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Stop. Stop! Stop, stop.
Seriously, stop.
Sit down.
No, none of you. Stand up.
Uh, I am very bad at endings.
OK?
Remember that.
I can explain myself there.
That will make a lot more sense once I explain to you
what this entire show is based on.
So the entire show--do not worry, it's a very simple show.
It's a very simple show based on one very simple,
humble note. Yeah?
One note from the Notes application off my iPhone.
We're all familiar with the concept, yeah?
If you don't know what the Notes application is,
it's a place where people of my general age,
and background,
and level of mental health go
to express our deepest,
darkest, most intimate thoughts.
Yes?
Onto what we all know is the most secure app of all time.
Is it not?
The one that's been uploaded to every fucking Mac device
you've ever touched or thought of
in the past five years, right?
So I love the Notes app.
I want to say it. I'm a big fan.
I love the Notes app, because it's such a fucking
versatile app, right? It's a versatile app.
It can do everything.
I find it bizarre that it often platforms, I guess,
the entire breadth of the human experience.
I read so much in the format of a Notes app, yeah?
I find it bizarre that I can read my own shopping list,
yeah, in the same general style and font as I quite often read
a celebrity apologizing for making a racial slur, right?
Get you an app that can do both, right?
And I love the Notes app, because I have come
to rely on it purely because the fact--
and I'll get it out of the way up top, controversial--
I hate writing in notebooks.
OK?
I hate seeing people
writing in notebooks.
I hate seeing people writing in notebooks in public.
It's fucking pathetic, yeah?
I'm saying it.
The worst comes out of me when I see someone writing
in a notebook in public.
Honestly, it's a little voice being like, such a clever girl.
Aren't you so--
So special...
...in your notebook.
Oh, so--
Visited by the muse at this
fucking Five Guys
in the Westfield Food Court.
So I put pen to paper there, doll.
I once saw a woman journaling on a public beach once.
Go fuck yourself. Go fuck yourself.
How dare you?
I went up to her, and I was like, I'm so sorry.
I didn't realize we had a writer in our midst.
Yes!
Mr. Ernest Hemingway has graced us
with his presence.
Now, if you'll excuse me, some of us must return
to taking photos of ourselves
to send to men who do not care for our company.
Good day.
Some real work to be done, huh?
I don't know if that's crazy.
I just hate writing in notebooks.
I hate seeing people write.
I just hate everything about it.
For me, writing in a notebook,
it used to fucking mean something.
That's what I'm talking about, right?
Used to mean you're a detective.
Or one other example, I don't know,
the Zodiac Killer.
It's either or, right?
It just-- I find it bizarre that anyone
can buy a fucking Moleskine diary, right?
You should have to have a fucking license
to buy a Moleskine.
I think there should be a direct correlation
between the quality of your ideas
and the GSM weight of your paper.
And I'll die on that hill, baby.
OK?
I will say that I will admit to this one thing
I use a notebook for still,
and that is that I...
track my period in a notebook.
I've taken--yeah, I've taken that shit off grid.
I suggest you do the same as well
if you experience a period yourselves.
Because, personally, I don't love the idea of those apps
and the fact that the fat cats up at Silicon Valley
know exactly when I want to kill myself.
Keep that information close to your chest, right?
It's valuable information.
It's very hard to explain
to people who do not experience a period
how obsessed one can become, right,
with tracking your period.
I don't just track the period.
I track everything around it as well.
I track all the fucking foods I'm craving,
all the thoughts I'm feeling.
And it's so difficult to express that to someone
who doesn't have a period.
And I have to say to them, my brother,
if there was something that happened
in your balls
every month
that made you want to move to Berlin...
And start a new life, yeah,
you'd be listening to a podcast or two as well.
So back the fuck off!
Back off!
Um...
I find it bizarre that I wasn't taught to track my period,
though, at a younger age. I find that crazy.
I didn't start doing that until I was deep into my 20s, right?
I--for some reason-- I don't know if it's the same
in this country, but in New Zealand,
for some reason-- the responsibility
of teaching one about one's menstrual cycle growing up
for some reason fell upon the fucking shoulders
of the PE teacher.
I don't know if anyone else has this.
So that meant--
I had an adult man
called Nick Wilson, yeah--
bleach blonde hair, backwards cap,
fucking Oakley sunglasses on top.
You know that look that makes a cat look like it's got eyes,
you know?
He was holding up a little teacup as a prop, being like,
you'll bleed a teacups worth of blood every month.
And I'd be 11, being like, into that cup?
What are you talking about?
It's insane.
The PE teacher, the most emotionally inept
of the entire fucking faculty.
It's not even a real fucking job, man.
But back to this note. This note.
Now, I will tell you a bit about this note.
This note I started
at a rather tricky time in my life.
I'll be the first to admit it. Yeah?
That's usually when you do start a note
in the Notes app of one's phone.
Uh, I had started living alone for the first time in my life
as an adult.
I went through a couple of breakups.
Why not, huh?
I lost the lid to my KeepCup.
It was not a banner year for old Rosie.
Right?
So I started this note, and I started treating it
almost as, like, this diary.
I put everything into it.
Everything I was feeling, every crazy emotion I was having
amongst all the other things you'd put
in the Notes app, right?
Like recipes I saw online or fucking joke ideas,
everything went into this one single note, yeah?
And at certain point last year,
I was like, fucking hell, man, this is fucking good.
There's some good shit in this note, man.
I can make it--maybe I can do a show about this note, yeah?
I might print out this note.
Now, I would not recommend that
to anybody in the room right now, yeah?
Because the thing you'll know about the Notes app
and notes in the Notes app is that there is no ending
to a note in a Notes app.
But it turns out that endings are important, yeah?
Endings are what give things meaning.
It gives us a moment to reflect upon the experience
we've just had.
Without endings,
we have no moment to sort of learn a lesson.
We just make the same mistakes over and over again
on an endless fucking loop.
But I did not know this. I did not know this, right?
So I, first of all, first mistake,
took the note over to a Microsoft Word document,
migrated it over.
Fucking carnage, yeah?
Formatting is all over the show.
Fonts are missing.
It's not its natural habitat to see a note
in a Microsoft Word document.
