Sarah Savitt, deputy head of feminist publisher Virago and former publishing director at Headline, one of the most successful commercial imprints in the UK,  said my blog was “definitely enjoyable to read” as it was “funny, fast paced and interesting.” She recommended making changes to the blog, which I’ve now turned into a memoir, so that is has greater “focus” and “structure.” She gave me three pages of feedback on the memoir and recommended I read nine successful recent memoirs and analyse them technically to see how they tell their story.

I am now doing this starting with best sellers “Mad Girl”by Bryony Gordon which also talks about OCD, bulimia, cocaine addiction and journalism and “Reasons to Stay Alive” by Matt Haig which deals with depression and anxiety. She said there were “many themes” in my memoir “from class and privilege and race (people constantly asking where you’re from) to mental health to your mother’s abuse to drugs and sex.” She said I need to “choose one or two things to focus on and weight the book towards those themes.” She said that it is difficult for people who are not famous to get memoirs published but that those that are published and “break out” and become successful have this particular focus.  After I’ve read the 9 memoirs I am going to start a re-write of mine.

I’m also starting a freelance journalism course in October to try to resurrect my freelance journalism career and raise the profile of my writing. I may do a course on memoir as well. The agent didn’t work out but given that the publisher said the blog needed a major rewrite to make it commercially viable this may be why.

The search for Mr Right continues of course unsuccessfully. I’ve been on a few dates but haven’t fancied them. I’ve signed up to various Conservative party events (I grew scales and a tail before the last General Election and was, alarmingly, diagnosed as a Tory) to try to network and meet an ethnic Tory Mr Right. I did go to an event on Wednesday and met an attractive ethnic Tory but he was only 21.

The big change on the home front is that as I am now almost completely recovered from the OCD and broken my ban on having anyone to stay in my house over the summer I am going to get a lodger. This will bring in useful extra income as well as give me someone to discuss world current affairs with. Of course due to my bisexual tendencies the search for a lodger has been fraught with problems. I was worried about fancying the prospective male lodgers who came along but it was actually a gorgeous Iranian woman with arresting green eyes who made me swoon. Obviously I couldn’t say “you’re too sexy to move in” so I just told her an elephant was moving in instead.

I now have the assistant to a Member of Parliament moving in who is very bright and interested in politics and crucially, given my previous campaigning for Britain Stronger in Europe, pro-European. All the lodgers were quizzed on their Brexit views and any prospective pro-Brexit people were executed.

In preparation for the lodger I am de-cluttering my house going through every cupboard and throwing out junk and the fifty tonnes of paperwork I’ve accumulated since I started writing my first novel.  Before the viewings by the lodgers every inch of floor space was covered in reams of paper from various re-writes of the novel and the blog and a rhino that I’d brought back from Sudan was watching my telly. I’ve now thrown out a hundred bags of rubbish which are sitting in my front garden rather optimistically waiting for the bin men to take them away. I’ve got so much excess paper I could actually start a re-cycling plant in my home.  The rhino is claiming asylum due to the civil war in Sudan so is now living on my roof terrace.

As part of my new political activities I went to the Conservative Women’s Organisation summer party on Thursday. I was worried that everyone might be white but in fact half of them were ethnic minorities showing that I am not the only ethnic minority in London who votes Conservative. Though curiously when I see black supporters of Donald Trump paraded in front of the cameras at his speeches I think “you are a traitor to your race.”  I can see that some black people in dying former industrial towns in the United States may warm to the Trump message. But in the UK it is aspirational ethnic minorities who vote Conservative. Now I look Jamaican with my natural hair obviously everyone thinks I’m a Labour party supporter.

After coming out on Facebook as a Tory earlier this year I will be revealing myself on the national media by attending the Conservative Party Conference in October. This is not just an attempt to network and further my political career but also crucially to find a husband. But my chat up lines will not be the bog standard “do you come here often” but the rather more focused “what do you think about Brexit?”

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Next blog post – Finding a husband at the Conservative Party Conference (or should I be looking for a career?)