Decked out in Cruise Collections, your shiny toenails peeking out from sandals whose single leather thongs still cost more than you’re paying the Phillipino couple to keep the home fires burning.

Removing your floppy hat to paw at silky highlights and fat earrings, bikini held together by costume jewellery.

Sparkly bits on everything that isn’t the enormous gold beach tote housing one tiny tube of SPF750 Karl Lagerfeld lip balm.

Sunglasses conspicuously folded on the table, hot fourth finger bulging in its platinum boa constrictor.

Your other half in creased linens, George Hamilton tan, sweaty wrist weighted by Successful Watch.

Chasing around thirty dollar salad leaves under stylish ceiling fans whirring in well-maintained unison.

Your long-limbed kids sulky in white shorts and head phones, fresh from the stupidly-shaped pool, hair so blond it hurts.

When just down the road, you could be getting a pina colada with a cocktail-speared glace cherry.

Joking with the bar staff, making the acquaintance of a family of four from Spalding (one boy, one girl).

Getting comfy on a wicker chair, swaying to some steel drum popular covers.

Thanking God you’re not at the extreme end of the beach with the tightly-packed floral brollies and scorched non-tightly packed flesh.

Being sold a big shell or a trip on an inflatable chair going really fast behind a speedboat.

The sand is better where you are because the locals tread it like it’s yours and the tourists are busy in the local market stuffing clothes-staining souvenirs into shoulder bags.

But watch out for the sun.

Nothing makes it feel more exclusive than zapping a botoxed brow.

And there’s no greater leveler than a burnt nose.

I started it in 1934, even though it was written in 2001- an impressive achievement.

Jonathan Franzen has an unparalleled ability to create unique individuals out of universal characters.

Every human being is a type, insofar as we all behave with a certain predictable consistency: a vegetarian with a hemp wardrobe is unlikely to love plastic, for example.

A lot of inconsistencies breed eccentricity, while a majority foothold doth madness make.

But add just a few and what you get is an individual. (Turns out the vegetarian was a stripper in her twenties and smokes 20 Benny Hedgehogs a day.)

All novelists walk this line as a tightrope between skyscrapers: too broad a brushstroke and they’ve created cardboard cut-outs; an over-zealous daubing of quirkiness and the protagonists don’t feel real.

Franzen synthesises the two flawlessly, sweeping up every idiosyncratic morsel in the heads of his subjects (no crumb too miniscule) yet somehow making them immediately familiar.

Add to this a respect for the tragic and a flair for the hilarious and the result is gold-plated Top Banana.

I’m at the bit where Enid is on a Nordic Cruise trip and has been befriended by the promising Sylvia, who steals her away from an uncomfortable dining experience to the Lagerkvist Taproom, for a tete-a-tete. While a dwarf in a horned helmet and leather jerkin serves them cloudberry akvavit potato vodka, Sylvia embarks on an outpouring of grief over the torture and murder of her daughter.

Sylvia and her husband’s diametrically opposed emotional reactions to this traumatic event are drawn intensely, invoking powerful feelings of hatred and revenge, with which the reader empathises. Enid, however, considers herself less intellectual than her confider and, as a result, finds her attention diverted to the bartender.

So it is, that after Sylvia’s most indepth and harrowing unburdening, this follows:

‘Maybe one more?’ Enid said to the dwarf, raising her glass. She was almost wholly not listening to Sylvia but shaking her head and murmuring ‘Uh!’ and ‘Oh!’ while her consciousness stumbled through clouds of alcohol into such absurd realms of speculation as how the dwarf might feel against her hips and belly, embracing her.’

… so that the synopsis of this scene might be: mature woman fantasises about dwarf sex as new friend describes the emotional fallout of her daughter’s brutal murder.

There are other writers whose work I enjoy more- who have perhaps left a more complex, challenging, meaningful etc. aftertaste and whose style I might rather emulate- but none who has forced me to pause mid-read so regularly in order to smile and think, ‘That is just so bloody genius.’

Within 60 minutes of seeing a pediatrician he was quarantined for four days in a hospital where every single person who entered or left the room had to wear top to toe protection destined for incineration.

He didn’t have it then either.

This can be charming or alarming.

Charming

On a Grenadian beach late afternoon in December Rufus and I strolled barefoot to book a massage for me at a resort.

