Hadley Freeman and Caitlin Moran at Book Slam | Instadiary

My copies of the books arrive by post: #excited!!!!

You can diatribe all day long about how young women today want more than what Glamour et al have to offer; better yet to actually go and see it in full swing. Last night, my friend Jen took me to  Book Slam at the Grand in Clapham. Covering everything from menstrual accidents to your parents fighting about the washing machine, Caitlin Moran, Hadley Freeman, Sarah Pascoe, Salena Godden and SOAK made for an epic evening of entertainment and enlightenment.

Compare Salena Godden kept the energy charged from start to finish. She opened with a hilarious anecdote about offering to draw a moustache on Patti Smith in Paris. Turns out Patti already reckoned she had one; cue awks recognition of that fact on a drunken Godden's part... Super funny and a great entertainer for the night, she delivered some rhythmic verse on lust and life. Her style is to layer meaning through repetition and to really perform the poetry.

Star of The Thick of It, stand up Sarah Pascoe did her brilliant rendition of why being a drunk woman with a mic is a far better way to go than any other. The pinot grigio fuelled audience were quick to show their approval with lols. She also ripped it out of the beauty industry for some ridiculous campaigns involving giving your younger self a hi five for applying wrinkle cream. Bleugh! Also on the bill, the very sweet SOAK, fresh singer from Derry. She is such a beautiful voice for a girl who just turned 17.

Hadley works the crowd

I was really excited to see the writers, especially because they work at where I'd love to one day and all that. The Guardian's Hadley Freeman opened the readings with an exerpt from her new book,  Be Awesome: Modern Life For Modern Ladies. She started with a Daily Mail headline guide to her day - "is that belly a pregnancy bump?"; "Hadley Freeman leaves the house wearing the same blue pair of shoes for the third day in a row". It's sardonic, self-conscious writing only the highest minds achieve.

Later, she divulged her reasons why everything being wrong with your body (see: what the beauty industry want you to believe on cellulite, baby weight and cankles) is pretty much proof that there is nothing wrong with your body, simply that you are, in fact, a human being. Her slamming of Christian Louboutin was amazing (appazza he told her in interview he can tell what type of shoe every woman is, prompting her naturally to enquire her own imagined model. His response? A Dr Marten's boot. Feminist or no, miaow) For her famous anniversary reincarnations, Louboutin slimmed Barbie's ankles down, not because they were fat, but because they "could be thinner". Ah, what....

Stylist and Times columnist Caitlin Moran's approach was different - she told wicked journalistic jaunts on how she accidentally tried to break into Kate Moss's house while on her way to have Sunday lunch with Bennedict Cumberbatch, on whose couch, by the way, she spilt period blood. Oh, and she also menstruated all over the bathroom and living room floor of Richard Curtis, writer of Four Weddings and a Funeral. Apparently her first ever period lasted for three months! Never mind that, she was super late interviewing Gordon Brown, but it didn't matter because he was 20 minutes late anyway. One gets the impression life as Caitlin Moran is hella fun but WILD. 

After, I got an autograph from Caitlin in my copy of How to be a Woman and her advice to a budding writer? Write every day, and read. If you see a flurry of activity on the blogosphere, you know why. Hadley had disappeared. I rather tipsily tweeted her on my way home... and this morning she replied! What a truly awesome lady.