Like it's a really nice thing to be able to do as an older woman. You know, we can moan about our bones creaking or, you know, how tired we are all the time. But there's a really beautiful moment where you sit and you go, everything I wanted when I was 22 or 23. Yeah. I basically have. And also I think in terms of that I look back at being at university and I had this one bedroom. I remember when I first saw it I kind of said I was going to go into a house

instead of going to halls and there was these girls who said oh you can have a room in our house and I just got there landed kind of from Guernsey with all my stuff and this room was like a cupboard with the heating system in it and just loads of carbon monoxide stickers everywhere and my bed was literally my head would have been half a foot away from the you know the loud heating machine and this tiny box room and it was so cold despite because the heating was never wrong because no one could afford it that I used to get dressed in bed before I went to bed yeah very So you could just get up in the morning and go straight to college.

Everything that's happened since then to where I am now is all me, a decision to move on to the next thing, whatever job you took going on, doing the course, passing the course, moving to London, all this stuff. It felt like such a slog at the time, but you look back and every stage of that journey to success was all Me no one was doing it for me. I'm like fuck what climb that was?

But how amazing so satisfying? You know, it's just an amazing thing to think that you just you start somewhere and then you just make this journey through to wherever You get to but I think for the girls in the book. They don't know about that climb yet. They don't know about that journey. They think it's going to just be success tomorrow. Yeah. Or they're scared that there will never be all of the things that they think that they should have, they're never going to get. But also, I'm imagining that most of the people who listen to this podcast will be our age. And it's quite a nice thing to do if you're listening now, just to kind of look back and go

Like have a word with 22 year old you yeah like time travel and say babes, you know, like I've done. Okay? Yeah It's really it's really amazing. I think all of that that 20s are as you fucking awful such a shit show I mean towards my end of my 20s when I thought I'd kind of I was through all that literally I remember having five quid going well Do I feed me or do I feed the cat and then you know six months later things are kind of, I was through all that. Literally, I remember having five quid going, well, do I feed me or do I feed the cat? And then, you know, six months later, things are kind of better again. Gosh, the resilience of us to have got to 45. I don't think I ever fed myself.

I must have done, because I'm alive. Like I fed myself Quavers, I think. Yeah, the diet was bad. To lie on my stomach before I went on a bender. I discovered how much. There was a local coffee shop that sold a granola bar for, like, £2.60. And that granola bar was really massive

and would really fill me up. So when I was really broke, I just lived on granola bars. But not now, because now it's like, you know, granola bars are quite healthy now. Back then, they were not. So basically, you know, granola bars are quite healthy now. Back then they were not. So basically I lived on cake. I just lived on cake. I was talking to my dear friend Laura the other day and we were remembering going on holiday to like her aunt or someone had like a static caravan in France somewhere. And

we went away. We were in our like mid-twenties., and we had no money. Like, she paid for my flight, and I was like, I didn't get paid, I can't pay you back. And we had about 20 euros for the week. Everything went on booze and cigarettes. And then one of her aunt's friends had to basically come and rescue us. Bring us around some booze. That's the thing.

It was so dire at some times. How were we surviving? Someone was obviously doing something somewhere. But we were I but I remember that I like now look back and go that was the best holiday. Like was awful. It's just. Well whoever the aunt is he's just like got these girls who are just smoking and drinking and. Yeah yeah yeah and if you're listening I'm so sorry. But also thanks. Thanks. Thanks for the baguettes and the cheese. So good. The other thing I wanted to talk to you about in the book is sex. Yeah.