It's like seeing a fucking teacher in a supermarket.
It's not right.
What the fuck are you doing here, man?
So I printed it out.
And I didn't check--
I didn't check how many words there were.
I wrote that.
That just says "good luck."
Keep it in, you cowards!
So I printed out the note
and didn't check how many--
Actually how many words, or how many pages.
And so, it started printing.
And, um, it kept printing and kept printing.
Print, print, print, print, print, print, print, print.
This printer was literally addicted to printing, OK?
30 pages,
size 10 font.
Whoo!
Now, I don't know at what point a note
goes from being a note
to some sort of unhinged manifesto of sorts.
Uh, 16,000 words perhaps?
16,000 wor--
Valerie Solanas,
the woman who shot Andy Warhol,
her manifesto was 24,000 words.
All right?
And I don't want to toot my own trumpet,
but I could fucking hit that shit by Christmas if I tried.
And I'm gonna tell you right now,
it is not an easy read.
I will only share one thing verbatim from the note
to just give you an indication
as to my emotional state at the time of starting it.
Um, here it is.
And, uh, this has not been embellished for the show.
This is truly how the entire note starts.
Just one sentence, one simple sentence,
and it says,
"I may have a lot of problems,
but at least I have a heart."
No, thank you. No, thank you.
No, no, no, no, no.
No! No!
No, no, no, no.
Not for me that, as a personality, that.
What sort of Myspace liminal hell
is this bitch communicating from?
Uh, and as I say,
it's not only, you know, all this emo shit,
it's, like, just random, normal things mixed up.
Like joke ideas splayed into--like here,
it just says just the word "cucumbersome."
It's apparently a word I've invented
for when you're holding too many cucumbers.
So tonally, it's all over the show.
And what became so clear to me reading this note, right,
is that I am very bad at endings, yeah?
I am very bad at things ending.
I'm very bad at relationships ending.
I do not take that too well.
Another example of this, I'll give you this, um,
it's quite hard to actually do this,
because I can see a lot of your faces,
and it's a truly vulnerable thing to admit
because it's entirely true.
At a certain point in the most recent breakup I went through,
I genuinely found myself googling the phrase,
"can you be broken up with
for being too cool?"
Now--
the cocky energy of that phrase alone
could power a small village.
Do you understand that?
Incognito mode, of course, if I fucking--
of course, straight to incognito mode as well.
I'm not an idiot, right?
Don't want that purple linking me.
I think incognito mode gets a bad rap for being the thing
you go into when you want to search something a bit cheeky
but naughty, right? Not for me. Not for me.
That's where I go to search my most private
anxiety spirals, right,
to their natural end with no paper trail.
But you'll know this, you get to make it fun
because you get to put on little hat...
and some glasses
and pretend to be someone else for a while,
when really this is the truest version of yourself.
So it fully--
and honestly, it shocked me, I think.
It shocked me that I found myself
googling something like this, because, look,
I am an adult woman. I am an adult woman.
I have been through heartbreak before, OK?
I've done it all. I've done every iteration of it.
I've been the dumper.
I've been the dumpee. Yeah?
I once got dumped over the phone during COVID,
which was pretty gnarly.
I like to refer to that as the reverse Soulja Boy.
Which is a good litmus test
to see how many people my age are in the crowd.
And I'm gonna be honest,
that's a--that's-- that's a good amount.
I once dumped a man on a trampoline.
Not my finest hour.
In my defense, not bouncing.
Sort of just sitting on it.
Sort of just, you know, sadly undulating, I guess.
Don't know if that's worse.
I, uh--I got broken up with
for the reasoning that the person said to me.
He said, I don't think I love you
as much as you love me.
I don't love you as much as you love me.
Brutal, awful, right?
No. Which, then, an hour later into the breakup
was actually upgraded to,
oh, I actually don't know if I love you at all.
To which I replied, I would actually love to accept
your first offer of--
I've actually talked to my team.
We're actually really happy with that
if that's still on the table.
It's like "Dragon's Den" where you have to talk to the wall.
And you're like, I think we should take it.
It's a horrible thing to hear it said to you, right?
Like, it was a horrible thing to say to someone's face.
Also, I think it was a fundamental misunderstanding
between the situation between this person and myself,
this man and myself. Because that is true.
If I'm in a relationship with you,
I fucking love the shit out of you, man!
Yeah? Yeah, I'll fucking go hard.
I go hard in the paint for love--
if that makes sense. Right?
But what I don't think this man understands,
and a lot of men I've been out with
haven't fully quite grasped,
is that I do love them,
but it's actually how little I respect them.
And do you know what?
And surely that's got to balance the scales.
Is that too harsh to say?
Of course I respect some men.
Jim Henson.
The list goes on.
The list is a work in progress, OK?
I think what hurt about hearing it, though, is that I--
I mean, there's an obvious truth to that statement, right?
Because that is true. I am a romantic person, right.
I fucking go hard.
I can't change the fact that I'm a romantic person, yeah?
I think it's a symptom of the generation
that I grew up in, right?
I think, as a generation, we were taught
that romantic love was the ultimate form of love
to pursue no matter what, right.
And everything we listened to, and watched, and read,
everything taught us that romantic love
is to be put on a pedestal, to doggedly pursue
no matter what the cost.
And I think it's fucked me up as an adult person, right?
'Cause It's turned me into this person who looks back
to past relationships, relationships that didn't
work out, that were actively bad for me.
But I still look back with these sort of
rose-tinted glasses, right?
Almost like a little truffle, but going back in time
to hunt in my memory for little moments of euphoric love
to sort of chomp on years and years later
for a little hit of dopamine in the present.
And it's fucking pathetic, right?
'Cause it feels like going through an advent calendar
I've already eaten, yeah?
Just to rip open little cardboard perforated doors
to stare at a plastic mold
and desperately try to remember what the chocolate tasted like!
Not all of these will be jokes!
OK?
Some of them--
No!
Some of them will be very sad poems that don't rhyme.
All right?
That's the most one-woman show I get, I promise.
But you know what I mean?
I think--I think the generation below us now
have a very different idea when it comes to romance.
I don't know if it's any better.
