Is the gold medallist not as good? I know nothing at all about slope style and I only saw the British blokes so I don't know what happened with the actual medallists.

I love that she was going to retire… but then did this.

And her girl-in-the-red-coat performance just now… BLIMEY. What a talent. She's spectacular.

JENNY JONES! JENNY JONES! JENNY JONES! JENNY JONES! That was me in my living room this morning. She's bloody brilliant. Very happy. And the commentators screaming and crying just made it even better.

Yes. I went back and started again because I thought I'd missed it. You can't just suddenly have a character appear in a story with no introduction and expect the reader not to be confused.

She was AMAZING.

My mother actually texted me to see if I'd watched it. Quite a speech.

…I know.

Presumably they just didn't show the pre-show? The BBC didn't, either, as far as

Yeah, poor Maxime! The whole time I was thinking that I wanted either all three of them to get medals or just one (or none), just because it would be so rubbish to be the one who didn't get a medal when both your sisters did.

They're just so you can get used to having your photographer shoot you. That's often really helpful and can make a big difference. (If you want to bombard your friends with them afterwards to the point that they start to hate you, that's another issue entirely.)

Fascinating. I hadn't heard of her before, so Google's great for this.

I lived that programme. As an English girl in LA, it all seemed very familiar.

Oh Lord, dating! I didn't enjoy it that much, although perhaps it would've been the same — it's so fraught, everywhere! I did eventually love it there and now miss it very much — I was there from 21 to 30, so it's really my grown-up home, and when I came back to England I felt foreign. I go back twice a year or so; I…

Absolutely. I eventually built up a great life in LA (I was there for my whole 20s and plan to move back within the decade—I married an Angeleno) but it was slow-going.

Hahaha! I make the exception for the ones who actually did end up being my friends for the past decade or so… they genuinely were being friendly, but I just couldn't tell the difference at first!

The flakiness drives me bananas. It's so accepted and I can't stand it. There are Californians I absolutely love but have to really limit my exposure to because they're so unreliable. (And I'm saying that as someone who spent almost her entire adult life in LA and will move back there in the next five years or so!)

True on all counts — the key is finding actual friends instead of just people being friendly, and that does tend to take loads of time. When I first got there I just had to do everything alone, but after two years I had a great social life — I didn't really change anything in between, but I just accidentally met…

Right; I was hugely suspicious of the Californians I met at first, because as you said so many people just seemed really pushy in a "friendly" way and that was absolutely not what I was used to. And then I convinced myself to accept that people are just being friendly and it's not a bad thing… at which point I found…

That's exactly what I'm saying — people were acting like they really liked me but it meant nothing.