WWJSP do?

This is something I find myself asking more and more.  Mostly at work.  Occasionally about fashion.  What to cook for dinner.

Yes, I am currently slightly obsessed with Janet Street Porter.  I think she is magnificent.  Her hair!  Her voice!  Most of all, her attitude.

I have recently read her two volumes of memoir and I am honestly inspired.

‘Baggage: My Childhood’ chronicles the life and family of a girl called Janet Bull, up until the time she (spoiler alert, kind of) told her mum to fuck off and ran off with a photographer/hipster called Tim Street Porter.

I found this particularly interesting because JSP (as I like to call her) went to the same school as my mother.  Although my mum was there some years later, Janet was still legendary among the girls of Lady Margaret’s in Parsons Green.  Of course she was!

Its follow-up ‘Fall Out’ has the very intriguing subtitle ‘a memoir of friends made and friends unmade’.  As she explains in the preface, she is in the habit of culling her friends and falling out with people.  I can relate.  However, I have improved on this in recent years – I don’t lose friends or feel the need to cut them off nearly as often as I used to.  Maybe it’s just because I’m pickier these days.

Anyway, this memoir only covers the period until the early 70s – JSP’s first marriage, the start of her career, John and Yoko turning up at her first wedding (really).  So, I hope she loses friends less often these days as well.  And that she writes another volume of memoir soon.