When I read what Archie wrote in reply to the journalist Vicky Wilson, I was quite overwhelmed. We all stumble along trying out best and often failing at this difficult parenting business. I frequently feel crushed by the responsibility of growing people from seed. The rewards are enormous, and being a mother was my main goal in life. Lovely things children. Anyway, this is the original - a cut version is published in the March issue of Psychologies, along with a nice portrait of him anyway.

How did I get published? Well, it started a long time ago with an obsession with fairies. I was a tomboyish child, so the gossamer ones did not sit well with my desire to climb trees. But I was convinced that when I was ninety-nine, those bony wings on my back would sprout (being a child of the skinny Sixties they were not immersed in fat) and transport me somewhere or other. So I wrote extensively on the subject; before I could read, in fact.

At prep school, the games mistress also taught English. She hated me so much on the pitch that she once threw a rounders ball at me which hit me smack in the eye as I dreamed at fourth post: but in the classroom she loved me as I wrote delicate haikus about the moon, and drew pictures of Gollum. Poor Miss Williamson, I must have driven her mad.

At Cambridge I wrote very poor imitations of Roald Dahl short stories, published by my friend Roger in his amusing magazine. Later, I applied my fictional gift to preventing myself from dying of boredom while writing about conservatories for a magazine:'Emerald swept into the double-glazed Amdiga conservatory, her satin dancing slippers making little noise on the Fired Earth terracotta tiles.'

Later still, I went on an Arvon course because although I had been suppressing and sublimating my passion it still had to find an outlet and there, on a windswept moor in Devon, it did. The midwife was Beryl Bainbridge, the doctor Nicholas Shakespeare (who accused me of verbal diarrhoea — Beryl said he was jealous of my typing speed).

She told me I should write a novel, while stirring powdered gelatine into her tea to strengthen her nails. So I did, in the five weeks between two magazine contracts (Slimming, and Pregnancy — one leading inexorably to the other). So excited was I with my 100,000 words that when I bumped into a rather grand publisher who was now doing a little light agenting, and he offered to read it, I was overwhelmed. Particularly when he rang two weeks later and told me he loved it. I thought all that writing about hitherto very fat ladies standing in one leg of their trousers was over at last. That was in the mid-1990s. I have a few dry and withered rejection letters, but nothing else to show from that episode.

In 2006 I was writing a piece about self-publishing, vanity publishing and publishing for a magazine. I contacted self-publishers AuthorHouse, who had just landed in Milton Keynes from the US and they asked me if I wanted to give it a whirl for my piece. They said I could try their package that put copies of the self published book into chain bookshop in Oxford Street, and offered to do this at a special rate as I was a journalist. Thinking I had nothing to lose, I decided to try and find my one finished manuscript. I didn't even think it was in an electronic form any more, but managed to find an old floppy get it converted to disc and sent it off. When the galleys came back, I could see all kinds of wince-making glitches and set to work with a will on a couple of new drafts — again between editorial contracts.

Then I forgot all about it again. It sat on the AuthorHouse website, unpublished as I learned more about self-publishing and its appalling image in the eyes of the convential publishing world. I designed a cover (heavily influenced by 1980s Virago), and mucked about with editing, putting quotations at the top of chapters, typefaces and all, but I did not publish.

The next thing that happened was, that while Acting Features Editor at Tatler I was approached by Lorne Forsyth, who had just taken over publishers Elliott & Thompson. He wanted to grill me about internet matters, as that is the other thing I do (CondeNet, ivillage.co.uk, AOL UK etc) and I just wanted a nice lunch. Ever a girl to sing happily for Zafferano, off I went.

While I confidently expounded on SEO, blogging, social networking, interactivity and all that stuff to this highly competent and intelligent person, he gently probed me on the subject of my own writing. Instantly I shrank back like a snail. Detecting this, he pointed out that he was always astonished by how sensitive people were when it came to their own creativity. Could he see something I had written? I shyly handed over the password to the Authorhouse PFD.

That was in 2008. In 2009 he relaunched Elliott & Thompson as E&T Books and requested One Apple Tasted for the launch list. To begin with I was quite stunned. In January of last year we had our first proper meeting and there was One Apple Tasted all nicely marked up by editor and publisher with comments. All I had to do was take it home and 'run it through the typewriter'. Then we were off. I suggested Lawrence Mynott, a brilliant illustrator and book designer, as well as an old mucker of mine from that glorious decade, the 1980s. And there it was — the pink, black and white cuboid of my dreams.

E&T gave a party at my mother-in-law's house — where Peter Pan was written — on a lovely July evening. And people started buying it, and reading it, and saying things on Amazon and elsewhere that made me hide my blushes behind my fan. I compounded the problem by writing a piece about sex for the Telegraph, which caused a flurry. I had to explain that I could not write as I wanted to until after my beloved mother died — but then when my father died as well, I found caches of letters dating from WWII which indicated a very different emotional landscape. I am really sorry they are not here to share the fun.

Now Sail Upon the Land, the next one, is bubbling around in my head night and day, and flying out of my fingers when moving house, childcare, building websites and writing for some reason many brochures about chalets, will let me.

I have had my nose to the grindstone these past weeks working with Standpoint magazine to relaunch their fantastically erudite and interesting website.

Standpoint is a new monthly magazine - just over a year old - edited by Daniel Johnson, late of the Telegraph. I loved going into the calm, civilised offices in Manchester Square and sitting with the web editor while we corrected and re-corrected until he was relatively happy. For a chap in his early twenties, he has an estimable eye for detail that I respect.

I have never worked with such intellectually challenging content before - Vogue.com, AOL UK and ivillage.co.uk don't really have the same buzz. My attention wandered disgracefully from where it should have been immersed in social bookmarking icons and usability, Captchas and tag clouds, to an essay on the problems of adoption in the UK, a report from Mumbai shortly after the terrorist attacks and the truth about the historical Jesus. In fact weeks of readable, revelatory journalism, by prominent writers from Nick Cohen to Susan Hill, that you don't really find elsewhere in the UK all in one place.

It was like when you start packing china, and find yourself reading the newspapers from two years ago with intense interest as the sun sinks behind the horizon.

As internet content consultant, my challenge was to wrestle the vast and diverse array of what was strictly magazine content into a sensible categorisation which would work for the user. With a year of published magazine articles, cartoons, columns and images to deal with, sometimes I felt I was trying to stuff a leviathan into a seaside bucket (cheerful red and white, with blue accents).

The original website was stuffed with good content, but the new one is clean, modern and very hotlinked and 'daisy-chained' - my expression for leading the user from one interesting topic to another. Enslaving them to the content in fact and encouraging them to share their interesting finds with their online communities via Diggit, Reddit, Facebook and the rest - from icons scattered like confetti all over the site. Of course, no amount of good navigation in the world is going to do this unless the content is genuinely original and compelling - which it is.

So it is out there now in BETA, which means more tweaks will be needed until everything flows like the upper Thames in June. So do go and visit the site, have a click around, and let us know what you think. www.standpointmag.co.uk

I am sure a lot of people do this, but I find that my reading habits are very much dictated by my mood and what is going on in my life, and I don't despise anything. From the instructions on a shampoo bottle to the world's greatest literature, and everything in between.

Because my first novel One Apple Tasted (7 Aug 2009)  turned out to be a love story - this was not a deliberate attempt at a genre, but just flowed out of me - I have been reading a lot of what you might called women's fiction to see how I compare. I have looked at everything from covers to how they are written. How much or how little they say about the state of womanhood today, to whether the fashion details are accurate. You see, I am both high and low brow - and my brows also beetle about all over the middle ground as well.

Some of it, particularly Georgette Heyer (printed Valium in my opinion) I have always relished. I also have a taste for early Barbara Cartland - before she became formulaic and started pumping them out hourly. One hilarious example is Again This Rapture (great title) - all about a masterful man and the girl he had to tame. Very 1950s. Cartland herself was independent and feisty - not an object of fun but a powerful feminist force field, always looking after everyone around her. She longed to be loved by a forceful man - but discovered, as so many of us do, that they are rare as rocking horse poo.

Other more modern examples are simply too much for me, too icky and unrealistic, with perfectly rippling males endowed with huge bank accounts and every other firm attribute. My own 'hero' is deeply flawed and needs a modern independent woman to help him be the best person he can be. But some modern writers are still harking back to old patterns of relationships where the ideal was that the man rescued the woman - even if the heroines are decorated with token independence (they have a 'job' or a 'talent').

Anyway, the research is fun and my room is strewn with books as I keep one in all the places where I alight to read - from downstairs loo to bedroom. Shire Hell, by Rachel Johnson, sister of our gorgeous blond Mayor of London, is amusing me with lots of recognisable English behaviour; The Seven Year Itch, by Kate Morris, is full of the guilt we feel about doing something for ourselves not our children; there are several Katie Ffords strewn around - I enjoyed The Rose Revived for its interesting gardening details. I will have to go and read an Anthony Trollope before long, to inject a bit of ancient testosterone into my mind.