Is that okay? Always. I'm apologising. That's alright. Do you enjoy writing sex scenes? I love writing sex scenes. Do you? Yeah, I really do. I love writing sex scenes, but honest ones. Sometimes they might be

arousing, but I'm not necessarily trying to arouse anybody. I'm like, I like, especially at that age. There was no arousing sex in your 20s. Well, I didn't write the details. I don't know if you noticed this, but something that I really noticed was up until kind of 20s or whatever, friends would always talk about sex

that they'd had with whoever they'd had sex with in detail. And suddenly when real love started to come into things and people got boyfriends that they really loved, potentially might marry, the sex chat just stopped. And so I would never discuss my sex life with even my closest friends really now. And I find that really interesting. It's true. Even with your best best friends, suddenly when real love is on the table with a guy, with the minute details, certainly in a criticism,

the sex conversation changes with your friends. And so in the book, I'm very kind of graphic about a lot of sex. But if there's real, real love, I might put the reader out the room at a certain point and just keep it a little bit sacred. So it's there and you've got some nice bits to kind of get juicy about.

There's some quite relatable shit sex. Yeah. Drunk and like, did I have sex? Yes, some did I have sex moments. Like I definitely related to Flo, who has what we shall call alcohol problems. Yeah, but I think back then, especially on Guernsey, getting blackout drunk was very aspirational.

Really? Well, that was the goal. We would drink to get as pissed as possible. And it was three bottles for a tenner or whatever, putrid paint strip of wine that we were down before we got to the pub. Then I remember a friend and I, we used to always go to the pub.

And I cannot believe they served it to us. We used to order a glass of white wine with a shot of vodka in it. What? Drink that. Even the alcoholic here is going what? It's absolutely obscene and that would be the start of our night and then we'd still be going at two o'clock in the morning by the time. How?

Well, I don't know. I don't, you know, we wouldn't barely, we would call each other in the morning and be like, how do we get home? No idea. Whatever can't remember anything and that was just completely normal and it makes me shudder now I go back to Guernsey. I'm like, oh those streets could talk what people remember that I don't remember But I you know, it's fine. That's I don't do that anymore. But that's what that age group was. That's what we were doing That's what Guernsey was. It was just so binge-drinky back then. It's much more, the island offers so much more now and I just don't think that cult just didn't exist in the same way. But back then that was really what we were doing. I went to Guernsey this year for the first time.

Isn't it pretty? Oh my gosh. Did you do the festival? I did the festival and they put me up in the posh hotel where... Which hotel? Thingy gets married in the book. Oh, in the... St. Pierre Park. St. Pierre part? You stayed there?

I turned up in Guernsey and it was the nicest day of the year so far. It was May. Great. And I just thought we went to Kobo Bay for a swim with the local triathlon ladies who clutched me to their bosom and took me into the water and I thought to myself I just don't understand why I don't live here. It is so gorgeous and so wonderful and such a lovely way of life. It's just got better and better. But because you probably don't appreciate it

when you're a child. There was two books that preceded Honeybee, both set in Guernsey. And only now are people going, God, Guernsey sounds amazing. And I think it's so telling of where I'm at in my life. Because Paper, Airplanes and Goose are about Renene and Flo, like Rene desperate to leave the island which is where I was and I wrote those two before I had kids.

And now I wrote Honey Bee with kids at 45. I go back to Guernsey now and it's like turned into the most incredible, like my kids just think it's the best. We're on the beach all day, the restaurant's fantastic. We're boat hopping from island to island. You know, we did Four Islands in one week last summer. Like, it's absolutely incredible. I've completely fallen in love with Guernsey again without even really realizing what I was doing.

You can really see that in Honey Bee. It's a character all on its own. And if I continue to write these characters set on Guernsey, I think that love affair with the island itself will just continue to be more obvious in the books. But you know, Paper, Airplanes and Goose, I was that love affair with the island itself will just continue to be more obvious in the books. But you know, paper airplanes and goose, I was like, I want to get the fuck off the island. I feel it's a trap, you know, it's not where they want to be. Also, your childhood was quite kind of really terrible, you know, like your mother died when you were very young.