Amongst the gardens and swimming pool was a verandah with a thatched roof, housing a breezy restaurant.

I made my way towards it, to ask for information.

As I approached, I could hear Jennifer Rush belting out ‘The Power of Love’ on the sound system.

Audible from some distance, close-up it was all-encompassing.

And there’s only one thing you can do, wrapped in a power ballad.

So I’m walking towards this verandah, singing:

‘The sound of your heart beeeea-tiiiing,

Made it clear sudden-lyyy,

The feeling that I can’t go oooooo-oooooon,

Is a- light years a-waaaaaaaaaaaay’…

And as I look up I can see a local woman in her resort uniform, checking on things for the evening meal at the restaurant.

And she’s also singing:

‘Coz I am your la-dayy, and you are my ma-aaaaan’…

And she sees me and smiles and carries on.

So I carry on too and we walk towards each other.

‘Whenever you reach for me,

I’m gonna do all that I ca-aaaaan’…

Until we’re face to face (Rufus in my arms, with an expression somewhere on the trauma spectrum).

And we’re just standing and singing right at each other, for what seems like a very long time, Sonny and Cher-styley; only we’re not married artistes- we’re out-of-tune strangers, in the dying sun.

‘We’re heading for some-thiiiing,

Somewhere I’ve never be-ee-ee-ee-n,

Sometimes I am f-rightened but I’m re-eady to learn

About the Po-wer of Loooove.’

Her: Can I help you, Honey?

Me: Yes. Please can you tell me the way to reception?

*

Alarming

Bruno had a stiff neck on New Year’s Eve. He was hot as well, maybe related to the fact it was 30 degrees outside.

But as Jan 1st’s not ideal for a medical moment I took him to the doctor- a 60-year old man in shorts above a shopping mall, surrounded by religious bumper stickers.

(The Creole language added flavour to this exchange because it sounded to me, in this context, ignorant but I won’t try to re-create it because the ignorance was mine.)

Doc: What’s the matter, young man?

Bruno: I’ve got a sore neck. (gets his temp taken, as I give more background)

Doc (shaking his head, breathing in): Oh, no no no no no no. This is bad. This is verrrrrry, verrrrry bad.

Me (panic rising , shallow breathing, leaning forward): What do you mean ‘very bad’?

Doc (sitting back, folding arms, feet not quite on table): You brought him here. You have a mother’s intuition. What do you think the matter is?

Me (panic risen, getting agitated): I think he’s sprained his neck and I want to know how to treat it.

Doc (smiling, raising eyebrows, not getting agitated): Mmm-hmmmmm.

And you don’t think a fever is linked to a very stiff neck? They would have absolutely nothing to do with one another, you think?

Me (not smiling, feeling sick): What fever? I don’t know. What are you saying?

Doc (without panic or visible signs of nausea, preparing to annunciate every syllable):

MEN-IN-GI-TIS.

Me (ohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuck): What do you mean? What do you mean, meningitis?

Doc (wearing a how-stupid-can-a-person-be? face, a bit fed up, sighing): Infection. Meningitis. In-fla-ma-tion of the spinal cord.

Me  (Gigantic. Pupils. Trying. To. Be. Calm.): So what do we do?

Doc (wearing an oh-I-see-this-is-how-stupid-a-person-can-be face, incredulous, amused): You take some antibiotics. You go home. You wait.

Me (OMGOMGthisiscompletelynothappening): What do you mean? What do you mean we wait? I can’t do that. I need to do something else. I need to take him to a hospital.

Doc (sitting up, chortling): Oh, really? And you think that’s going to be a good idea?

Let me tell you something, Mummy. The hospitals here aren’t like the ones at home. Standards are different. You don’t know how long you will be there. You don’t know what you are going to leave with.

Do you see what I am saying to you?

.

He went on to try to explain that meningitis is on a scale of 1 to 10 and that Bruno was most likely at the lower end.

But I was already spiralling towards the ‘m’ word, to which he responded with an amble in the opposite direction (and a long explanation to the receptionist, who was similarly unmoved).

Suffice to say, tears, telephone calls and large-scale bustling to a private clinic followed- Bruno getting more hot, silent and stiff-necked throughout.

Tests confirmed (thank the bumper-sticker Lord) that he did not have bacterial meningitis and we were sent home.