It's this-- I've noticed this online
that I've never sounded older
in my entire life.
What are the young'uns are doing online?
I've noticed this thing--
is this concept of romanticizing
your own life, right?
I don't know if some people know about this.
If you don't, basically the concept is that
what you've got to do is you've got to add the romance
to every little mundane thing in your life.
Just go and make it romantic, yeah?
So just make everything romantic and fun.
So it'll be like make up and then make a cup of tea.
Make a cup of tea, but make it cute.
Make it cute.
Maybe you could do the little doily.
Well, you do it.
Or you can maybe make it in a little antique teapot
from fucking 1998.
Leonardo.
Or maybe you can wear a little nightgown while you do it
so you're like a little fucking Victorian ghost
or some shit, right?
Romanticize your own life.
It'd be something like maybe you go to a café...
And you write a note.
And the note, it'd be like, have a nice day.
And someone might find it, and read it,
and feel good about themselves.
Romanticize your own life.
Now, this is a genuine question,
and I ask it with love.
Are the children well?
Do you know what I mean?
Because this is-- it's kind of insane.
I love them.
I love the children. I love the kids.
But guys, you got to get your fucking heads in the game,
because you're gonna be fighting for water reserves,
"Mad Max" style,
in, I want to say, two months time.
So enough with the shit, right?
It is--I think it's like a-- I kind of think
it's a generational trauma response, right,
to a crumbling world around them,
which I think has resulted in a level of whimsy
I have not encountered in years, OK?
And I fucking know whimsy!
I grew up in the 2010s!
I fucking know whimsy!
I'm part of the "Amélie" generation.
Je suis, Amélie.
Justice for Amélie.
She's a good bitch.
Amélie, to women of my age, she's our Travis Bickle.
She really is.
Yeah, that joke gets absolutely nothing every time I do it,
and yet I continue doing it.
And that's what courage is, OK?
I just think it's just so sweet, though.
It's just so sweet, because these children
almost act as if they've invented
the very concept of whimsy, right.
And I have to be like, my child, my child,
let me ask you a question.
Have you--
have you ever worn
a top hat
at the height of summer
to a Panic! at the Disco concert
to impress a bisexual boy who hates you?
All right.
I have done things that would make you shudder!
I know whimsy!
Respect your elders.
I, uh,
if you don't know this concept,
the romanticize your own life thing,
I think you may be familiar with things
that kind of fall under the umbrella of this sometimes.
You may notice this in the algorithms--
the idea of dating yourself.
I don't know if anyone has encountered this.
It's a fucking rancid concept, yeah?
'Cause I think it's aggressively targeted
towards specifically single people in the algorithm.
And the idea behind that is that what you've got to do
is you can't wait sometimes.
You can't wait for someone to take you out on a date, yeah?
What you just got to do, you got to take yourself
out there, girl.
Pop on a little bit of lippy.
Pop on a little black dress.
Yeah?
And you're just gonna go out and by yourself, yeah?
Go to a museum on your tod, hmm?
Go for a meal alone, if you can fathom it.
Now, I don't know what I missed
in the past 10 years or so,
but the last time I checked,
that concept was just
fucking living your goddamned life!
What the fuck has happened to us as a society,
where we have become so disconnected
with the idea of solitude
that we can no longer do anything by ourselves anymore
without reframing it within the context
of being in a relationship
with oneself?
Sorry!
Do you think-- sorry, do you think--
do you really think, when you see...
an old Italian man...
Sitting down on a piazza,
having a little red wine,
a little cigarette,
do you genuinely think that man
is thinking to himself,
just took myself on a little date, you know?
Self-care.
No!
I think the weirdest one, though, by far, I will say,
that has gone through this rebrand of doing something
to oneself, um, is masturbation.
Has to be.
The rebrand of being in a relationship with oneself,
rather, is masturbation.
We call that having sex with ourselves now.
No, thank you. Not for me.
Not for me, that phrase.
It's got a real single parents alone together vibe
to that phrase that I don't love.
You know?
Also, I hate myself, let alone want to fuck her.
Do you what I mean? Like...
it's bad branding for those with low self-esteem, right.
And again, I think it speaks to this idea
that we just can't call something
for what it is anymore, man.
Just call--
it's call-- just call a wank, a wank, man.
It's a fucking wank.
It doesn't need to be anything more, anything less.
It's just this-- let's stop making--
let's stop making everything special, yeah?
Don't--don't light a candle.
Can we agree on that in the room right now?
Don't light a candle to have a wank, OK?
The only times you should light a candle
in this life are if someone dies
or takes a shit.
And that is all.
OK?
So what was I saying?
Oh, yes, I'm a romantic person.
Clearly.
And so, in my early 20s, I, uh-- about 10 years ago,
my early 20s, I did what any romantic person
would do, obviously.
And that is that I moved to London,
the City of Love.
Sorry, that's supposed to be a joke.
Have you been here?
What the fuck is that? Um...
I moved to London because of love.
Classic me.
And it was really hard to, I think,
explain to my family and friends that--
or I guess reassure them that I was gonna be fine.
I was a young woman moving to the other side
of the world, right?
And very early on I found this quote, right,
this incredible quote, that really sort of summed up
the experience of what it is like to live
in a bustling city like London.
And it came from the Russian socialist Alexander Herzen,
when he put it just perfectly about London life,
when he said, "There is no town in the world more adapted"
"training one away from people
"and for training one into solitude than London.
"The manner of life, the distances, the climate,
"the very multitude of population in which personality
"vanishes, all this together with an absence
"of continental diversion, conduces, to the same effect.
"One who knows how to live alone has nothing to fear
"from the tedium of London.
"The life here, like the air here,
is bad for the weak, for the frail,
"for one who seeks a prop outside himself,
for one who looks for welcome, sympathy, attention."
But I love the buses.
That was me, not him. Um...
Fuck the tube! Fuck the tube!
I'm on the bus, where it's at.
For me, I think a London bus, that's where the fucking stuff
of life happens, man.
Do you know what I mean?
Like the godda--four kids crying their eyes out
on the bottom deck of a bus.
That's the stuff of life, yeah?
