Villefranche-sur-Mer |
It is a cliché that we all
remember things differently. A week ago, I found myself being included in one
of the group whats app created by classmates from my primary school. I found it a little incredulous as I
had recently quitted from whats app group consisting of my secondary school
friend and now I have to decide if I should exit . While it is nice that
friends from the past show up and play catch up, they can be a little
overwhelming when the phone is swamped with a hundred over messages in one day.
I am amazed that some of these
school friends could recall things
that happened in school as my own memory bank has since been reprogrammed and many memories have been erased and
replaced by more recent events. Perhaps I am not too nostalgic about childhood
not that I had a bad one. I just
do not travel back in time with the same degree of sentimentality and
enthusiasm that my school friends demonstrate. A school friend lamented about
how one Bahasa cikgu used to hit every pupil on his or her hand for not
performing well in ‘ejaan’ ( spelling test) and I was apparently spared the rod
as I used to ride the same taxi as
the teacher for my trip to and from school. I asked my sister if she remembered any of it. She told me I
used to be picked up from school in my dad’s business van or truck and
occasionally the ice cream truck belonging to our neighbour. I had trouble
remembering any of this though I could remember the super thin and tanned driver who used to smoke a
lot and resembled what I thought a drug addict would look like. Our late dad
was an entrepreneur and I remember he was never on time. He did make it a point
to take us on a beach or movie outing on Sundays. I also had some fabulous time
practising duets with him playing the violin and me the piano when we were
young. So to me, he had pretty much redeemed himself. Nobody is perfect and everybody is different. That is
probably the best motto anyone should have in life.
When I was studying in Sydney, I
used to enjoy retreating into the world of old movies that played on television
so much so that there was this one time I was late for a part-time waitressing
job I took during my first summer holiday. I can still recall the yelling from
the Greek cook but he was not intimidating at all. The café I was working at
was located at Bondi Junction and the breakfast crowd arrived after 7 am and
many of them had to start work at the departmental stores in the vicinity. It
was the month of December so Christmas was approaching just like now.
Chick lit can be nauseating
because it is often pretty much a fairy tale. A night in with Audrey Hepburn is an entertaining read. But Lucy Holliday has made it really hilarious about how aspiring actress Libby
Lomax has retreated into the world of classic movies as her dad had been instrumental in influencing her for her love for movies. Her dad has left the family to focus
on writing a book about Hollywood screen icons like Audrey Hepburn. And at her new bachelor pad
which has been reduced in its size by her
dishonest landlord, Libby meets her screen idol, Audrey Hepburn complete
with little black dress, tortoise shell sun glasses and vintage cigarette
holder sitting on the Chesterfield sofa that her childhood buddy has picked up
from used furniture store at the movie studio. Just as she feels everything is
going wrong and she has been unlucky then things start to look up when she
starts whining to her sofa about her life.
The story is written in the voice of Libby.
'I mean , I may just have been
chatting to my new sofa, but I ‘m not 100 per cent crackers, not yet. Obviously
there’s no way this is the real, bona-fide, sadly long-dead Hollywood legend
Audrey.
She’s got the voice down absolutely pat, I have to say. The
elongated vowels, the crisp, elocution- perfect consonants, all adding up to
that mysterious not quite-English –not quite –European accent. Exactly the way
Audrey Hepburn sounds when you hear her in the movies. ‘
Libby has
issues with her estranged dad and she needs to work them out of her system. Audrey
encourages her to re-connect with her dad. So Libby listens to her alter ego and responds to her dad’s
tweet and agrees to meet up.
‘ Once again, I remind myself to give Audrey a piece of my
mind when I get back to my flat tonight. Because this is going even worse than
I thought. I’d forgotten, somehow, just how flat and unenthusiastic my dad can
be. How it’s not just the way he smiles at me that makes me feel like that tiresome
neighbour: it’s the way he talks to me as well. The way he’s always talked to
me, in fact.’
When she is with her dad, she
wonders if ‘Dad happens to recall – as I ‘m doing, right now – the occasion we
watched Charade, together, when I was nine or ten. It was at a time , a rare
and brief time, if only I’d realized it back then, when he was making
sufficiently good progress with the book to mean that he wasn’t canceling our
one weekend a month at the last minute , and that he was in a relaxed mood when
I went to stay with him.’
We have to accept that nobody is perfect not even our parents. We should not forget the good part
and accept that not everyone thinks alike and we have to work out what
works for us.
A night in with Audrey Hepburn is definitely a girly
escape as the protagonist has a hot and popular actor falling for her, a wonderful girl pal whose brother
constantly looks out for her and he is sweet, caring and reliable. Life is definitely looking better for Libby whose story is continued in Lucy Holliday's next novel A night in with Marilyn Monroe.
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