Wayland Kennet died after a very brief illness last Thursday, early in the morning at that quiet, still time when more people seem to die than any other. I have known him for half my life and I was very lucky to have such a man as my father-in-law. To say he was a free thinker is an understatement - he never saw any need whatsoever to take the party line on anything. 

The obituaries this week have been fascinating. Of course I was aware what a public man he was, what good he did, what brilliant innovative ideas he had. But it is enormously comforting to read about him in the different styles of the major papers, as a man of worth and substance whose actions improved things, and who was led by principle rather than politics.

At the same time, he had his own party lines and disagreeing with him always produced a lively argument. He did listen though, never ever just dismissed what must have been very immature opinions at least to begin with. 

He knew a lot about lots of different things, including sailing (see him with my husband Thoby below on a cousin's boat in the Solent in the 1980s). His brother Peter Scott - an Olympic sailor among so many other things - had slung him, as a very little boy, over the side of their boat to win a race - possibly the world's first rudimentary trapeze. He spoke masses of languages. He would sit down and play the piano. He told jokes. One favourite was the French expression for rabbit breeding: 'cuniculture' always made him laugh. He was immensely generous.

Last year we organised a diamond wedding anniversary party for the parents, hugely enjoyable and packed with people of every age, all of whom adored them. Latterly, he and Liz, would come and dine with us every week. Sometimes it would be us and the children, sometimes with friends. The last occasion was Sunday lunch on 19 April, when he came to meet my brother Johnnie's fiance and we ate lasagne and my party-trick pudding - instant hot sponge with chocolate sauce (from the microwave) which he loved.

His father Edward Hilton Young and Liz's father Brian Adams, had both followed my grandfather Roger Keyes, on the Zeebrugge raid on 23 April 1918, a curious family connection that we sometimes discussed. 

He would always hug me in the passage as he left our home, telling me warmly how much he loved coming to our house. This was so kind, as often the house would be chaotic with noisy teenagers, smaller children cross at going to bed, me having to rush in and out, doing some last work on the computer. 

He just accepted the vagaries of family life, and settled down to eat and talk, to drink a glass of Italian wine, to play the piano with our son Archie, and be his delightful self. I will miss him dreadfully, not just for the fount of wisdom (you could ask him about literally anything from the arts and/or sciences) but for the fact that when you lose someone loved and loving, they are not replaceable - there is a black hole in your personal universe of affection. 

Well it has all been a bit of a whirl since the beginning of the year, when the whole publishing side of things suddenly emerged from theory into practice. There was the final edits, which saw me up til 2.30am correcting timelines and inaccuracies pointed out by the excellent editor and publisher. www.eandtbooks.com

There was the struggle to get the self-published version down off Amazon. Impossible, it is stuck there like a sock in the back of the washing machine.

Then there was the cover design, which involved long and entertaining conversations with Lawrence Mynott, a good friend since the 1980s. We agree it was a wonderful decade, lots of parties and fun, and so creative. Quite by coincidence, the Vivienne Westwood pattern on the shirt in the cover image has recently been revived, and I am trying to beg, steal or borrow a 'piece' to wear at the launch party.

Then more publisher meetings, deciding things like the date of launch, and learning about distribution. The great thing about working with a small, relaunching publisher is that they are wide open to new ideas about online publicity, social networking and all the rest of the 21st century's box of tricks. Friends working with big, established publishers, which have big established marketing budgets and practices of their own, have not had nearly as much fun!

Since I specified my first website in 1995, I have always looked to the US for inspiration, where they are so comfortable online. I looked at some US author websites, and took a little bit from here and a little bit from there, and designed my website which I then had built by Indian developers I work with constantly. I added a sample extract and other information and ideas, and am now working on uploading some pictures from the 1980s, and other fun stuff (as they call it in the US) www.oneappletasted.co.uk.

For you suave and much-published authors out there, skipping in and out of Bloomsbury, the traditional book publishing area of London, to discuss cover design, launch parties, copy editing and more, is a matter of dull, everyday drudgery. For me, it is a lovely treat. And I had my treat again this morning. Just one hour with the ultra-efficient Mark Searle of E&T Books is enough to set me up for weeks.

He is a real all-rounder, full of enthusiasm, even if he does have a cold. I must admit I am slightly scared of him as well (in a good way) so I stayed up 'til about 2.30am last night doing some last bits of chronological restoration to the proofs. It got very cold, and I nursed a hot-water-bottle with one hand as I typed with one finger, shivering with tiredness and chill. Husband left me sleeping and dealt with getting the two boys off to school, and I woke to find muesli with yoghurt and a cup of tea beside the bed in acknowledgement of my editorial marathan. Before I could enjoy them, I had to skip downstairs to capture a sentence spinning in my head, and went straight back onto the computer in my pyjamas to have another tweak.

The electronic version of the One Apple Tasted proofs is a haze of red tracked changes. The paper version, dog-eared and covered in orange and green felt pen, messy writing and random blobs (mine), ultra-neat pencil comments (Helen the editor - meticulous and sometimes quite alarming in her perspicacity - I would never dare to sneak some plot elision under her discerning nose), and more pencil from Mark (including a note which delighted my heart - noting his favourite funny line in the book).

Lorne Forsyth, the moving spirit behind the relaunch of E&T Books, came in for the end of the meeting, and the atmosphere became very jolly when we began to discuss having a Cava tasting for the launch. This is how I imagined publishing - very personal, but professional, humming with creative ideas and enthusiasm. I am so delighted to find a little pocket of old-fashioned Bloomsbury life, not just thriving but relaunching, with me on board.

You wouldn't think that simply stepping out of a nice shiny black front door, with a lion's head knob, in Bloomsbury could be so significant, would you? Well, for me it is like the nicest thing I could possibly imagine - it is one of those dreams we use to comfort ourselves when things aren't going well. Like little girls dream of a big white dress and a wedding - with often disastrous results for their future happiness - I was always banging on a door market 'Books'. My life has been a mad scramble to keep a roof over our heads and my children in clean clothes - so going out and working and working for other people. Pouring out my creativity in the service of others for a pay cheque or a day rate - for which, don't worry, I am heartily grateful and there's lots and lots of creativity left over for my own use.

What happened was this. I have always written bits of fiction - short stories published in university magazine (heavily influenced by Raold Dahl's thrillers with a twist (one of which was going to be read on Radio 4 - called Burglar Repellent); or strange meandering love stories - an attempted Mills & Boone (Tuscan Torment by Mavis Flame - rejected on the grounds it didn't reach the high standard expected by their readers!).  In 1993, my mother died - it was devastating. You don't know how you get through it, but you do. In order to make a kind of retreat, I went to the Arvon Foundation for a refreshing, creative break.

The two tutors were Beryl Bainbridge (extremely encouraging) and Nicholas Shakespeare (who told me I had verbal diarrohoea). I wrote and wrote and wrote, and felt so inspired that I wrote a novel in five weeks afterwards (the time determined by the gap between two publishing contracts - I think features writer for Slimming magazine and deputy for the newly launched Pregnancy magazine). I pounded it out on an electronic word processor, chucked it on the floor, rearranged it a bit, then pinned each chapter together with a paper clip.

I had no idea what to do next, but bumped into the step-father of an old friend who offered to read it as he had recently moved from publishing to being an agent. Well, from the timing of this post, you will understand that that was a false dawn. So dispiriting that after a few rejection letters, I just abandoned the whole thing and went back to magazines (Country Living, SHE, Vogue), The Times, and then the internet (ivillage.co.uk, AOL, Conde Net UK).

While at SHE I was editing a rather thin piece about publishing your own novel, and the PR for self-publishing company Authorhouse asked me if I had a manuscript so I could see how the whole thing worked. Luckily, I had not lost the electronic version - on old fashioned floppy discs - so I got this converted to a more modern format and popped it on Authorhouse. As soon as the galleys came back, I realised it needed a rewrite. That was 2005. I did bits here and there when I had time. Did a cover I loved, did blurb etc. Found out a bit about publishing that was hugely interesting but not going anywhere.

Until I met my publisher while doing a stint at Tatler. The result is this morning I spent a couple of hours discussing that novel, and it is all coming true at last, and I am now thinking about that moment when I turned to congratulate the publishers on their new ventures (they are relaunching) and they in turn congratulated me on mine. And I tripped off down the steps in a broad Bloomsbury street - literally my dream come true (forgive the cliche!).

Christmas trees were a shocking price this year. So Husband went and bought a nice shapely one - but of the old-fashioned needle dropping sort, and by New Year, there were green drifts of pine needles in the corner of the sitting room, with horrible bare bony branches adorned with my lovely bobbles.