A man clipping his fingernails
for so long that at some point you kind of have to assume
he has moved on to the toes.
Yeah?
SOL, baby.
I was on my favorite bus the other day, the 73.
Shout out to 73. Yeah!
A couple fans. Classy bus.
That's gonna go crazy in an international market, I think.
73!
I love the 73. It's my favorite bus,
but I think something that happened on the 73
recently really sort of summed up
the kind of experience of how jaded one can become
living in a city like London.
And it was that this guy came on the 73,
and he had a really good sound system,
he had a really great speaker, and he was playing
that song "Cheerleader." You know?
♪ I think that I found-- ♪
Great song.
He was blasting that while also yelling at all of us
that he wanted to kill us all.
It was a real juxtaposition of vibes, I feel.
It's like, pick a lane, mate. You know?
But that wasn't even the funny bit.
What was so funny, and what I found myself laughing at
at the back of the bus,
was that it became so clear so immediately
that this man had clearly not paid for Spotify Premium.
And so--
I don't know if anyone's ever had their life threatened
to them before to the tune of a fucking Hello Fresh ad,
but it is a weird experience, right.
But that's what I love about London, man.
I love London. It's a place for me.
It's an introvert's dream, London.
And I'm an introvert. That's why I love it.
I love being an introvert.
I'm proud of it.
I hate extroverts.
I find them both frightening and boring at the same time.
I think, when you're younger, a certain level of extroversion
is kind of forced upon you,
even if you're an introvert when you're in your 20s.
I dated a lot more in my 20s.
I did that. That was fine.
That was fine. It was great.
It was fine.
Dating in London in your 20s is fine.
I will say this, though, and that is that the only downside
to that is that quite often dating in London,
what that does mean, is that
you will often date British men. And--
No disrespect, no disrespect.
But for me, personally,
I'll say this,
the experience of dating British men sometimes,
for me, felt like some form of international diplomacy scheme
in which I had been sent from the islands
to come over here and teach men
who went to boarding school how to cry.
Unpaid! Unpaid!
No.
Sort of like reverse colonialism but make it fun,
you know what I mean?
A bit jaunty.
And it was just-- it was a shocking experience.
It was a culture shock to me.
Because I had never met a proper posh person in my life.
I'm from New Zealand.
We don't fucking do posh people.
What--what the fuck is going on
with that lot?
Seriously, genuinely.
Some of them have family crests.
I'm sorry.
What are you talking about?
My family does not have a crest
if that is any indication as to my family's
level of wealth or background.
If my family had a crest, right,
I think I imagine what it would look like is that in one corner
it would just be like a picture of a box
of off-brand corn flakes, yeah,
a marijuana leaf,
and whatever the Latin word is
for "undiagnosed" just proudly under there.
A few of the clan in tonight, I see.
That's good.
It's just crazy, 'cause, the thing is, posh people, they--
this is the problem, isn't it?
They also-- they go under the radar.
They're very hard to spot sometimes, right,
'cause they're hiding in plain sight a lot of the time.
I have found the best time to catch them is Christmas.
Always. Every time.
That's when they come out of their shells.
That's when you get to see into their living rooms,
into their family photographs, right.
Posh people are obsessed with Christmas
because they get to go back and see their parents.
'Cause they're, again, obsessed with their parents.
Again, I don't understand that.
You're not supposed to fucking keep hanging out with them.
That's not the point.
But they're all like, I I love my mommy and daddy.
It's crazy, right?
And I know you're not supposed to judge anyone
from what they come from.
You're supposed to judge them on who they are.
But I will say, a lot of the times I look at these family
Christmas photos, a lot of my own friends,
and I love you guys, but I will say,
a lot of the times your girlfriends...
♪ Look like your sister ♪
♪ She looks so much like your sister ♪
That's Shania Twain.
I don't know if you caught that.
No, no, it's fine. That's the original song.
She did a cover of mine.
That's quite unnecessarily actually harsh on posh people.
I do think that British people, in general,
are obsessed with Christmas in a way I find embarrassing,
I think.
Do you know what I mean?
If I meet another man in his mid-30s
who is like,
I love "Elf," you know?
That's my favorite--I love watching "Elf" with my mummy.
If I meet another man like that, I will buy a gun.
I'll buy a gun.
I won't use it.
I just want to have it, you know?
Uh, so yeah, so I did date in my 20s.
And you know what?
I'd say, on the whole, dating in one's 20s
is so much easier than dating in your 30s, right?
Because for me, again, I'll say this about myself,
in my early 20s, right, dating was a lot easier
because I had not one principle
or value to speak of at that age.
And I've found it's a real asset when it comes to dating
in a city like London.
Any level of self esteem, real cock block.
Would not recommend.
'Cause the thing is, I was, like, so--
I-I was so willing to change myself to be whatever
this person wanted me to be.
The person I wanted to be with, I would just change myself,
do whatever they wanted me to be.
Like, I would just ask them.
I'd just straight up asked them sometimes.
What do you want? What do you want from me?
And I would do it. I would do it.
I'm very malleable. I'm like Play-Doh!
Just mold me into what you want from me.
I know I'm very tall. I can be so small.
I can be so tiny. I could squeeze myself.
I'd be a tiny woman, like a Thumbelina
or a little Anne Geddes baby, sort of in a calendar,
in a tulip, barely able to support
the weight of her own neck or can't open her eyes.
A tiny, tiny woman!
Or I could be something different!
I could do something like I could be sassy.
I could be, like, a sassy woman for you if you want that!
I could say stuff like, well, you think that?
Well, how about this?
I will do anything!
Anything! Just tell me what
you want me to do, and I'll do it.
And apparently you should say none of that on a first date,
especially at a bowling alley
from across the lanes.
And I respect that.
And I respect the staff at Rowans for enforcing that.
So...
Uh...
It was just--it was just so much easier, right?
It was so much easier to date in your 20s, right?
Everything gets a little harder.
I think, like, I think it's because, as you get older,
right, the way in which you kind of conceive love
or think of love changes.
The ways you want to express love very subtly change
once you hit 30.
It starts to be stuff like,
I want to fucking make you a chutney!
You know what I mean?
Like, that's how you want to show it!