So this could have been a story about a rubbish doctor concluding a wrong diagnosis (even if right in emergency terms).

But events on New Year’s day brought us together with the same doctor and it turns out Bruno probably did have the low level viral meningitis the doc was trying all along to describe.

He took the medications, rested and is now perfectly fine.

So actually this story is about a good doctor with a laid-back manner, in a high-octane situation.

And, yes, perhaps a bit about the power- the white heat- of parental love.

Mostly, they’re celebrities, which is why they’re celebrities.

If you knew them on a personal basis they would make you feel sick with inadequacy, which is a weird psychological phenomenon because the relationship between someone’s belief in themselves and one’s own isn’t inversely proportional.

Even though the next person who conquers cliche mountain with the words ‘in these uncertain times’ deserves to be bludgeoned decisively, you can’t help but notice there are less shoulder-padded, big-haired Alexis Carringtons around these days.

The crop-clutching anxiety of Julie Andrews before ‘I have confidence in me’ (only she doesn’t) may have yielded to ‘I’ve got a secret’ Katie Holmes smirks (hubby’s is better) but great big ballsy showing-off seems inappropriate, when there are so many different ways smiles can be wiped off faces- wait, what are they even doing on there in the first place?

A British trait it may not be, but if Helen Mirren gets locked in a lavatory with Kate Winslet at a Christmas party, there’s only one of them the nation will be feeding cheese straws back to through the gaps.

I can’t really be bothered to read the interviews of entertainers any more, wanging on about how blessed they are or how much they love their exceptional or deliberately non-exceptional pets but last week I flicked the pages of two and it’s solely because they’ve spotted a giant self-love gap in the market.

The only things anyone knows about Nancy dell’Olio is that she was on Strictly Dancing and went out with Sven but no-one can get enough of her because she keeps telling them they can’t get enough of her: ‘No, you can’t leave the bedroom. You want me. Look at me. I’m stunning. You’re killing yourself with how stunning I am. Be quiet and take off your socks.’

Lady Gaga too- perma-weaving her own mythology in pantomime suits and being carried onto Grammy red carpets in giant perspex eggs. Never knowingly overheard saying, ‘Who, me?’ but stopped from throwing gossamer-gloved punches at ingrates who don’t genuflect, on a daily basis; making Madonna look like Gollum.

It’s the only thing left that’s shocking or interesting and from which you might want to learn. Interviewers need to strike all the, ‘What do you wear in bed?’ gumpf and extract from the famous the secret of their cock-surety.

Did your fantasticness lead you to believe in your fantasticness or is it your belief in your fantasticness that has made you fantastic? What part of you isn’t fanstastic? Does the level of your general fantasticness make the non-fantastic part really venal and miserable and almost capable of murder? Do you fear a back-lash for spreading the word of your fantasticness? Or do you just believe in it so whole-heartedly that nothing could de-fantasticate you?

Only now do I realise my soft spot for J-Lo is that she doesn’t have any soft spots. I’m more impressed by her chutzpah than by the technology that helped man walk on the moon- a mini portion of which she recently sampled at the American Music Awards.

In fact, so sure am I of her sureness that I’m going to ask her if I can insure her for the event next year because unlike Adele (who couldn’t attend this one due to surgery on her vocal chords) J-Lo would perform dead, with the vocal chord surgeon’s forceps still clamped around her tonsils.

While other 42-year old Moms-of-two were feeling a bit achey and taking to bed with their nagging self-doubts, this one was doing this:

… shortly before performing another number with Wi.Ll.i.am.i.am, picking up  her own award, changing into another hot outfit, going to a club and giving her 24-year-old boyfriend lapdances (plural!)

I couldn’t get that body or that voice or those dance moves but the one thing I admire above all – that is way more in my reach, yet so mind-bendingly way beyond it- is the absolute, 100%, steel-girded belief she has that she won’t tip over on a dancing heel and make a thorough arse out of herself.

Which is, of course, exactly why she doesn’t.

In 2003, a 27 yr old American, Aron Ralston, went to the Blue John Canyon in Utah for a hike, telling no-one where he went.

He fell down a narrow slot, unsettling an 800 lb boulder, which trapped him against the canyon wall by his right arm.

He spent the next 5 days and nights trying, in vain, to free himself before finally breaking the bones in his trapped lower right arm and cutting it off.