It was a depressing sight, and I was resolved regretfully  to de-tree early. But, outside a house nearby, propped up on the dustbins, was a shining, expensive, non-drop, dark green tree of great loveliness. I spotted it while walking with No 2 Boy, and went back yesterday to see if it was still there. Quickly popping it into the back of the car, I went home. It seemed like such a mad task to dismantle one tree and put up another on 1 Jan, but having consulted No 2 Boy's preferences (he is only 7) I did.

The old one's last hurrah was to shed everything as I undecorated it, before we successfully bundled it out of the door, and the new one is now gleaming in the corner every long, dark, glossy needle intact. I sat and looked at it last night, and was really glad I did such a mad thing. We are now set to make it to Twelth Night without feeling dismal about a needle-less skeleton haunting the corner of the sitting room.

I haven't been blogging much this year, as I have been so busy creating www.internationallife.tv for the Publishing Society, along with their magazine - the first issue of which came out looking very glossy last month. But the main thing that has happened to me this year is that I have at last landed a publisher for my first novel, One Apple Tasted.


I wrote the first version a while ago, and immediately landed an enthusiastic agent. It didn't 'go' though, and I chucked in the proverbial bottom drawer. Some years later I fished it out again as an experiment in self-publishing, which was great fun - not the same thing as vanity publishing at all, although there are shades of grey. When self-publishing companies offer marketing tools, it is as well to stay well clear.
 

The process taught me several things. One, that my ideas of what a books should look like are a little old-fashioned. 2, that I needed to rewrite it, and 3, that font sizes have got a lot bigger over the last few years (why?). But it also led me into the happy groves I had been longing for, where writers gather.


The properly published version comes out in May, and I will be blogging the process of that here.

You've heard of extreme sports? Well I was subjected to extreme bra fitting yesterday evening, courtesy of Rigby & Peller, who have transformed the experience of encasing and uplifting the breasts into a kind of sporting event. They do not stoop to the humble measure tape, the capable and firm ladies simply ask you to strip to the waist  glance your way briefly and then bustle off. The first time this happened to me, I  was astounded to discover that I had the seeming proportions of a Page 3 girl from Essex - 32E. Having always believed I was a more modest 34C.

Having lost some weight, I went back, and it is even more slick this time - I have shrunk to 32D, and the wonderful fitting lady prodded and poked me into a fine selection of lingerie, uplifting yet beautiful. Lovely Rigby & Peller, I wouldn't have anyone else handle my breasts.... unlike my old friend Alice Hart Davis, who dared very bravely to have this new tit lift by injection, detailed in the Observer. Terrifying. She like me has breastfed three children - although it is really the pregnancy and general wear and tear that causes a once pert embonpoint to descend. Anyway, this injectible has given new lease of life to her front - she looked lovely in the pictures.

As I get older, I seem to catch up more and more on friends' news by opening the papers, as journalism becomes more personal than it ever was before. Of course Alice's piece was of great general interest, but I do sometimes wonder whether my friends' relationships with their teenagers, although fascinating to me, are of equal interest to the general population. With one caveat, some of my friends are paralysingly funny writers - and that means that any subject matter is worth reading when written by them.

I could not resist somewhat uplifting bra and pants in a delicious shade of pink with blue embroidery and some little diamante sparkles. Looked so nice with my pink body, interlaced with blue veins....

My small son (as opposed to my large son - 6ft and growing) was seven on Friday of last week. They are allowed to take a treat into class, so we popped into a shop on the way to school to buy something he calls 'Quietly Street'. This turned out to be Quality Street - for my US readers, a mass market box of wrapped chocolates which used to have a spurious 19th century couple on the front, clad in purple, but seems to have lost them with out me noticing at some stage. Anyway, we bought some of that Quietly Street, and took it into the chilly playground to hand over to Miss Wilson. The children are lined up in the playground these days, no longer are parents allowed to invade the building,  hang things up and generally hang around. This apparently was becoming a problem. I can see that independence is fostered by this approach, which of course I approve. I kiss his pink cheeks in the playground, and go off to the bus.
Managing this small son has been a full on task. He has a complex star chart, which is beginning to look more starry (he gets pink blobs if things go pear shaped, and green blobs for serious transgressions - for some reason you can't buy black blobs these days, and any commercial reward chart has no space or provision for poor behaviour - which explains a great deal about the children of today).
Anyway, the school has a sensible approach and we are devoted to the special needs lady who likes and appreciates  our boy, and when it all get a bit rough, takes him aside to do some sums. Which has a remarkably calming effect. When our Eldest was young, nothing was done for the brighter kids - her primary school was ludicrously bad. None of the other children in her class at this stage could read at all - coincidence? Lots of thick children? No chaos and rotten teaching.
 We had the resources to remove her and make sure she made up for the year she missed. Others didn't. This is probably why white boys from poorer homes are now the least achieving group in society.

Teach children not only to read, but the habit of reading, and they will always have a way of occupying themselves. Deprive them of this, and a huge proportion will end up in prison. Seems to me a simply equation.  So why do children still leave primary school unable to read when there are now proven methods of managing this? Beyond me, Gov. Small son can read well, and wants to. Sees his siblings reading, and wants to be like his big brother. The fact that big brother reads the wrong books under his desk in class is I suppose a side effect we hadn't anticipated....

Half of him is in the washing machine. He tells us from its echoing inside, that he can go to a different country if he wishes (washes?). He is irresistibly amusing.

He is also a monkey. Very fierce and stubborn, far more than I can remember my  big boy being at this age. We have had to institute a system of star charts and regular visits to school  in order to get things under control. He is very energetic  so needs masses of exercise, which we do provide. He is full of ideas and imagination, asks fascinating questions.

He has fair hair, faded to hay colour in the winter - and brightening to straw in the summer. He is face is pink and sweet. But when he is angry, and I remember this with the other children, he seems to grow enormous . And I struggle to remember that he is a passionate small boy, fighting to have an identity of his own in a house full of large people. No 1 Boy is over 6 ft now, and Eldest is 18, has a job and a boyfriend, goes to Art College, and is gorgeous.
And he is still small and needs looking after, how ever much he resists our attempts.
Now I will ask him to go upstairs and wash his face and teeth and put on his pyjamas - he doesn't need a bath as he has been swimming and had a shower - and then I will come and read to him.
I have been reading a childcare book by Dorothy Einen - who says at this age this should be normal. She doesn't however tell you what to do when a child doesn't even seem to hear your request, let alone obey.
So we resort to the threats and bribes and stars.
After a day working at the Internet coalface, it is tough to be a parents - you have to stop mentally speeding and go into their zone. You can speed up again once he is asleep, in fact you have to to deal with an exeedingly bright 15 year old boy.
The sense of amazed triumph I feel when one of my silly comments makes him laugh is like nothing else.

Well, I felt quite sad before Christmas. They say that mourning becomes less intense years after you lose the beloved person, but it doesn't really. The only thing that lessens in fury is the awful shock you get to begin  with  every time you remember they have gone.
Christmas is not the best time. Mummy made a wonderful Christmas at her house in Kent, with a Christmas tree in the hall, and all members of the family present and correct. She took great pride in the details and in being the Christmas person. To the extent that, when I wanted to be a grown up with a Christmas of my own when Eldest was about nine months old, she and Daddy came and ate lunch. But, and one does have to remember those less perfect things about people, she was unable to embrace and accept my Christmas, and did one of her own the next day.
However, these days it is the in laws every year. With no home to go to, and with the  idea that they are old now and it might be the last one, every year we have gone there.
All the family appears and it is happy occasion, my father when he was widowed, loved it.
Only this year, I couldn't face it.

I wanted to  have my own Christmas, no be part of anyone else's. So I let Husband take the children to have a family lunch and presents, and I stayed at home - after stockings and church. I actually took a hot water bottle and a smoked salmon sandwich to bed, and read my book.

I felt so much better afterwards. Of course being very tired after a year of work doesn't help. So there I was, possibly in a minority, not doing Christmas. The next day I did cook a dinner, and invited friends, and it was lovely.
Funny thing Christmas.
Won't let it happen quite like that again.

You know those red 'flowers'? They are leaves in fact as I am sure you know. Well, there they were lurking in Asda this morning, and I was irresistibly drawn to the deep red colour, the darker veins in the  leaves and the softly velvety texture. I think my mother thought they were common - not at all sure why. Of all Christmas decorations, they seem the most innocent - sitting  and growing in their pots.

I bought two, one for our neighbour, who is always rather cross which is sad, but I hope this red flower might make her less so. The other for me, to sit beside some white crysanthemums in a vase, and be Christmassy in a common sort of way.

The first book I really remember enjoying was an illustrated one about Tutankhamen. It had the gold mask on the front cover, and inside a lot of words, and lots of pictures. I loved it, and we pored over it all the time, as well as an other book that had less pictures, and was about the discovery of Troy by  an extremely dodgy character called Heinrich Schliemann who draped the jewellery he found around his large Edwardian wife, and made extravagent and unscientific claims about what he had found. Which reminds me, I must go back to the subject and investigate the latest ideas.