Right, or the things you're looking for change as well.
Now, I'm looking for someone who gives me the feeling
that I get when I see my fucking suitcase
come around the baggage claim at an airport,
where I'm like, that's my fucking suitcase!
And everyone's like, it looks like every other suitcase.
And you're like, no, but that's my suitcase!
I put my stuff in it!
That's what I want to feel, right?
And it just gets so much harder to find those people
in the ways that we meet people these days.
Like, I was on apps for a very brief spell in my early 30s.
That was not fun at all.
To be honest, it was mainly me just explaining to 21-year-old
men in the conversations what a Concorde plane was,
which was, to be fair, quite a lot of fun,
and you should try it yourselves.
You get to be like a very, very long time ago,
in the year 2000,
there was a plane that went very, very fast.
It was too noisy.
They're like, oh, my God, tell me more.
And it just gets harder.
Everything is-- and I know--look,
I know I can hear myself say that out loud.
And I'm like, oh, I'm so old.
I know I'm not old yet.
I'm 32. I'm not old yet, right.
I know I'm aging, though.
I know I'm aging in many very subtle ways.
I've started saying "safe travels" a lot.
Do you know what I mean?
I don't know what happened.
It just started--safe travels.
Good flight. Safe travels. Yeah?
If you've ever seen a teenager
say "safe travels,"
that is an undercover cop, and...
you're going to jail
for some reason.
But everything is harder. I think, uh--
getting dumped in your 30s is so much harder
than getting dumped in your 20s, right.
Because, as I said before, when you're in your 20s,
you're still building your personality.
You're still figuring out who you are.
So you don't have to take it as personally,
that rejection, right.
Just be like, it's fine. It's all good.
Yeah, I'm gonna be a different person
in like a year or two years.
All good, yeah?
You do you.
What if our life is long.
We'll be friends still. Of course.
When you're dumped in your 30s,
you are being dumped
for who you truly are.
And I'm so sorry
if that is the first time some of you are hearing this
in the room.
But that is a scientific fact.
Do we know this? Yeah.
Our personalities fucking lock in at 30!
Yeah? This is me forever now.
I'm fucking gutted. I am gutted!
Do you know what if feels like?
It feels like--you know when you're playing "Mario Kart,"
and you're trying to figure out which character to play with,
and you're dilly-dallying for way too long,
and the fucking timer runs out, and you end up on the last box
that you just happened to be on.
So you have to be like, I'm fucking Waluigi
for the rest of my life. Is that it?
Great!
Ideal.
Now, I think I should have changed
the character in that joke.
Because I've noticed it doesn't get as much of a reaction,
because I feel, as a society,
the temperature is changing on Waluigi.
I'll say that. Yeah!
He's just a bit misunderstood
in the shadow of his brother, right?
I think he's kind of hot.
I don't know.
Tall. he's got that mustache. It's crazy.
Waluigi looks like every man in East London.
Right?
You'll fucking see him on a Lime Bike later on.
That's fucking Waluigi on a Lime Bike.
That's crazy.
So it's very hard to come to terms with the fact that
this is you for the rest of your life, right,
when you hit 30.
And, look, I don't want to sound self-deprecating in a way.
Like, oh, this is me forever now.
I really wish--I really wish that self-deprecation
hadn't become so much a big part of my USP
or my brand, right, as a person.
But it has.
And really, I honestly thought self-deprecation
was something I would eventually mature out of.
I'd grow out of it. But that is not the case.
I have found this, that is not the case.
What actually happens, right, with self-deprecation
is that the older you get,
the more accurate the self-deprecation becomes.
Right, because you know yourself better.
Your friends know you better.
So in my teen years, I could be like--
I could get away with being like, oh, I'm such-
I'm never gonna find a boyfriend.
I'm such a spinster.
We loved calling ourself spinsters
when we were teenagers. I'm such a spinster.
I'm never gonna find someone.
And your friends are like, what are you talking about?
They've got your back.
They're like, what are you talking about, girl?
You're crazy.
You can't do yourself down like that.
Of course, you'll find love someday.
Shut the fuck up.
Stop talking about yourself.
Now, at 32,
if I say something like,
I don't know if I'll ever get married.
My friends are like, well, marriage isn't for everyone.
And I'm like--
I see. No.
I see.
The game is on.
The game is afoot.
I know I said just before that I know
that I'm aging in many very subtle ways.
And another way in which I know I'm aging
is that I have done that joke quite a few times now,
to the point where I have had to start
wearing fucking knee pads.
So yeah, thanks!
Yeah. Yeah, no.
I'm unsure as to what you're clapping there.
Like, the concept of safety, I guess?
That's crazy.
That is the problem with having close friends.
No, yeah, that sounded worse than I intended it to.
What happens is when you have close friends
and you go through a breakup, it is quite tough.
Because--and now, be honest with yourself right now.
When a close friend goes through a breakup,
obviously you're very sad for them.
But it's also fucking compelling, isn't it?
Do you know what I mean?
It's hard to look away.
Be honest.
It's like, you know when a firework accidentally
falls on its side on Guy Fawkes
and it starts shooting into the crowd and stuff.
And everyone's a little bit scared,
but they also want to stick around
to see what happens, right?
That's what it's like when a close friend
goes through a fucking heartbreak.
And it's tough.
It's so tough, because the problem is that
your close friends, they know who you are.
They know who you are deep down inside.
They know the fucking real you, right?
They've known you for years and years and years.
By the same token, your close friends
know exactly how you compromised your personality
in order to be with this particular person.
But this relationship has now ended, right.
And so, the shame with which
one must return to those friendships
is fucking humbling.
The only equivalent I've come up with is that
it's as if you shat yourself
at a work Christmas party on a Friday night.
Yeah? You with me?
It's the feeling of having to come back to work
on the Monday,
just having to be like,
that was crazy!
Who was she?
No, she seems deeply unwell and deserves our love.
That's how I felt. That's how I felt.
I felt too embarrassed to turn to my closest friends
at such a tough time.
It was crazy.
So I just, honestly, I started, in this breakup--
I started turning to very, very random people.
Anyone who was close to me, right?
My 80-year-old grandmother was living with me at the time.