Yeah. And you were brought up by your aunt? My mom died just before I turned seven and I lived with my grandparents until I was 10 and then I moved in with my aunt and uncle who became my parents. My dad is wonderful and lives up in Scotland but we didn't live with him. It was extraordinary but also not awful. My aunt and uncle have this lovely house. They were really interesting great people. Are they kind of James and Auntie Jo in the book?

Well no, they're very different from them but my auntie is called Auntie Jane and she does keep bees. They're not like that at all. James and my uncle are not similar at all. My uncle is an extraordinary person, but not like James. But I like the idea. Another way that I know that James exists and my uncle exists, but really the books are about female solidarity and so the way that an auntie, the power of being an auntie, Auntie Joe doesn't have any kids in the book and she's taken in her dead sister's daughter and will do anything for her. And I love that relationship so much.

Again, it's the power of female solidarity. And I just love it that Renée gets saved by her. But Guernsey is a really beautiful place. And we had this kind of extraordinary childhood, so much freedom, because it's so safe, powering around on my bike from beach to beach, house party to house party as I got older. I didn't realize at the time quite how lucky I was.

There was a lot of trauma for me because obviously my mum had died, but at the same time I was a happy kid. I mean, I was the school jester trying to make everyone laugh, probably to mask my pain, but I'm still funny. That was just the most important thing. But I was, you know, I did terribly in school. I did terribly in school, failed everything, was an absolute disaster. But I remember laughing so much.

And I remember having really good teenage years. You know, there was this kind of stuff going on, of course. And I was different and sad because I'd lost my mum. But I don't look back on my childhood as a sad childhood, weirdly. I didn't. Sorry if I didn't. No, not at all. I think people presume it was, but it wasn't. There was lots of sad elements to it, of course. There was an awful death in the family and there's two bereaved girls

and there was bereaved brothers and bereaved, you know, there's sad people. But overall, my house growing up, my auntie was the most amazing cook. Like we had a lot, you know, 15, 20 people over on Sundays just eating massive Sunday roasts and big walks on the cliffs and loads of animals and it was all lovely. Do you think, I also think children are much more resilient than we give them credit for. I think so.

I do though now think, are they, or are they just very good at banking emotion? Masking it. Yes, because I think what I did was this awful thing happened. I swallowed it and just did jazz hands for 20 years. And then when I was growing up, I was like, oh, this awful thing happened. And it didn't come out again. I dealt with it.

But I just there was no therapy back in the 80s on Guernsey. We would just... There wasn't anywhere. There wasn't anywhere. And I had people around, supported people around me. But we didn't talk about it an awful lot. We kind of did crack on. And that just wouldn't happen now.

I just don't know if that would happen now in the same way. I think the world that we live in is kind of- Be more supported. More supported. And just the suggestion of therapy would come up a little bit quicker, I think, rather than maybe 40 years later. But I think, in a way, you

know, people always say to me, it's so sad, it's so sad. And then we're getting to an age now where my friend's mom's are dying. And I sometimes think, well, that seems harder. Like you've known that person your entire life. How do you live without them? Not that there's, you know, it matters which is harder and which isn't, but I'm like, I'm okay about it. That's part of my story. It's not something that I feel like ruined my life. It gave me an extraordinary motivation. It gave me a lot of drive. I think it made me a very empathetic person.

When something like that happens to you as a child, you have been given feelings and things to deal with that you shouldn't ever have had that adults get. And so it puts a lot of emotion and feeling into your body that you get to grow up with, is in the end quite a nice thing mm-hmm but obviously I wish it never fucking happened it was really sad but you try I can see how my life was built around it now and I look at my life now and I don't think it's a coincidence that I write for a living you know I put

it all onto the page all comes out constantly even though I'm not gonna write about dead mums in this book suddenly, there's just a dead mum somewhere, because it's just obviously still like there waiting to come out. But the therapy of writing fiction has been extraordinary. Paper airplanes, the first in this series, that was me for the first time getting it all out. And I was a different person after I wrote that book. I was like, that could have cost thousands and thousands of pounds in therapy. But like fictionalizing my life, having conversations I wish I'd had, having a few people say things

that I wish they'd said, having me deal with it like this, giving myself the friend I wish I'd had, all of these things was just such a cleansing thing to do I always think with these books with the brand-name flow books. They always seem to save the day Yeah, the first one came my TV career had gone to shit and I was just over I didn't have any money any job and then I just got this call out of the blue from an editor saying I think you'd write Really well for young adults if you ever thought about writing fiction and that was paper airplanes and goose About 13 years ago and then in December I was writing another book that just wasn't working and