We were also taken to the British Museum to see the mummies, and we loved the goat standing on its hind legs in a tree that dated from Ur of the Caldes - some of the earliest of civilizations but with artistic skills of exquisite delicacy. When my mother died, my donkey was left a bit bereft as I couldn't have him in London. But some kindly neighbours looked after him and I visited when I could his field in Kent. But not long after she died, he seemed to go into a decline, I was rung by the kindly neighbours who had summoned a vet. He then called me and told me that my donkey Gus, whom I had had since I was nine had a deformity of the jaw and couldn't eat properly any more. He was getting thin and there was nothing that could be done.

With a sad heart I asked the vet to put him down. I felt like the King of Ur, who had horses slaughted and arranged around him for the afterlife (and I think concubines, warriors etc at well - what a waste). I imagined Gus titupping down into the dark, following my mother's shade in its rose trimmed hat (another story) to join her. Well, they had had a long and mutually antipathetic relationship....

Anyway, this was about going to the Tutankhamen exhibition, with high hopes of seeing some of the things I had loved and pored over as a child. I went in the early early morning down to the river, got on a boat, feeling sick on the choppy Thames, having had no breakfast. They fed us when we got there - as it was the launch of a gorgeous sounding Red Sea Resort called Port Ghalib - and I fell upon the breakfast and large cups of hot black coffee very gratefully - smoked salmon on little bagels, tiny sausages in buns and lovely baklava (don't usually allow myself to eat this as it is so fattening). I thawed and felt better very quickly.

 Then upstairs and into the exhibition - room after room of interesting stuff, a lot from tombs belonging to Tut's various ancestors. A stunning broken head of Nefertiti - his father's No 1 wife - he was the son of a concubine. But when we finally got to the tomb contents of Tut himself, it was rather disappointing. I wasn't too bothered about not seeing the gold mask, I had seen that in Cairo. But I was sad that the chair that shows the young king and queen tenderly attending to each other, the elongated cheetahs, the black painted guardian statues, and above all the gorgeous golden goddesses holding their arms up to protect the big golden sacred box. I loved them so much as a child, and felt short changed as they weren't there.

In the shop, there were Tut Christmas decorations - you know the usual glass ones made in Poland, very pretty. I fancied one for this year's bobble. Alas! They were £50. Even the sales lady said she hadn't sold any and it was a high price. I bought a copy of Minerva to find out the latest theories on Tut's death, and a couple of postcards for No 2 Boy, and set off warm and happy to pick him up from school and take him through the routine of swimming and piano lessons that Husband has set up for his Tuesdays... Day off today, and I feel better already.

An alien ringtone jerked me awake from a dream of feeding couscous to French footballer Thierry Henry. Husband has recently bought a new mobile phone, which is why the ringtone was unfamiliar - anyway at 3am the heart starts to bang whatever the phone that rings. You associate broken nights with newborns, but they are a feature of parenthood throughout– the summons to wakefulness moving from the crib by the bed, to the cot next door, to the bedroom down the hall, to the empty, moonlit streets – and to the other side of the world. I always find it amusing when people say they ‘want a baby’ – a baby is simply a stage of personhood – the small, floppy end when they can’t actually say anything but have no trouble in making their needs known. You never hear someone say they want a person – but that is what I always thought, and that the person you gave birth to was exactly the person they always would be. Our firstborn, Maud, was a ‘good’ baby, and not too sleepless. She’s now 18, and an art student. At 3am last night, she was titupping alone in her high-heeled Mary Janes down the rough end of Ladbroke Grove, in Notting Hill, and rather hoping for rescue. She had been working the door at a Goth Burlesque night, in a pub called Paradise by Way of Kensal Green – a quote from a poem by G.K.Chesterton that refers to the nearby cemetery - and had had to wait until the bitter end for her money. Dressed in a small black dress, and extensive black eye makeup, with her bleached bob, she looks sensational – another reason why I didn’t like her to be out in the moonlight alone.

Husband sleepily pulled on his trousers and went to fetch her. I got up irrationally to see if 15-year-old Archie was in his bed – I went to sleep so early last night I didn’t see him come in from his Alpha Youth course. I detect his hippopotamus-like groans and wuffles, and do not, as I would have such a short time before, go over to the bed and ‘kiss him in his dreams’. It would be a gross infringement of teenage dignity. Instead I assuage my maternal tenderness on Tolly, who is only six, kissing his velvet cheek and telling his oblivious ear that I love him. I put my still-warm hot water bottle into Maud’s bed, and go back to my own, lying awake until I hear what I hope is the right car, then with relief the ‘titupp, titupp’ of those iridescent Mary Janes and soft familiar voices in the street below. Maud comes into our room, telling us about looking after Lily Allen (or ‘wrangling’ as she put it) and Johnny Borrell of Razorlight – a major rock star surprisingly on the bill with Roxy Velvet and her blood, drill ‘n’ brains act. She had apparently said to him: ‘You know my cousin Arthur,’ To which he replied, ‘Yes – he is my friend.’

I lie in the dark feeling safe at last because those I most love are all under my roof, fitted together like the family jigsaw. I remember feeling this in 1993 when I had a horrible suspicion my mother was ill (she wouldn’t face up to it), and she was staying the night: ‘I’ll do something about it all in the morning,’ I was thinking, frantically grasping at the safety of the moment, but she died a few months later. Now it is 8am, and Tolly is climbing all over me, asking me to choose a batman sticker. ‘I have such secret stickers,’ he tells me. ‘You have no idea how secret they are. They’ve got love in them.’ Having patted a selection onto my pyjamas, he adds: ‘I hope you will never lose these, so when I am a man and live somewhere else you will remember me.’ Even he wants to freeze the moment. Now I must leave the computer and make him Saturday morning ritual pancakes, while the teenagers slumber on upstairs.

Yesterday I attained a very dull number in the scheme of things. I decided to have a party, because you have to celebrate dullness somehow. So I invited about 20 of my local friends and neighbours, and prepared a 'buffet' (emphasis on the second syllable - always sounds like Abigail's Party). The day began, as in a tradition started by my late and beloved mother, with fishcakes and tomato ketchup in bed, but alas no children to share it. Teenagers sleepy, No 2 Boy off somewhere, hastily making me a highly abstracted card (reminded me of things that have won the Jerwood Prize). At work, I had requested no cake or fuss or collection, as I really don't want people putting their hard earned money into an envelope for me. I left a bit early as a treat, and off I went home. To cook dinner for 25 in the couple of hours left to me. Husband had bought me an outside fireplace, and erected a canopy under our vine for people to shelter under. The promised Indian summer had not arrived, but the smokers happily congregated sheltered from the dripping world.

I made: a fillet of South American beef, roasted with just salt and pepper, and for a shortish time to leave it quite pink but cooked right through.
Fruit cous cous - with red onions, cucumber, mint, coriander, parsley, raisins, golden sultanas, salt, pepper, lemon zest and juice.
A salad of mixed leaves (out of a bag - well time was short)

Fresh mayonnaise and salad dressing

Horseradish cream
Smoked salmon
home made ry bread and pitta bread
dressed cubes of feta cheese with fresh herbs... etc
and two cheesecakes I made at the weekend, chocolate (which has gone to school this afternoon to feed the hungry hordes) and vanilla with fruit sauce
o and home made hummus
people did seem to like it all
I got some terrific presents, each one perfect and useful and beautiful. a hottie cover, red leather gloves, a really nice beach towel for next summer from my friends who have a house in Cornwall where I hope to deploy it next year, sweet smelling things....
I said to Husband, re the outside fireplace which was my birthday present from him - I asked for earrings... He said, we'll get you another one, and then you c an wear them.

I met Eldest on the Tube coming back from her Art School, (lovely loving surprise) and she gave me a beautiful drawing she had done. No 1 Boy bought me a wonderfully fluffy looking card, with a really good poem inside (by him) and the sweetest undertaking to do his homework, and be 'fragrant', and 'Myself' - and signed by him. All their offerings have kept me light of heart all day while I wrestle with spreadsheets.... I also had my aura read yesterday - I have a multicoloured aura, just missing red and orange, the plodding bits apparently. I am hypercritical, with an over developed sense of responsibility, I was not nurtured as a child - I carry far too much for other people.... I sound like all women born in the 1950s... to me.

Last night the parents in law were with us for dinner. They were on good form, and cheerful. We discussed the Diamond Wedding Anniversary party we are organising for them in January, and I suggested a little blessing with their favourite priest. There was a bit of debate about whether he is still alive, as he is a year older. We will contact him, I am sure he is still alive and living in Brighton with his sister. Who has a large bust, if I remember correctly.