Quite a weird, sassy best friend character
to have in one's life going through a modern breakup.
And she did her best. She did fine.
She was fantastic. She was very helpful.
I will say, it's very hard to explain
to a woman who was born during World War II
what attachment theory is.
They don't really get it.
She'd be like, yeah, I think you're anxious
attachment is because of rationing, I guess, right?
So that was unhelpful.
I just turned to random strangers sometimes--
complete strangers.
A man had started cleaning my flat at the time.
Uh, I paid him to do it.
That's an important detail for that.
I did pay him to do it.
His name was Lindsay.
And Lindsay, oh my God, he was fucking incredible.
He was an incredible guy.
Incredible guy, terrible cleaner.
Could not recommend him with a good conscience.
Yeah?
He had a real jazz vibe when it came to cleaning,
where he just sort of went where the spirit took him
and sort of ignored large appliances.
He would light incense and leave it burning in my home
a number of times while I was out.
And the weirdest one, I think, for me,
is that he would change his WhatsApp profile photo
every week.
Something not right about that, right?
But he was fucking incredible, right?
He was--Lindsay was like, OK, I just opened my--
I just completely told him every single thing
about this breakup immediately, the first time I ever met him.
And the first question he asked me, he said,
bird or geezer?
Bird or geezer?
And I was like, Lindsay, you are on the right side
of history, my friend.
And then the shame that went through my body,
having to stand, as an adult woman,
quite seriously and emotionally,
having to say to him, in my own flat,
geezer.
It was a geezer.
Not that I'm embarrassed!
Not that I'm embarrassed
that it was a man that broke my heart!
I'm not. I've decided I'm not--
I'm not embarrassed to be straight anymore.
I've come to terms with it.
I've come to-- it is what it is, yeah?
All right? I've come to--
And if anything, it feels like a little bit of a throwback
as a dating preference.
It's a little retro.
We've kind of moved past it as a society.
And yet, I'm in there just clinging on for dear life.
I feel like--
Still dating men, I feel like I go through
a lot of the same emotions
as I imagine people who collect vinyl records must feel,
in the sense that both groups are really
truly flying the flag for what is,
let's be honest, a dying medium.
Yeah?
Both of us, just find ourselves saying stuff like,
well, actually, the fact that it's largely inaccessible
and of a low quality overall is what we find charming
about the format.
So I was in my flat, and I was like, geezer.
And, um...
Lindsay was like, how long?
How long was the relationship?
And I was like, eight months, man.
Eight months.
And Lindsay was like...
What are you crying about, girl?
What are you fucking crying about?
Lindsay bollocked me in my own home, yes?
This man told me what the fuck was what.
I met him that day, and he took me through
every past relationship he's been with,
all that he's loved and lost.
And he said something to me
that I will never forget, right?
Before he left, he turned to me in the doorway,
and he said this to me.
He said, what you got to understand is, yeah,
we were put on this Earth to suffer.
So all you can do
is you got to grab your giggles where you can.
I don't know if I had just been touched by an angel
or Lindsay had once killed a man for fun.
right?
I choose to believe the former.
It's much more charming.
So I was running out of options, right.
I couldn't turn to my closest friends.
I was too, too embarrassed.
My Nan went back to New Zealand.
Lindsay only came once a week, right.
So I--
I did what any person of my sort of general vibe
and background would do is that
I turned to the internet.
Incognito mode, of course, right, for answers.
And that's my problem is that I don't see heartbreak as--
I see heartbreak as a problem to solve,
rather than just fucking an experience to go through.
So I will tell you, when you search a term like
"can you be broken up with for being too cool,"
what you will get is you will open up an entire corner
of the internet, and that is the world
of online relationship coaching.
Now, I don't know if anyone's familiar with this.
If you're not, I will explain briefly.
It is--it's a largely American industry.
It's kind of adjacent to life coaching a bit.
And it's mainly sort of run by these kind of weird men.
They're always called, like, Declan or Gavin or something,
and they've got suits, and they're looking like that.
And their URLs are quite intense, quite hectic.
They'll be like, stuff like HowToGetYourExBack.com.
Like, YourExWasABitch ButMaybeTheLove
OfYourLife.org.edu.
And these men were just sinister,
because this whole industry was kind of sinister.
'Cause what they're doing is they're preying upon people
at their most heartbroken, right,
their lowest ebb of their lives,
and they're trying to get money out of you, essentially, right.
They lured you in with these sort of free online articles,
and checklists, and all that that build up to--
like, weekly podcasts that you listen to every week.
Then, eventually, maybe a workbook or two.
20 US dollars a workbook. Why not?
Eventually, what they're really trying to get you to
is ultimately they're trying to get you to
one-on-one Zoom coaching sessions with them, right,
that can cost like fucking $500, 600 US dollars a pop.
Right, it's horrible.
Also, these men, their advice is fucking shit.
Yeah?
Do not take any of the advice.
One of the tips on one of these articles genuinely was
dress every day as if you're going to bump into your ex.
Dress every day.
I'm gonna let that sit with you for a moment, right.
Do you know what that me--
like, this is how I dress every day.
This. I don't want to bump into an ex-lover
dressed like this, yeah?
32 years of effort went into this look.
Can you believe?
Which, sartorially, I can only accurately describe as
I somehow managed to, every day,
dress like, simultaneously,
a missing child from the 1980s,
as well as the mother
searching for that missing child!
And I hear a few claps.
That does hurt my feelings a little bit, right?
Because that's the applause of recognition.
So I knew I couldn't take the advice from these men.
They're fucking awful. I didn't respect them.
So I moved on to a female relationship coach.
I thought that would work for me better.
I found her in the form of Jillian.
Jillian.
Uh, didn't love her vibe either,
because her tips were just as bad.
One of them was genuinely, drink more water.
Drink more water.
Get a bit dehydrated when you go through a breakup.
Drink more water. Fuck you, Jillian.
I'm fucking heartbroken. You fucking drink more water.
What the fuck are you talking about, girl?
Shut up.
One of them was, she said, oh, join a club.
You need to join a club. Be more social. Join a club.
I'm not fucking eight years old, Jillian.
What the hell? Join a damn club?
