Jeni Barnett

THE FORGEWOOD BARN is a new eatery hidden in Eridge.
I went back home to the cottage early this morning and got caught in Crystal Palace bumpers.
By the time I arrived the snow drops had flowered.
Opened up three weeks worth of mail – mostly junk – and tickled the cat.
Posted letters and set off to James Bibby my man. He’s built like a brick merdemaison. What he can’t do with his cranial osteopathic hands you could write on a grain of rice.
Took the back roads to home and there, on the side of the road, was a sign to a new cafe and bar.

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My lovely Shakeel came round this evening to talk about a new outfit for Radlett. He’s got until the 21st to stitch me together. And there I was looking at myself when I whispered to Shakeel, I asked him whether I had put weight on and he said yes. I crumbled.
It’s mad.
But we decided that whilst I looked like a pregnant puffin we would wait to create a new dress.
Then I put on a purple dress and went off to The St. George’s Hotel in Langham Place. Took the lift to the fifteenth floor to the bar, looked at the view and hugged lots of old telly friends. They all thought I looked great…
Now it’s not that Shakeel was wrong it’s just that he’s worked with a better canvas. My old telly posse knew me when I was the size of Totnes Town hall.
So it’s all evened out in the end. I’m eating cucumber as a penance and wondering what it would be like to work in Argentina. Can you imagine, sun, sand, sea and a couple of tangoes a night. And I don’t mean the orange stuff….

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HOWARD GOODALL, the composer, talked to me from a school in Kennington. He has got 30,000 schools on board to become musical establishments. Today is ‘National Sing Up day’. Teachers joining in and children standing proud as they open their throats and let it rip. HOWARD had two, kids with him, they sung to me down the phone. I cried. As Howard himself said it was moving, really moving.
Then it was celebrity city.LEEE JOHN, JAMES EARL JONES, POLLY RAE and WILLIAM BAKER. Hows that for a days work.
I often wonder whether I’m name dropping but its my job to interview people and today happened to be chock-a-block with celebrity.
Mr. James Earl Jones, he of the voice of DARTH VADER, is playing BIG DADDY in ‘CAT ON HOT TIN ROOF’. He came into LBC Towers with his son, who took notes. He belched in the middle of the interview, thats the father not the boy, we laughed James said he belched and farted like everybody else, I told the producer to keep it in. I don’t know whether she will. We sat in a tiny recording studio and talked about his life, his parents, Prof. Crouch the teacher that stopped his stuttering by making James read out a poem he had written in front of the whole class. James Earl Jones went ‘mute’ as he calls it, for eight years, after moving away from Mississippi. He was fun and measured and a big, big man. The interview is going out on Friday.

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The ‘oosbind of thirty odd years left for Warwickshire this morning.
He took a bag of clothes, a basket of wine bottles and his lap top. He left at 9.30 and gave me a perfunctory scratch with his Royale. Thats the little tiny rock ‘n’ roll beard that aging rock ‘n’ rollers have. A kind of simplistic vanity for old gits. The facial furniture adopted by so many men reflects there relationship to their manhood, like the trident missile it’s a perfect deterrent, never used and almost certainly obsolete. In my husbands case his Royale is perfectly pruned and tended and gets ever longer by the day thus becoming a ‘Chin Shrub’.
To beard or not to beard that is the perennial question.
My ligament is still hurting in my left ankle, all walking is out of the question until after Wednesday.
So it was the bus and tube again.
I miss my ramble through the park and over the bridges.
I went to see THE CARETAKER last night. By golly but Johnathan Price is sensational. If you sat next to me you will have noticed my head snap back and forwards. I was snoozing, not out of boredom, but because I had driven up from Sussex at 6.33a.m.

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I’ve just come in from ‘The Wolseley’, the posh restaurant next to the Ritz.
I was treated to liver and bacon courtesy of a wonderful man I have known for years. He works for a publishing house and represents Jackie Collins and Adriana Trigiani. He and his partner go to Florida every year to drink Vodka Martinis and hang out with the retired, we talked about life and the art of publishing.
‘The Wolseley’ is noisy and starry and perfect for an evening of indulgence. We shared cheesecake and gossip, then he went off to Sarf London whilst I walked down to Hyde Park Corner and grabbed a taxi to get me back to the flat.
Two nights in a row I’ve had cabbies that told me about the five bridges that are closed in London. The hold ups, the water works and the Blackwall Tunnel closures. Getting around London is proving to be a nightmare. Please can I blame Boris Johnson?
Thank you I will.
‘Boris pull your finger out’.

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