For some reason I had a feeling of heightened sensitivity, and suddenly had a strong desire to look after my children when they are old. In particular, Eldest, who was sitting opposite me. She is 18 now, at Art College (Chelsea) and nearly grown up. I had a sudden fleeting vision of her being helpless again at the end of her life, as she was when she was a baby. And me not being there to look after her.

It was odd and sad, and I felt quite shaken.

Do you ever think about what kind of person you are? There isn't usually time in a busy life for much introspection, but I deliberately chose a holiday that would force me to calm down for five minutes. Admittedly I didn't think about myself a great deal - just read a lot of middle-range undemanding books aimed at women like me (the surprisingly good The Second Wife by Elizabeth Buchan - which has a silly pink cover designed to make it appeal to a female market, but which is well written and interesting, and a Mavis Cheek which I got slightly bored with - her style can get a bit repetitive). Anyway, it didn't start that well. I managed to misread the electronic ticket and thought we took off at 13.10 (it turned out to be arrival time). I felt such an idiot that I burst into angry tears. Of course, the airline will smack you on the bottom for being so silly - so I had to buy three more returns for later in the day. You aren't allowed  to use the return bit which I suppose makes sense.

So it meant I did have time to sit down and do some work before we flew  and luckily tickets ar e not so ghastlily expensive as they used to be. But that will teach me! I am usually so picky about things like that and suffer such train-plane-automobile anxiety that I was surprised  with myself and can only think it was stress-related.

We flew into Nice and arrived in the dark. It was just me and the boys (15 and 6) and Club Med at Opio fits the bill in that it  provides entertainment for all age groups. There are 'Clubs' for both. It meant I could force myself not to do that guilt thing and have them with me all the time as I work - so if I am on  holiday I must want to be with children 24/7, mustn't I? Well, in fact of course, I wanted to lie in the sun and read, and swim and go to the excellent gym classes, and have a quiet drink by the pool.

No 2 Boy (6) is now a keen swimmer and can jump into deep water with absolute confidence. Last year, he couldn't swim but loved the water, and found the opportunity to sneak off and get calmly into the pool fully dressed. He reports now that people around, far from rescuing him, took photographs! So since then, he has had intensive swimming lessons and sessions . I can sit out of the pool and watch his antics with pleasure, or join him to play catch with a football or practice my life-saving skills on him. No 1 Boy (15) met lots of teenagers and also lay in the sun reading (he loves reading) - and then danced in the Night Club in the evening. We saw each other from time to time - the idea being for him to feel very free. And he didn't get burned this year - in fact it was all perfect.

The  food was delicious too. They have these overwhelming buffets - but being in France of course the ingredients were fabulous. Wonderful fresh fruit and salads, melons that taste rich and sweet, peaches and nectarines... Having lost so much weight this years, I was naturally anxious not to put any back on. It turned out not to be difficult at all - plenty of exerc ise, lots of salad, bingo!

I recommend Club Med particularly to families with diversely aged children - so much to keep them happy and the parents peaceful. I didn't get a single dance as I put No 2 Boy to bed after the mad nightly shows, but that was fine as well. I am lightly tinged with brown, and quite relaxed.

My first blog, A Mum's Tale, which is still out there in cyberspace somewhere, I set up to help other AOL members understand the pleasures of blogging in January 2003. I enjoyed it a lot, and soon gained lots of loyal readers who particularly enjoyed my stories about Littlest, who is now 6 and far from little - wears eight-year-old sizes - and is known as No 2 Boy. He hasn't been the easiest child, often being very  perverse in his behaviour, most particularly when I am tired. Luckily I have lots of energy, but his endless running away and disobedience, with hard punches to the stomach etc when told 'No' were quite difficult to deal with. He is fast and energetic, and has many good qualities of persistance and  application to a given task. He is also very funny, and when not cross and thwarted, is an absolute joy. Then, suddenly, in the last week or so there has been a change. I have noticed with all three of my children that a period of eating large amounts of food is followed by a developmental leap forward.

He was eating an amazing amount of food recently, so much so that his wiry and angular little body developed a soft tummy for the first time in his skinny little life. And then came the developmental leap. He is reading really fluently, enjoying it, and volunteering to read to me every night. We have amazingly good cuddles where he lies quietly enjoying the moment of peace and love, and saying very sweet but sometimes anxious making things, about always wanting to be a little boy so I would always be with him. But recently these have been  accompanied by much more reasonable and frankly, loving, behaviour. I can feel that source of mild anxiety beginning to drain away, and he is a pleasure to be with. Bedtimes are much easier, morning delightful. I think the developmental leap is one of emotional maturity, the beginning of an understanding of the effect of what he does.

I am not holding my breath but I do feel a hopeful flicker of what he might be, the boy I can take everywhere and do everything with, as I did with No 1 Boy - who was much less energetic. We are going to France next week, and travelling with my little boy has really been a trial in the past as he ran away on airports and became angry and frustrated on aeroplanes. I hope that the new maturity might manifest itself in a wonderful holiday with a more grown up boy. He made me a necklace at his playgroup yesterday with all 'diamonds' transparent coloured faceted plastic beads in lots of colours. It is thoroughly wearable and followed a bracelet a couple of days earlier that was more randomly designed, but which I was delighted to have. He went to enormous trouble with the necklace, and this seems like another sign.

This morning he came and told me a recipe: Fried water and sugar and then put fruit salad in it. And then you puff it up, when it is puffed up you put it in the freezer for half an hour or so and then you take it out of the freezer and then you have fruit ice cubes! I do love him so.

Well, we are all agreed I think that we haven't really had a summer. We were going to go to ireland, but sitting here in my sheepskin slippers, I cancelled it because I couldn't face more of the same kind of weather. Husband and Eldest went however, and visited his nanny in hospital. She was very well, which is lovely to hear - and it is well known that nannies live forever. I am taking the two boys to Provence at the end of August, for a last blast of heat before the Christmas term begins again.
I went to  the Salvation Army for my holiday wardrobe, and bought a selection of white strappy cotton tops in different shapes, a white linen suit with cropped trousers and a safari style jacket with pockets (need to buy large white knickers to wear underneath - possible clue as to why original owner gave up on this almost new garment) and two pretty cotton printed skirts plus plain white cap to keep sun out of eyes. This set me back about £35, and was all nicer and better quality than anything in the tail end of the sales.
I have been so busy at Conde Nast Interactive, that I never got out to look at the sales at their height. I never bought anything summery at all, so the Salvation Army was a God-send literally. The weather has never prompted any attempts to shop for cotton or bare shoulders.
No 2 Boy is off sailing this week, on a lovely cutter called the Golden Vanity with a group of other teenagers. I just hope he protects his shoulders this time - last summer he got the worst sunburn I have ever seen which ended up weeping. Hope he learned that at least in some things, his mother does know best.
I must now get out of my writing pyjamas and into my track suit bottoms and go to the gym. Apart from some copy writing that I must finish today, my other aim is tidying and cleaning. What an exciting time I am having! But with all male people out of the house, I have the space and time to please myself.

I do feel a bit spare and wambly though, which is probably really good for me. Because the endless demands can make the brain itch after a while.

I am finding this weather a strain. We were going to go to Ireland for our holiday, but I feel it is asking for a very dreary holiday as Ireland is even wetter than England. So husband will be taking one or more of the children to visit his nanny, and I will stay here and work, next weekend.

Last week was a frenzy of updating websites at Conde Nast. We made big clicky differences to Stylefinder.com and Glamour.com. I also organised cookery films to be made for the new YouTube.com/easyliving channel, which we plan to launch the week after next. The wonderful David Herbert, Australian cookery editor of the magazine, consented to let our cameras into his kitchen while he demonstrated some quick and simple stuff - that most people have forgotten how to do. This can then be downloaded to your video ipod and put on your worktop while you follow his simple instructions. I am really pleased about this one!

The world of internet publishing moves so fast compared to magazines. You can have an idea one minute, and execute (almost) the next - if you have a terrific team like mine. In a previous internet publishing job, if you didn't do several different kinds of ludicrous paperwork you couldn't do anything. I only ever got anything done if I simply did it and hoped no one noticed it until I had finished. The uncertainty and lack of deciseness at the top end of the company was to blame. Conde Nast is a pretty confident company - and that makes all the difference to the kind of people who work there. It is all about creative ideas, and doing good stuff that people will like.

As you can tell, I am happier in this job than in many others.

I think I am mainly writing for my sister here. Hi Gini! And am so busy that sitting down to blog has slipped way down what is possible. Right now I need to get myself together and go to buy ingredients for buns for No 2 Boy's primary school fair. Meanwhile, No 1 Boy is off back to Westminster Abbey to tower over his old co-choristers and enjoy their really excellent yearly fete. Husband has taken the car to France to transport his yoga teacher on a silent retreat. So we are on foot, which is completely fine in London.