Worst one was, she said,
don't wear AirPods in public,
because you cut yourself off
from having conversations with strangers.
Over my fucking dead body, Jillian.
You're gonna have to rip the AirPods out of my dead, cold--
I want to be fucking buried in my AirPods--
just in case I get buried alive,
so I can rock out in the coffin. Yeah?
Jillian--another thing Jillian was obsessed with
was childhood.
I think this is a real big obsession in therapy
in general at the moment, like inner child work
and stuff like that.
I don't buy it.
I don't give a shit.
I don't care about childhood, right.
My inner child, she's on her own.
OK?
Do you know what I mean?
Because, for me, that's such an unhelpful thing
to try and, I guess, dwell on or unpack.
Because childhood is a historical event.
It's happened.
I can't change anything about my childhood, right?
It's fucking Stonehenge.
It's the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
It's happened. It's done.
And quite crucially, as well, I can't remember
much of my childhood,
which I think is the first sign that nothing bad ever happened.
Yeah?
I think if something traumatic happened,
I would have remembered it.
I did try mining my past for moments of trauma,
the little nuggets of trauma, to sort of explain flaws I have
in my adult personality.
I tried that.
My dad nearly drowned once. That was fun.
That was good for trauma, I guess.
Obviously-- but it actually kind of wasn't,
though, as well, in that I wasn't that sad.
I'll be honest.
And I love my dad, obviously.
Let me explain myself.
But I'll say this--what happens when someone nearly drowns
is that they're nearly drowned.
But what contextually that also means
is that it was probably summer.
Do you see what I'm saying?
Like, oh, your dad nearly died.
But I'm not gonna lie to you,
the vibes are fucking immaculate.
They were.
It was a good year.
2004, man.
So I don't have trauma.
Uh...
Trauma, not for me.
Trauma, I hardly knew her.
I will say this, though, for the whole thing about
going back into one's childhood that I do find interesting,
and I think a lot of people my age are probably experiencing
themselves, is that I realize I'm finally getting to the age
in which I am meeting my parents
at the age that they had me, right.
We didn't know our parents
before they were our age, right?
A-and finally meeting them, you know,
adult to adult, face to face.
And so much more of my childhood
is making sense to me now.
Do you know what I mean?
The fact that my dad would come home from work every night,
not talk to any of us, go straight to the back steps,
smoke cigarettes, and drink coffee till bedtime.
Now, I'm in my early 30s,
I'm like, brother, you do you, man.
Fucking drinking that Nescafé as dark as night
with 14 sugars just to feel something anymore, Dad!
'Cause our daddies didn't have ASMR.
Think about that for a second.
Our daddies didn't have ASMR in the '90s.
They didn't have a hydraulic press crushing
a fucking can of Pringles, yeah?
How did they wind down?
All they had was untaxed cigarettes and the void, right?
It was hard.
Also, like, my mom as well. Fuck me.
My mom, she had three kids by the time she was 28.
Three kids! That's obscene to me.
Child bride. Child bride.
What is going on?
Three kids at 28!
I find that insane,
to the point that if I met my own mother at this age,
I would have been that fucking friend
who was convincing her not to have me.
Do you know what I mean?
And I don't think any of us in this room
could call ourselves feminists
if you wouldn't be willing to do the same.
Yeah?
If you wouldn't be willing to go back in time
and convince your own mother not to have you
so she could chuck it about for a few more years,
right?
Everyone freaks out about that whole, like,
would you go back in time and kill baby Hitler?
Bitch, I would go back in time
and kill myself
so my mom could go to Bali.
And that's feminism, I think.
I think it is.
So, uh, Jillian didn't work out for me.
I knew I couldn't work with Jillian any longer,
so I moved on.
And I found the Holy Grail, the one.
And her name was Margaret.
I want to tell you about Margaret.
Margaret was an American lady.
She was deep into her 80s, an elderly woman.
She talked like this--
right, sounded so crusty like that.
And she did these podcasts I would listen to
every night before bed.
And Margaret was fucking incredible.
She had a tendency to sometimes talk
in sort of-- kind of bumper sticker slogans
when it came to breakups and all that--
stuff that everyone's heard during breakups.
Stuff like, the only way out is through.
The only way out is through. We've all heard that.
I don't--I fucking hate that saying, right?
And also, I don't understand it, yeah?
How is it 2024, hmm,
and we have not yet found a way around yet?
Yeah?
We have vibrating anal beads
powered by Bluetooth technology, huh,
and we have not yet found a way
to circumvent the devastation of a fucking breakup.
What are these scientists doing?
Have they never felt love before, right?
Other ones is that what you've got to do at this age,
particularly, is you've got to figure out what your values are
and whether or not they align with the person
you want to be with, right.
If they don't, move on.
If they do, go ahead. Yeah?
Biggest one was children.
You've got to figure out whether or not
you want children or not.
And if that doesn't match up,
it's gonna be too much of an obstacle going forward.
And I'm embarrassed to say it was, genuinely,
the first time in my life
where I asked myself not should I have children,
but if I wanted children.
And it turned out the answer was no.
And it turns out that is the wrong answer.
OK?
I wouldn't recommend it. Do not share--
if that is your feeling, do not share that with anyone.
I found that the socially acceptable answer
to that question is "maybe one day."
Tee-hee.
A girl never tells.
People love that, right?
They don't like a flat no.
They do not like a flat no, right?
And even when--
You know, I think people accept it.
I think sometimes people see my stance
of not wanting children as something, like, radical
or political, like a statement.
There is no statement behind it.
There is nothing radical about it.
I'm just fucking lazy, and I don't like bending over.
All right?
And that is enough of a motivation
not to have children.
God did not make me to get up before 9:00 AM, yeah?
And that's OK.
I think people's motivations to have children
are even more fucked up than that.
I think some people have children because
they don't want to die alone. They don't want to die alone.
I don't understand the logic of that,
in the sense that the day you die
is already gonna be
a bad day.
Do you know what I mean?
So you're going to invest decades of your life
to ensuring there are good numbers
on that one fucking day.
Fuck that. Just pop on a DVD.
I'll be as happy as Larry. Let me die alone.