There followed a book Between a Rock and A Hard Place (!), a film 127 Hours, various talk shows and a career as an after-dinner speaker.

It is easy to see what so captures the imagination about this- a tale of foolhardiness, accident, loneliness, desperation, fear, strength, courage and survival, wrapped up in the skin of a not-unattractive, white, middle class male now sporting a dramatic mechanical hand.

The horror has universal relevance because- unlike tales of societal or racial oppression, acts of war, political kidnappings and the like- a version of it could happen to anyone, given an enormous amount of bad luck (plus a dash of the arrogance of youth).

And what captures the imagination of mainstream society racks up dollars for an entertainment industry sustained by marrying good stories to wide audiences.

But there’s a problem with misery: it isn’t entertaining. Beauty can spring from pain but pain is not itself beautiful.

Danny Boyle shows that he knows this in 127 Hours.

He uses jump-cuts and flash-backs to bring the action-free incident to life and- evocative though the sound and visual effects are- circumvents too much jaw-clenching with a deliberately perky sound-track and imaginary conversational devices.

However, it’s this watchability that makes the film a failure within a greater context.

Because what this story is about- or what matters about this story- is the individual’s gargantuan capacity to overcome adversity.

In illuminating truth, art- in any of its forms- may suggest itself for the job of telling it.

But as the experience of pain is wholly personal and non-transferable, it may fall short: pain’s bleakness lies in its loneliness, in the impossibility of separating oneself from it, in its fear.

How long will the suffering last? Will it get worse? Will it become too much to bear?

Then there are ways that art itself is the antithesis of pain- inessential, distanced from direct experience, sharable, engaging, finite.

So even as we are taught to be positive and look on the bright side, there are times when good old-fashioned dwelling has merit- when it is worthwhile facing discomfort head-on.

Consider- not for 127 hours but for one moment- the reality of a man trapped in a hole of despair, partly of his own making.

Days from the raising of a missing persons alert. Miles from the nearest passer-by. Trapped in an upright position, with hardly any water or food. Entirely at the mercy of fluctuating temperatures.

Hungry, thirsty, alone, afraid, sleep-deprived, delirious and in excruciating pain.

Imagine the unfathomable darkness he must have contemplated.

Yet, pushed to the extremes of experience, he didn’t panic or make poor judgements.

He acknowledged his failings and thought outside of himself, of his family.

He faced the prospect of his death with dignity. He didn’t yield to despair.

He went to Hell.

But he came back.

That he now profits from sharing his story makes simple economic sense; that he took learning from his suffering is the real gift.

Aron Ralston is all of us: unthinking, unlucky, self-centred.

He’s also what we all have the potential to be and that’s nothing less than a hero.

The trials of the human condition can be made palatable by art.

But we must beware that, in the process, its wondrous triumphs are not diminished.

Tonight I swept the kitchen of crumbs and miscellaneous comestibles.

‘I’m going to be really good and make sure there’s nothing here to tempt rodents,’ I thought.

Then in the process of sweeping, I imagined the tiny little mice waiting in the wings, catching sight of me with the broom and letting out a really heart-wrenching, ‘Ohhhhhhhhhhhh’ sound of disappointment at the willful clearance of some perfectly tasty morsels, straight into the food-recycling bin, where they were going to do nobody any good at all lounging around alongside the spent lemons and tea-bags.

(The sound would not be full of self-pity but understated- a letting-down sigh, like a balloon deflating.)

All day it had been building, the promise of a feast you could wrap your pink nose around and exult in; the kind of meal that would give you a great night’s sleep and a promising start to a new week.

And I imagined them hanging their heads a bit lower than usual and padding back on their miniature paws and not having the energy to talk about it amongst themselves (what would there even be to say?)

And just buggering off to bed with empty tummies and the hollow dream of an unswept Galaxy niblet later in the week.

And for one crazy-horse moment I considered replacing a bit of the mess because one thing I can’t stand is disappointment.

But- for tonight, at least- I did not.

Because I remembered that there’s one thing I can’t stand more than the disappointment of mice.

And that is mice.

While most Western retailers tumble over themselves to deafen their merchandise with marketing noise, there is one still humming a fifties tune: the shoe shop.