Last week saw the Serpentine Party. I stood outside for some of the time to observe the making of our VogueTV video - which you can find at www.vogue.co.uk. It was great fun seeing it all happen, and I enjoyed identifying the older generation, such as Vidal Sassoon, to the very young and lively team - who then picked up the ball and dashed with it.

Inside there was a disco - these days they have named people spinning the discs - an activity known in the past as putting a few records on, but now seems to have attained some kind of separate cache. There was some disco, which I always enjoy - and I got a dance out of a kind man. My heels were very high - in keeping with the mood of the evening. But I put those silicon strips inside to stop the balls of my feet from burning. It does work.

Who else was there? Author Santa Montefiore dressed like a Barbie mermaid - you know that shiny blue stuff. Thandie Newton, incredily slim in satin by the new Biba (I met Barbara Hulanicki last year - who is spitting about losing control of her brand - the whole thing about Biba was how democratic it was. She described how everyone could afford her looks and the fun of that. New Biba is designer expensive).

All kinds of models looking beautiful. Some amazing legs and figures. Some legs that should have been hidden. The actual party was quite informal and not very crowded. People wandered around on the grass, looked at the exhibition and yelled to each other above the music. It wasn't as much fun as the Tatler Summer Party which was stuffed with old friends - perhaps I just like talking parties these days more than loud music ones. It is quite possible.

No 2 Boy is trying to do my hair for me, which is kind but a bit painful.

Earlier on Wednesday, I travelled out of town to have my picture taken for Saga magazine for an article I wrote about losing the weight at last (by the way it is staying off - but I realise just how careful I have to be to make sure I don't waste this opportunity to be a healthy weight). Not quite there yet in age, but not far off. They had dressed a tailor's dummy which they had adjusted to my old dimensions, in a dress, and asked me to pose with it. So I embraced this cosy armful happily and hope that the contrast between it and me in visible when the picture is published. So my face was carefully and well made up by a professional for the Serp, all I had to do was add a little glitter eyeliner and some more blusher and lipstick, and I was away...

We made a mad dash by train through the rain yesterday to view 'Monkey' - Damon Albarne and Jamie Hewlett's latest collaboration - a Chinese opera based on an ancient story.

Made sandwiches, packed what we call 'fidgets' - ie things for children to do in moving transport - in this case, tape machine, gameboy, magnet toy, microscopic life book. Big children have ipods and reading material these days. Off we went to Euston, and onto a smelly Virgin train up to the north for a quick cultural burst.

Like Gorillaz, it was a mix of cartoon projected on either transparent or opaque curtains in front of the stage, of live action with singing and acrobatics, wonderfully strange contortions, and lots of East/West music and singing including a bit that reminded me peculiarly of Minnie Ripperton and the Gower Peninsular (where we had a geography field trip and she was number one in about 1975). La la la la la, la la la la la etc. Eldest cut me off before I could hit that famous high note - and quite right too, because I can't.

Highlights included ladies spinning parasols on every extremity while being wheeled around in shopping trolleys. An amazing cartoon of someone seen in Xray vision swallowing a bee (which was the Monkey king transformed) who then did Kung Fu in her stomach. The spider women - pretty girls letting themselves down on long silk scarves, like that BBC link. And the Skeleton demon and her accolites - rather sexy zombies spinning diabolos with great skill. No 2 Boy was gripped throughout the 145 minutes it took without an interval, apart from some wriggling. In spite of the fact it is in Mandarin, and he couldn't really see or read the subtitles which were projected a bit low, fast enough.

It is visually explanatory for all ages though, and I do highly recommend it. Not a single moment when you felt the seat beneath you, if you know what I mean. Then we dashed in a taxi back to the station and just caught our train back to London.

I thought vaguely when I reached middle age that changing for a party in a car in traffic would be behind me. But then I also thought I would have an iron grey wavy perm and a turquoise Crimplene two-piece with American tan tights and sensible shoes. We went to Eldest's brilliant A Level Art show at her school, to see what she had been doing (masses, very good, saleable now I would think), and also to say goodbye to it all - the place where she has been happily and productively studying for the last seven years.

But what I wriggled into in Fulham last night was cut off cream linen trousers, and a silvery white dress - a Stella McCartney knock off from my favourite shop, Principles - and extremely unsensible platform stratospheric sandals. I got my slap on straight, in spite of braking and going round corners, and was ready to meet lots of people I haven't seen for 20 years or so, and lots I have. I arrived eagerly and early so I had the energy for all the conversations at this 25th anniversary party. The couple looked just as they did - I am not exagerrating - they have five daughters, ranging in age from early twenties to nine, and they all ranged behind a stack of buns in a wedding cake shape and made speeches. Apparently there were 70 people from the wedding at the party - and all four parents as well.

There were also lots of men I kissed long ago. This is really unusual at a party these days. Because I met Husband when I was 25 and of course never kissed anyone else since - except in the friendly way - I am usually surrounded by unkissed men. They all also looked remarkably good - for some reason men's hair doesn't seem to go grey in the same way and require expensive attention from a hairdresser. There they were, blond, brown, dark - occasionally grizzled, sometimes a bit fatter - but that was just cuddly.

Only two odd thing - one, a girl I haven't seen for years pulled my hair to get my attention NOT appreciated. And a man I went and said hello to, said, 'Sorry I don't remember you at all...' Well, he certainly wasn't one of my beaus but we definitely had a chatting relationship at Cambridge. I found that rather chilling, and wondered if he actually had memory problems. There were tears from some, hugs and invitations to lunch. 'I haven't taken a girl out from Vogue House for 20 years,' said one man who has worked around the corner all this time.

'Girl?' Perhaps not. But lunch, yes.

As I am back in the Internet now, working for Conde Nast Interactive, I have to be thoroughly interactive myself. The first thing I did was set up YouTube sites for some of the conde nast websites - go to www.youtube.com/vogue, /glamour and /GQmagazine to see what I have made. As the net becomes more and more moving and shaking, it is necessary to show people all the  films we have been making at parties and shows.

Then I went on Facebook, and found all kinds of strange figures from my past popping up. It spiders through your email addresses and picks up anyone on Facebook - I sort of did this by mistake because I was in such a hurry. But there are my nice friendly godchildren etc. Mostly younger - but other people with teenage children popped up as well. It will also invite all the other people in your address book to join Facebook if you don't watch your clicks. I just felt relieved that when I was having my two week sabbatical from work, I scrubbed my address book reasonably thoroughly.

People get very addicted to it apparently. I cannot quite understand why, but it is nice to be said Hello to.

Like many people I have a recurring dream about my Finals, which took place a long time ago, but which didn't go as well as they should due to various factors up to and including the suicide of a friend sending me into a flat spin. Anyway, my usual dream is of trying to take them in some subject I have never taken before - such as Medieval German, without any preparation. Last night's was different - I was allowed to go back to my college and go through the course again (although it did with the perversity of dreams, include Maths - I read English) with a view to doing much better this time. This is a much more positive dream outcome than the deadly fear of failure I usually wake up with, and which is a signal that all is not well in my inner life.

This morning I woke without academic dread, but feeling somehow the whole issue was resolved and gone now. I wonder if it is because I am enjoying my new job?

This was the two weeks in June known inaccurately in Cambridge as 'May Week'. When I reach June and the sky is grey I always check the date and see that inevitably these two weeks are cold and windy, damp and dull. This meant that with rare exceptions the drinks parties and dances we enjoyed after exams took place not in bright remembered sunshine. Most of them were outside in the parks and gardens of the various colleges, or on the  banks of the Cam as far out as Grantchester. To get to the upper river, it was necessary to go through the mill pond by Silver Street Bridge. You were meant to get out of the punt, and pull it up some rollers . Well, a bunch of drunken friends decided that getting out of  the punt to go down again was too much trouble, so they  pushed the punt onto the top of the rollers and stayed in it.

When the tip of the punt hit the mill pond at considerable velocity - due to the weight of the people inside - it caught and flipped, catapulting them vertically across the pond. One by one they plopped into the noxious waters of the Cam, infected as it is with every kind of stomach churning bacteria. How we laughed. I walked back from that party.

Another party that took place in the gardens of Magdelen was remarkably sunny. I remember it with great pleasure - it stands out if only for the weather, and the drink which was vodka and pineapple juice. I sat on a bench talking to various people, and Hugh Laurie came to sit beside me. He was very shy in those days, and he said nothing - which was normal for him. After a bit he rested his head on the back of the bench and seemed to go to sleep. So I took a picture of him. After the party, he didn't talk to me at all. Which I didn't notice due to his notorious silence. Apparently he was embarrassed because he had made a pass at me. If he did, I didn't notice that either....

Happy days.