Let me die alone
with a box set.
But I know that about myself, right,
and it was amazing to figure that out.
But it does not stop,
I guess, this assumption, right?
There's still an assumption that if you're born into a body
that is capable of having children,
that that is something that you will want to fulfill one day.
Right, I was at the children's birthday party recently,
and I was playing with the kids.
I love children.
I get on with them so well.
And this older gentleman, he noticed this,
and he said-- he said to me,
does it bring out the mother in you?
I was like, oh, fuck me, there's something so sinister
about that, isn't there? Because it's not "a" mother.
It's "the" mother, yeah?
'Cause it's this kind of idea.
It speaks to this idea that within every little girl
there's a little mother just waiting to burst out
of one's chest
and sort of eat the host body to become
the mother!
Like, I'm not a fucking Kinder surprise, dude.
Like, there's nothing in there.
It's the same kind of guy who wants to hit you with those,
like, biological facts you always hear as a young girl
from a young age, which is so fucking creepy.
Shit like-- you always hear this,
I don't know why I know this fact.
People are like, you're born with all the eggs
you'll ever need your life.
They're born into your body as a little baby.
And you little baby's babies got all the eggs that they need.
Like little salmon roe.
All the eggs they'll ever need to make.
It's like, sir, I'm gonna have to ask you to back the fuck up
and stop telling me I'm full of eggs.
All right?
Get on the ground.
I just question, constantly question, right--
we're pitted against each other, people who want kids,
people who don't want kids.
It's still quite-- my motivations, I'll admit,
they oscillate! They oscillate
about not having kids between two positions
depending on my level of self-esteem
at that moment in time, right?
Like, if I'm feeling good about myself,
the reasoning is that, well, my grandparents,
my parents, they perfected the recipe, over and out, right.
It's either that, or, if I'm feeling bad about myself,
it is, whatever this is has to end.
And you need to be the one who does it, girl.
But it's crazy, like,
it was an amazing thing to realize about myself,
and I had Margaret to thank for that.
Because that's genuinely gonna have an effect
on all of the relationships
I embark on going ahead.
And I have Margaret to thank for that,
a woman--a fucking America, elderly woman
who would make these podcasts I'd listen to
every night before bed.
And beyond that, right, I think Margaret taught me that--
it's so cheesy to say, but she taught me that--
you can't really give up.
I was at a fucking low, low spot, right,
when I was listening to her, and she told me
that you have to keep the faith, I think.
Because sometimes, I think,
this is the necessary thing.
This is necessary.
To go through all of this fucking--
all the shitty little things, all 16,000 words of it.
And it's all delivering you, hopefully, to that person--
that person who is gonna say, in whatever form,
I'll be with you till the end.
And it's never the fucking first suitcase
around the baggage claim, is it?
It takes a few goes round-- unless your business class,
to be fair.
And, uh, yeah.
So yeah, I have her to thank for that.
And I believed her. And I'm glad I did.
'Cause a year on, now, later, from this note,
I am actually engaged, which is very exciting.
Of course I'm not engaged.
I--
what?
Sorry.
Have any of you been listening
to a single thing
I have been saying?
Of course I'm not engaged!
Why would I be--also, why would I tell you?
I don't know any of you.
Uh, no, yeah.
That is a dirty trick.
But that was on you, I think.
Uh, I will tell you what actually happened.
Yeah?
I'm not engaged.
I'll tell you what actually happened,
and that is that I was very, very sad.
I was very sad.
And I didn't know why.
I didn't have the answers to this,
because it wasn't a particularly,
you know, important relationship, right.
But I feel like that's what happens with breakups, yeah?
You don't know which one is gonna take you out.
It's like having a bad oyster.
It's just one of them just
fucking knocks you on your ass, right,
And this is the case with this one.
So I was desperate,
and I found myself, uh,
deciding I was gonna do it.
I was going to book Margaret
for a one-on-one
Zoom coaching session.
600 US dollars!
Yeah. Oh, you're right to gasp.
Yeah. Whoa.
No offense, I can afford that.
Because I'm a very dangerous mix of financially stable
and mentally unwell.
So I am ripe for swindling, right?
I'm like Shelley Winters in every film she's ever been in.
It's a niche joke.
So I went to the website, and I--
I went to what I assume would be like a booking form,
like a contact form to put in my details and all that.
And, uh, there was none.
There was just a YouTube thumbnail
that had this little title on the thumbnail.
And it just said,
"A very difficult announcement."
Yeah.
So, yeah,
Margaret died.
Oh!
Amazing reaction from people who found out
she existed five minutes ago.
Come on off it.
But fair enough.
No, that's true. I know. It's crazy, right?
It's crazy. But--
Sorry.
Not only had she died,
sorry, it turns out
she had been dead
the entire time
I had been listening to her podcast
and reading her work.
But I don't know if anyone's ever been Sixth-Sensed before,
but doesn't feel good.
Doesn't feel good.
Sorry, is that not insane to anyone?
Guys, for months, I had been taking the advice from a woman
who no longer existed.
What the fuck is that?
It's terrifying.
I find that so fucking terrifying,
the idea that there was a version of ourselves
out there forever.
There's a version of Margaret out there in the ether,
fucking living on forever and ever, never to be deleted.
That's petrifying to me. What happens to me?
What happens to-- what happens to my--
what's my legacy to the next generation, if that's the case?
Is it this note?
This note!
This fucking note!
Cucumbersome, is that it?
It can't be.
And that's--you know what?
That is the weird thing about even doing this show, right?
Because it's the same as Margaret,
in the sense that Margaret doesn't exist anymore,
but the person who wrote this note
doesn't exist either, right?
I barely recognize the woman behind these words.
And yet, I know,
the next time my heart gets broken,
I'll fucking meet her again, right?
Because that's how it works.
People don't actually change, right.
This is locked in forever.
I'm gonna make the same mistakes
over and over and over again
on an endless loop.
And the only thing I can do right now
is pull together whatever scraps of wisdom I have
in this moment--
yeah--pass it to the next version of myself,
and hope, fucking pray,
that she does a better job.
So that's it, really.
But to be absolutely fair,
I did warn you at the start.
I am very bad at endings.