Not one whiff of originality has since darkened its doors: the same little display tripods for the left shoe in a size 5; the boring soft-top stools being hogged by the huffing-and-puffing shopping expedition hangers-on; functional lighting, music, labelling- all flicking The Bird at the shoemakers’ elves on every British high street.

More vexing than this environmental stagnation is its resolve to retain the customer service model of an old-fashioned department store- the one where the outlet-to-client shoe transaction is mediated by the lengthy intervention of a Member of Staff, using visual stocktaking to communicate news from the warehouse basement, with all the efficiency of a snail on valium.

‘Do you have these in a size 7?’

‘I’m afraid I only memorised the men’s slipper section, Madam. Let me leave you sitting in this store while I transport my body mass down a flight of stairs, amble along an aisle and separate the shoe boxes by lifting, shifting and other means of physical manoeuvring, to investigate. Then I’ll transport my mass back up the stairs to deliver the results, whereupon the boredom induced by my absence will have driven you to find another pair certain to dispatch me on a similar mission.’

The method in this madness could lie, of course, in the re-appearance of said assistant with other options (‘I don’t have a child’s size 9 football boot but I do have these size 8 ballet shoes’. ‘You’re right. He’s a spoilt little shit as it is. Let him curl up his toes and dance.’) But could not this also take place in the digital arena, a la Amazon?

I dream of a store of inspirational presentation that propels me to a screen where- in the manner of weighing a banana at Tesco’s self-service check-out- I punch in my preference and am immediately informed of its availability or, failing that, a photographic orgy of similar size 7′s for my deliberation. And (in the mad REM bit at the end of the dream) to receive that choice via a grabbing arm, like those machines that push you out a Twix after a swim at the leisure centre.

They’re already doing it in Tokyo, for sure- the only shame being that robots have rendered people and their footwear, redundant.

Online shopping is an alternative- though (not unlike internet dating) the profile picture is bound to conceal issues and you’ll end up having to send them back to a Greater London suburb you’ve never heard of.

In the meantime, it’s back to a reality of cheese counter tickets and pop socks; of agonising decisions at the till over whether to invest in the sensible up-selling suggestion of protective boot spray, that will dry out over 7 years under the kitchen sink; of searching for a full-length mirror rather than an ankle-only fragment because the foot part is how the shoes feel but the look on one’s face wearing them is what really matters.

Come what may, buying shoes for children looks set to continue as a lesson in sufferance, the success of the exercise being dependent on the reliable feedback of a nonsensical person given to random motion operating in a confined, soul-sucking space.

Assuming the turbulent river of taste has been navigated between parent and child, a miserable debacle ensues whereby sprog is released to run back and forth (but not in that silly way with the bendy legs and don’t you dare wander onto the no-refunds pavement) before being asked questions about toes touching ends and issues of comfort and prospective suitability, even though they have never once been able to satisfactorily respond to their own name.

All of which could reasonably send a parent to consult the little machine, where- after 3 hours of foot contortion and tangled tape measures- a size will be concluded that has no correlation to shoe world, where all brands differ. ‘Your measurement is your pure size,’ will explain the nice girl. ‘Imagine your face if you hadn’t abused it for years with alcohol and resentment- that’s your pure image; it doesn’t mean much but it helps when you’re trying on hats.’

Eventually, a pair will prevail. This will never, ever be the one you want- not because they don’t have it but because the shoe industry considers it a duty of their profession to test your ability to make decisions: would you rather your little darling wears the right size trainers with pink hearts or the wrong size ones with Fireman Sam? Do you hate flashing lights in the heel more than the thought of going to another shoe shop in Brent Cross on a Saturday?

It’s like Deal or No Deal but with man-made upper soles instead of Noel Edmonds.

And don’t even think of bringing them back unless they’re still in the box, as technically they would no longer be shoes. Once they’ve left the cardboard protection it’s like they’ve been defiled. Did you marry a virgin? Do you understand?

‘So let’s just check you’ve got everything.

Your child needs school shoes for school, plimsolls for school sports, trainers for other sport, boots for wet weather, sandals for holiday, a fun pair for parties and a smart pair for the grandparents.

Plus one pair of Crocs.’

‘What are they for?’

‘Everything. They’re the only shoes they’ll wear.

So that’ll be £2,000 and this little ticket.’

‘Which is..?’

‘A reminder to come back in 6 weeks.’