When I was working for an American ISP, I  found it very hard  to communicate with management as they spoke a  language new to me which contained phrases such as .... Do you know something? I can't actually summon the full horror to mind. I am in denial, my memory has blanked out the trauma. Anyway, they sent me on a course to learn how to do PowerPoint which was their favoured mode of delivery of this meaningless series of sounds unrelated to the English language or even to communication of any kind. I enjoyed the course. I created a  little cartoon in which a boat went across my screen and the sun dipped into the sea. Very satisfying. I decided I would attempt as one clumsily waving a blanket above a fire in order to attract the attention of some teepees in the valley below, to use this tool to say, "Hi!" to my colleagues. I began to enjoy it but my PPTs did not resemble those of others. They were full of scratchy looking sketches of what I envisaged, and the language was baroque in its complexity compared to the limited phraseology to which my colleagues clung like the Raft of the Medusa.

So, PowerPoint, James, but not as they knew it.

Today, I do it again, as I have been asked to give a seminar about trends at the Pulse Exhibition which is going on at the moment. Stall after stall of delicious nick nacks, accessories, designs and desirable all vying for the attention of buyers. I love it. As I edited the Vogue List last year, and thought long and hard about how people live now, I am eminently qualified to pronounce on what is desirable. I have also always been convinced, as I am sure everyone is, of my consummate good taste (ha!). Anyway, I am blogging to get my fingers moving and then I will move on to lovely PowerPoint, but nowhere will the terrible debilitating phrases of management speak spoil its gorgeous surface.

My latest builds accessible on the web are: www.youtube.com/vogue, www.youtube.com/glamour and www.youtube.com/GQmagazine. These have just started, but seem to be attracting attention. I love multimedia!

I only ever seem to get to blog from the Virgin Active now. At work I am simply too busy, and feel a violent desire to rush outside at lunchtime to walk around a bit and get my steps up to a better level. At home, we just have the one computer online at the moment, and that is frequently occupied by teenager intently doing what teenagers do. Often on MSN. I think most teenagers' parents will recognise this - all kinds of ludicrous pseudonyms popping up all over the screen when you go online to do something sober and grown up like look for Marni on Ebay.

Anyway, I am now in the bit of dieting which is the oddest - maintaining the weight loss. It is very clear just how little one can eat on a daily basis now, and how much exercise is needed to keep things under  control. Not that I mind - the whole process has been pretty effortless. I have been asked to write it up for the Mail on Sunday, for Autumn - so simply have to stick with my goal weight now.

On Friday I went to a wedding. It was one of my goals to fit into an outfit my mother made for me to wear to Friday's bride's brothers' (keeping up at the back?) wedding more than twenty years ago. It was skin tight, a straight skirt and jacket, loosely based on a design by Martine Sitbon (a French designer who has rather disappeared). The interesting feature is that it has no shoulders - the jacket is long, with sleeves, the but the shoulders peep out of the top.. I dug out a strapless bra, wriggled into the skirt - checked that I could in fact sit down, had my hair blow dryed, bought a pair of stratospheric tan strappy platform shoes (having been tempted by a deep fuchsia pair which I resisted) and fell out of a taxi just in time outside the Savoy chapel near the river. This is the last remaining building of a hospital for the poor established by one of the King Henries, I forget which. The bride's brother told me I looked 'tres chic' - and told the assembled company that I used to be his girlfriend (back in the very distant mists...) - but it was satisfactory. I assume if I had looked awful he wouldn't have fessed up. His wife looked amazingly gorgeous - in silvery dress and coat and an incredibly elegant hat.

The music was wonderful. The couple obviously happily in love, the dress divine (ice blue Duchess satin with a short lace bodice). The reception an old fashioned English affair in an Army club in Picadilly. There was even one of my mother's old friends there, as there should be at every wedding. Husband and I had a very happy afternoon off - it felt illicit being a Friday.

The house has been full of our charming builder Eric, and Sylvester his side kick, building in cupboards so we can hide stuff. We have freecycled a whole lot of old furniture, and chucked out masses of clothes that no longer fit - I can't bear to get rid of things Mummy made though - but they do keep coming round again. So now I need to cram everything into the new cupboards, and we need to do more chucking as the next phase is converting the roof space into another bedroom and shower. And it is full of 'stuff'.

I think I have fire in my belly now though, and feel quite ruthless. Or do I? So much of it is to do with the past, with my late parents, with my family. Sad, it feels like rejection, dismissal, the removal of last shreds and patches. But it is only stuff. Love lives on.

Here I am again in the Virgin Active in Acton, taking a moment to catch up online and get a bit of exercise. New job at Conde Nast started on Tuesday - which is a kind of joyful whirlwind of activity. My poor brain has been asked to remember too many new faces recently - literally hundreds, so is doing its best by using memory tricks like rhymes and resemblances. Anyway a first week is always a blizzard - I am so used to it having had dozens of jobs since I started at Vogue after university. And the stairs still smell the same, which telescopes memory in the most extraordinary way.

No 2 Boy has gone climbing under the Westway - is apparently scrambling up the towering walls, punctuated with the coloured hand and toe thingies, like a little monkey - of course. We should have done this long ago. No 1 Boy has gone to a birthday party viewing of the new Superman III - panned by the critics but enjoyed by an uncritical public. His first GCSE - taken a year early at his school, is on Thursday. Provided he does do the revision he should be fine. Eldest is proceeding in a stately fashion towards her first A level on Monday - art - so we are rotting for both of them.

No 2 Boy, a budding restaurant critic, faced with  some pasta in cheese sauce with broccoli that I had knocked up for him: 'It tastes a bit transparent'.

Having ventured into the public sector for a few weeks, I have now popped out the other end. It has been interesting. We began to feel though in that cavernous but rather amazing building in Elephant and Castle, with its enormous atrium and terraces sticking out to catch the light, that we would never escape. It is good for the bank balance, because all I ever purchased was a baked potato and some salad. O, and the odd foray across to the Clarke's factory shop where I bought luggage and boots. I love Clarke's. Used to hate it, but the designs have improved enormously, and they don't seem to be bent on selling various colours, shades and patterns of Cornish pastie for the feet year round any more.

Another thing about the dept of health was that I had the  most flattering security tag that I have ever managed, or at least since the one when I had just come back from India in 1986 and was brown and very thin, for the Sunday Times. The diet has removed my wattles, which I feared were a genetic hazard that I wasn't going to escape (my father was splendidly wattular), but turn out to be a common or garden double chin. Removing the fat has removed my resemblance to an exotic turkey species - yet another reason for a person without a jutting lower mandible to lose weight.

I have had an interesting experience on Ebay recently. I am rather timid about Ebay usually, but I fell for the picture of a dress, the positive feedback and the location of the item in England. The dress was a cotton one by Marni, an Italian designer I adore. Anyway, I was the only bidder - the price was fine for second-hand labels - which made me wonder afterwards if other Marni lovers knew something I didn't about this seller. As soon as it arrived  I knew something was wrong. For one thing it came from China. On opening it, my heart sank. Flimsy cotton, a different colour, fake leather fastening, blurred, poorly embroidered label, messy stiching, it had the lot. So I wrote politely to the seller via Ebay asking for a complete refund and saying I would sent it straight back. Her response was extraordinary. She immediately refunded half the cost, and said she had relisted it and would I sent it on the the highest bidder. I emailed back suggesting that I was uneasy in sending out counterfeit goods. Not ever having experienced anything like this before, I underlined my view that the piece was a fake. Comparison with a real Marni dress confirmed it. Then she decided to escalate this to the PayPal resolution service. And swore at me! So far I have done as she asked and haven't left any feedback for her. I notice from her previous feedback that similar items have been received happily by other ebayers.

I will send it back to yet another address in China, and I hope get my refund. Then I will ask Ebay's advice  about what to do. Perhaps it would make an interesting piece - I will talk to the Press office. I have photographed the labels etc thoroughly. Hmmmm. I still like Ebay very much though.

Just lost my whole post where I was telling you how much happiness we are squeezing out of our weekend in Verbier - particularly standing at the top of the slope, my fists jammed into my hips as I rested on the ski poles and stared at the snowy peaks. Most of the snow has gone in the village. It is hot and sunny, and the teenagers and Husband are going Parapenting - flying on a parachute high in the sky. I am terrified, but will let them have the adventure on my behalf.

I am actually working - but the family get to have a good time while I do. We are guests of a delightful family, and we scrabbled together some togs and took off after work and school in Friday night. In my case, it is the ski suit I wore for the Oxford and Cambridge ski trip of 1979 - refound when I was clearing out my father's house. Completely different to anything anyone else is wearing, white salopettes and jacket with a few think coloured stripes. Comfortable and practical, and also vintage! Why bother getting anything else. My legs also remember what to do when they were last enclosed in the white trousers. I first learned when I was five, so the memory must be embedded somewhere. And the recent gym habit has really helped, no creaks just pleasure from my rather clumsy attempts to get down the slope.

