Anything Can Happen, Anything Happens All The Time.

I spill cranberry juice on the white bed covers.

This is why I'm not allowed to have nice things.

I run in to the laundry room and look frantically through the cupboards. Thank Fuck! There's a bottle of Shout. There's actually three bottles lined up which is I suppose the secret of people with entirely white houses. As I bend down to grab one I hear my only remaining pair of jeans rip somewhere near the groin. Of course. This is what happens when people like me are let in to Hollywood. And why oh why have I got a massive suitcase full of clothes I never wear and only one pair of jeans? I run back to the room and start spraying at the stain. I grab a white fluffy towel and use that to rub at the mess. It's actually working. I then lift the cover to find the stain has seeped through to the white blanket beneath. And the sheets beneath that. Ten minutes of swearing and scrubbing later I have a white, if soaking wet, bed and one destroyed towel which I hide in a cupboard.

'Lips! I'm just popping out to the shops.'

'Okay honey,' he calls from his office.

I need to find some relatively inexpensive jeans and some champagne because I have no clue what else to buy for people who have everything.

I finally find a huge shop called American Rag. It boasts a “World Famous Jeans Bar”. I enter tentatively and am confronted by an achingly cool hipster with a moustache and a tiny retro tank top.

'Hey there, can I help you?' He stares down at me repressively.

I feel like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman when she tries to go clothes shopping on Rodeo Drive. Except fat. And not a hooker. Yet.

'No no,' I mutter. 'Just having a gander.' I have never used the word “gander” in my life.

He glides away but somehow his eyes never leave me. I walk the eight miles to the 'Jeans Bar' and feel like weeping. This one section is the size of Asda and there are at least 300 different brands of jeans neatly arranged in piles. I touch one pair tentatively and turn to find the hipster two inches away.

'Jesus!' I shout.

He smiles from the teeth out.

'What size are you looking for?'

This is the one question a fat woman shopping does not want to be asked by a skinny condescending boy with a moustache.

'Belgium,' I reply.

'I'm sorry?'

'Don't be. It's not your fault.' I try to shuffle away.

'Are you from london?'

Close enough.

'Yup.'

He points to a Canadian brand called “Naked and Wild” or something very similar.

'These are really popular. Got some stretch in them.'

Uhuh. I thank him and look at the price. As I'm not really in the market for a pair of five hundred quid jeans I retch slightly and spend the next ten minutes trying to find the exit.

I walk over to Ralph's and buy a sewing kit and a family size pack of Pringles.

Lips and Stephen drive me out to Santa Monica, the scenic route. We drive through Bel Air and they point out some insanely large houses.

'How much would a place around here cost?'

'Anything from ten million upwards.'

There's one place that looks like a hotel.

'That's a private residence??'

'Yep. Crazy money. Can't buy taste though.'

We arrive at the beach and have brunch at Shutters, a very classy hotel. I go to the toilet and return to find a Mimosa has been ordered for me. I take one sip and Lips orders another round. We eat and Stephen points out a very handsome man in his fifties who's serving behind the bar.

'He was huge in daytime soaps for years. I mean literally YEARS. I think he did Days Of Our Lives too. Real famous. (Stephen has a delicious southern drawl) He works here now and quite a lot of people come here to see him and get served.'

'What happened to his career?'

'Who knows. It goes that way for people here sometimes.'

'He must have a very resilient ego.'

'I know right. I think sometimes it must be worse to have had it and lost it than never to have had it at all.'

I watch him. He seems happy. I wonder if he has someone who loves him and that maybe actually he's happier now.

We take a walk along Venice Beach. People are doing activities on the sand. There's a new craze called (I think) Slack Roping. It's like high wire walking but the rope is slightly wider like a belt and it's, yes, slightly slack. And there's people swinging from metal hoops and being suspended by other people's feet. There's yoga and even pole dancing. On the beach.

A friend of Stephen's called Christine is a bartender out here and she's in a competition this afternoon called 'Speed Rack'. It's for charity and is being held at The Roosevelt Hotel where the first ever Oscar Ceremony took place. We go along to find Christine has already been knocked out and is wandering around swigging bitterly from a bottle of Sherry. She's hilariously drunk and we spend the next few hours being handed cocktails at every turn. I get liquored up quick and good.
Lips and I pop out briefly so he can show me the walk of fame and Marilyn's handprints outside the chinese theatre. I decide I NEED some Elvis shades and we try several tacky tourist shops with no success. Though I do get some great pictures of Lips accepting an Oscar.
'I guess you have to go to Vegas to get Elvis shades,' I say.

'We can do that,' Lips says.

I turn laughing to find him deadly serious.

'What?'

'Sure, it's only an hour by plane. Let's check the schedule. Let's go to Vegas and get you some shades.'

'Right. Okay.'

We say our goodbyes and head home to get ready for dinner with James 'Downton Abbey' Faulkner. Lips wants to get there a bit early because the barman makes a renowned Gimlet.

We sit at the bar and James arrives in a cloud of smoke. He's a proper british luvvie all clipped tones, outrage and anecdote with a wolfish smile.

I'm going to order the fish but he dissuades me.

'It will have been frozen darling. Have the chicken, it'll go really well with this wine.'

He talks about work and another actor who is always up for the same parts as him:

'He has two characters; Loud and Even Louder.'

His wife is a cook.

'Why do you suppose it is that men are chefs and women are cooks?' I ask.

'That's a good question,' James says and we discuss it whilst we eat.

He uses the word 'Pulchritudinous-ness' when talking about an actress.

'Good word,' I say. 'I've always liked it.'

'Well it's a word that could easily be used to describe you,' he says.

I feel a glow of pleasure. After the jeans debacle I have been feeling less than great and the compliment bolsters me.

We head back to Lips's place and James joins us for a drink.

'Just a cup of builders for me, darling.'

Lips looks blank.

'Builders?'

'Tea,' I say. 'He wants cheap tea.'

'I have some PG Tips....'

'That's the one.

We sit in the garden and James regales us with anecdotes whilst chain smoking. It's so nice to have someone to smoke with.

He makes a joke and I start laughing and find myself unable to stop.

Stephen, usually fairly reserved, cracks up.

'This girl is killing me.'

James kisses us extravagantly and leaves and I crawl to bed.

I wake in the morning to find the place empty. I head downstairs to confront the coffee spaceship and find a note on the side:

Hi Thea!
Acting lesson – Thursday 10.30 am
Singing Lesson with Calvin - Monday 14.00 pm.
Please prepare the attached scene.
See you later, Stephen.

I pick up the script in slow motion.
“Jennie has a perfect french accent.”

How has this happened?