LIZ JONES'S DIARY: In which I wonder: was my ex right?

I wasn’t planning to expand on what happened on my birthday.

I alluded to it in my Moans last Sunday: I was stood up when I had booked lunch under a pergola and a tour of the walled kitchen garden. (I didn’t even get a gift or card from David 1.0. I bet you thought it was him!)

This week I was going to tell you all about the new Chanel exhibition at the V&A. 

I have reviewed every major fashion retrospective there for 20 years (Dior, McQueen, The Eighties, Ballgowns, Bowie, Sportswear), gave each one a rave review in a national newspaper, but they emailed to say I couldn’t attend the red-carpet gala as ‘the guest list is full, I’m afraid’. 

Full of who? Cast members from Towie? I had started begging back in February.

I sat at my table with Mini Puppy, scanning the menu, staring at my phone for an explanatory text. Nothing. ‘No, sorry I can’t make it.’ 

I’m sure, as in a previous year, other diners were whispering, ‘Isn’t that Liz Jones, and Mini Puppy? Why is she on her own? And isn’t it her birthday??!!!’

I’d been on tenterhooks since Sunday, when my column about my friend’s demands for a mini break were published here. 

No motorways. No central England therefore no stay at Thyme. No eating indoors. No sharing of the driving. No trains. 

I moaned about being stood up by my friend. She gave me her Mercedes 

I’d gone to such lengths to find the perfect apartment, paying over £1,500 as her birthday gift, plus an Aesop candle, and it still wasn’t good enough. (I hadn’t even written about her choice of the ‘hotel of death’ in the Lake District two years ago – food inedible, carpet stained – when she erected a wall of chairs on our balcony to protect her labrador from my collies.)

Unfortunately, the day before the column came out, the friend said, having possibly remembered I gave her all my top-of-the-range appliances when I was made homeless, and paid £10,000 to save some dairy cows she’d become involved with, £1,750 to rescue some spent battery hens, that I could have her spare Mercedes. 

She’d had it valeted, and filled to the brim with fuel. I offered to pay the going rate, but she wouldn’t accept a penny.

I can imagine her anger when the column about the mini-break disaster was published. I’d been hoping she was too busy to read it but I expect that some nosy parker told her about it: people do love to spread bad news.

But it was like that moment in And Just Like That…, when Miranda storms out of the stand-up show performed by her ex, Che. 

Miranda is furious: ‘What kind of a person stands on stage and makes jokes like that about what happened between us..?’

Che: ‘A stand-up. That kind of person. Why are you surprised? I’m so f***ing tired of having to explain myself.’

Or when Carrie is summoned by Aidan’s ex-wife: ‘I realise you mine your personal life in your work. But I hope you understand when I ask you not to write about my boys. Even if you think it’s funny or flattering, even if you use a pseudonym.’

Carrie’s face is priceless, wondering how on earth she could afford a bigger apartment to accommodate her imminent stepchildren were it not for her work.

But I start to wonder. Was my ex-husband right when he spat, when we met up for our ‘reunion’: ‘Everyone hates you – your family, your friends. Me.’ Well, was he?

Anyway, I sent her a light and friendly text a few days later because, well, it wasn’t my 12th birthday. 

‘Hey, sorry you missed my special birthday lunch outside and the tour of a walled kitchen garden. They wouldn’t let me in anyway, as they said no dogs are allowed as they are all about their “estate-to-plate ethos”. I did point out Monty Don has three dogs in his kitchen garden, Marcus Wareing has Esme, the spaniel, and Adam Frost has a cat. They refused to refund my money. I did point out, too, that it was my Special Day.’

I got this. ‘Will be in touch.’

Oh god. I hate my life! I’m going to have to return the Mercedes!