I was really stressing out about it and then I remembered that I'd done a very kind of basic draft of Honey Bee about four years ago and so I said to my publisher I can't carry on with this book that I'm writing would you maybe consider this one instead and we decided that that was going to be the book that would come out this year so I re-edited it. It was all set in London and not what you've got today, but it was just an editing job, basically. And they saved the day again. They just keep doing that.

There's a line in the book somewhere where Renae goes for a job interview and the woman who's doing the job interview knew her mum. And so Renae says, I feel like my mum just did me a favour. And I remember when I wrote that, I feel like that when I'm writing these books. This was my gift for everything that I went through, right? The fact that I've got these girls and this story and this amazing place that I can set them. This is the good that came out of all of that. Well, sorry.

I know, it's nice. I feel like we should probably finish on that, but I want to just quickly. Renée, I think she says, we are all running out of time. You can use it or not, and I choose to use it. And that, to me, kind of feels like it's very much a dawn way, like a motto that you might live by as well. So that was teenage me in a nutshell. Get me off this island.

I've got to grab the world. I've got to just go and get, get, get, get, get. Early 20s to mid 20s, me sitting in TV production companies, booking audiences on the Ruby Wax show and working behind the scenes thinking, what's my route to getting on camera? get get get. Early 20s to mid 20s, me sitting in TV production companies, you know, booking audiences on the Ruby Wax show and working behind the scenes thinking, what's my roots getting on camera? How do I become a journalist? How do I become a writer? Just like blinkers eye on the prize. I'm running out of time. I'm not going to waste it. I think when you lose a parent, you can have this thing. I don't know if it was you and me that were

talking about this the other day, but somebody else was saying, if you lose a mom or a parent, you can see your life until the point that they died. So my mom died when she was 36. So in the back of my head, 36 is this big thing in the future that I've got to like get it all done before that. And as it happened, I gave birth to my first baby two days after I turned 36. So in many ways, my life began then. And as soon as I'd got past that age, everything slowed down. I was like history hasn't repeated itself. It was a bit like, you know, when we all thought we were going to die and the world was going to blow up in year 2000.

Yeah, yeah, like UK. And the internet was going to explode or whatever. We thought it was going to happen. I think there was a similar feeling of 36, something's going to happen. And I'm 45 and it hasn't happened. So I feel like that anxiety is kind of gone now. And now I'm not really in a rush to do anything. Because you realize actually the quality of life isn't about being in a rush. A good successful day is not necessarily exhausting yourself

trying to get noticed, which I think is what I was doing before that. For the 20s, yeah. Dawn, thank you so much for coming on The Life of Friarney. I think we should have The Life of Dawn, a spin-off podcast. I think you basically just got it. Thanks for having me. I love you. I absolutely loved chatting with Dawn O'Porter today. Honeybee is such a beautifully written reminder that none of us have it all figured out and that's okay. By the way, I stayed up and read

that book in one greedy gulp till I stayed up till one in the morning, which is like I never do that. I never stay up till one in the morning. I'm in bed with my eyes shut at 9.30. Remember, if you enjoyed today's episode, like, subscribe and share with a friend. And back on Friday with a bonus edition of Life of Briny, where Dawn and I will be answering some of your questions. You can also reach out with your own thoughts for future episodes.

The details are in the show notes. See you Friday. ["Life of Briony"]