I dream regularly about skiing and always wake up regretting that I haven't been for years. Now I am here, and will go out again tomorrow morning. The trouble with the sun is that it makes the snow sticky, which make controlling the skis crisply more difficult. Also, the non functional left eye is a bit of a liability - although I have learned to glance up the slope, which luckily isn't crowded, to see that someone is not bombing with an almost imperceptible hiss down onto me.

You will know what I did last summer, if you go to http://travel.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/travel/ where you will find my piece about Abruzzo painting holiday that I so enjoyed. It also acts as a kind of 'before' picture of me as I was a bit rounded then. I had the top spot yesterday, but have moved a little down page today.

Blissful peace this morning as Husband and both boys decided to stay with grandparents in the country last night -  so I get a non-work morning when I can do what I like. It has been a lovely West Country wander for them, and a female time for me and Eldest. She has been doing a Maths revision course for her A levels, and then going out every night and having fun - including to her joy seeing Pete Docherty (not that she is besotted with him - he once put his arm around her at the Reading Festival and snuggled into her hair - "Big mistake," says my unimpressionable daughter, "I hadn't showered for three days".) However, she is keen on the Libertines, who broke up when Pete's drug-soaked behaviour became impossible, slightly before she was aware of them. So when Carl Baratt joined Pete on the stage of the Hackney Empire she was thrilled. They were intelligent and interesting, and neither creatively has been particularly interesting since - of course Pete has a high profile of an awful kind. His complexion is a disaster.

Anyway, that is what we have been doing. My life has been a bit less interesting - hard work all day, gym in the evening, and then pleasing myself. Contrast is the key to pleasure - when you are used to being pulled to pieces with demands from all directions, not being pulled around is glorious - but I rush to say that without the pulling to pieces, the peace and quiet would swiftly become dull and sad. Food always tastes better when you eat much less of it - the flavours burst on your tongue. Sunny days are wonderful after dull ones etc. O dear, do I sound trite? In India, a cold shower and snuggling into a clean sheet bag in a dusty but clean room in a dak bungalow, after struggling on Indian buses all day (ie people climbing literally on your head to get in) was a wonderful joy. Seeing the beloved after an absence... even of a night of sleep (No 2 Boy, yellow hair on end, blinking in the morning, is one of these).

It started very well.  Got both No 1 and No 2 Boys to church, which was filled with sunshine and incense and happy smiling people of a wide and delightful variety of ages. Father Ian is Church of England, but on the London-style, High side -  I am used to it now and beginning rather to enjoy the 'bells and smells' approach. The services crack along, and as a preacher he holds the attention by walking around and gesticulating, and also by being intelligent and interesting. The sermon wasn't the high point today -  Father Ian had been up since some godly hour celebrating the first Mass of Easter and I think was beginning to flag. But the singing was good, and the organist half way through handed No 1 Boy (an ex Westminster Abbey chorister) the music so he could join in with the different parts. He was pleased, but thought in his usual way that it might be because they didn't like his descants. Not a bit of it.

I am sure they would have him singing solos in no time, if he wanted. The rest of the day was taken up with gardening (Husband - it all looks far sleeker after his efforts, and in spite of piling off the children's scooter onto his knees a couple of days ago) . I took No 2 Boy to the park, where I encouraged him to join a game of football with a large and cheerful Spanish family of boys and men. He was a little shy to begin with, but they were kind and welcoming, asking his name. They didn't pull any punches though, and the men booted the ball and dealt with his tackles without much compromise as far as I could see. It was rather alarming, but he was soon stripped to his tie-dye vest and rushing about gaining possession, dribbling and kicking with the rest of them.
 Earlier I had played with him a bit, with the help of a slender Somali gentleman, who never spoke, just smiled and passed the ball with graceful ease while I rushed after it. Noticing as I did so that the gym has made a huge difference to my stamina, but I wasn't up to joining in with a lot of macho Spaniards in full flight.

Then Husband did the first barbecue of the year, chicken and sausages, aubergine and courgetter, plus onions and garlic. I had made a salad of Charlotte potatoes earlier in the day. The official bit of the Healthier Weight diet I was on finished a couple of weeks ago, but I have managed to keep going and lose another 4 lbs. Of course the weight loss slows down, but I don't mind that, as I am introducing nice things like the odd glass of wine, avocado and hummus etc. All my clothes now fit again, including things my late mother made for my honeymoon twenty years ago. As it is our 20th wedding anniversary on 25 April this year, I am extremely pleased to be back where I started.  I have lost 23 and half pounds since January 9. And I had lost weight several times during my adult life, always being sabotaged by having babies etc.  So if I find it difficult to remember how I did it, and feel a certain amount of despair at doing it again, what must it be like for people who have gained more and never lost it? So very difficult to understand what to do, which is why I am pleased to be doing some public information on the subject of weight loss at the moment.

Sorry, dear readers, for whose comments and visits I long -  I have not been serving you faithfully over the last week or so. And the excuse is a bit feeble - I do not have any time in the day as I work to bring to birth a new website for a Government Department. This involves attempting to communicate with a vast behemoth of civil servanting - it is a different world, words mean different things, and people work at a very different pace and with a completely strange range of activities. I think I am getting a bit closer to something useful though now. And it is only until May by which time my work will be substantially done, and I move back to Conde Nast and its much more frivolous web offering.

The team I work with in Elephant & Castle could not be nicer and more encouraging. I am finding it strange at this late middle point in my career that it is possible to work with nice appreciative people, who value my efforts. Doesn't that sound dreadful? But I have often in a long career worked with people who would rather chew off their own face than be nice about someone else's work - or even personality. Things have been said to me that made me want to crawl into a hole - such as a shopping editor (I was her manager) telling me it wasn't  what I said but the way I said it that she particularly disliked; and another telling me that the whole of a new team I had just arrived to manage found me 'very condescending'. Questioning the rest of them carefully, I discovered this was far from the truth and they appreciated very much being managed by someone who knew something of the world outside the odd one they found themselves in. You can be bullied from below you and above you in any given office situation, and it is usually the fault of poor leadership at the very top.

Anyway, enough dull career stuff. But  the world has changed enormously, for me and for other employees  I hope - it just seems more professional and aware of itself as the workplace has readjusted over the last 20 years to accommodate women wholeheartedly. You can't be liked by, or like, everyone, but at least you can treat them politely. I believe that I am not going to suffer that awful daily sick feeling you get when you know that someone is going to bully you - if not that day, then some other day in the future, and you will quail inside with the misery of it, and bring the grey damp cloud home with you to make you snap at your children...

Talking of children, I asked No 2 Boy (now six) about some glorious knowledge he had come up with - probably on the subject of dinosaurs or similar. And he said, 'There's this school called brain and  and I walk up these spine stairs and find out things. Then you walk into brain school and then the teacher tells you, 'Ng, ng, ng, ng....' Of course.

I have spent the last week commuting to the Department of Health to put my online editorial skills at the disposal of the general public. It is an exciting project, and I am having to work hard and fast - thinking on my feet and scribbling in my notebook to visualise what the pages will look like. I am editing the section of a website that is all about helping people lead what amount to more comfortable lives - because being healthier, having lower blood pressure, not carrying mounds of lard around etc, is undoubtedly a more physically pleasing way to live.

The two main challenges are smoking and obesity. Everything else pales into insignificance compared to those twin evil traps set for us. Do you think it would be possible to market a product for public consumption these days that guaranteed to kill 50% of its users? The causes of the rise in obesity are of course very complex - but not so complex that ordinary people don't solve it for  themselves every day of the  year. While the medical establishment looks for 'cures' - the private sector quietly gets on with combinations of counselling, support groups and diet information that really does help numerous people - including me. But the way these things are depicted in the media would be enough to make you give up long before you started - have you noticed how many times it is stated that diets don't work, and dieters always get fatter afterwards? That is only the dieters who go back to exactly the same habits they had before the diet and put the weight back on. Ongoing support is the key.

I think if people only could get a glimpse of how much happier and better they would feel if they just made some tiny changes in the way they choose to ingest and move around, they would climb mountains and cross torrents to get there. But we are very bad at thinking ahead, from the top down. Look at successive governments - long term planning is not their strong point. The overflowing prisons could have been far less of a problem if dyslexia had been tackled with money and good sense years ago. A very high proportion of young offenders and prisoners generally cannot read - often because they have difficulties. Their presence in prison cannot be some kind of bizarre coincidence, so where is the government policy that makes sure every single child in the country can read by the time it gets to secondary school?

They are trying, but not nearly hard enough.... If some schools manage this trick, why not all?  It is SO slow, and each year that goes past testing things that obviously work in small areas, is a year that another child is lost to a productive life...

Anyway, so I am spending eight weeks with my website, before going back to Conde Nast to work on their websites. I am so looking forward to riding my brand new replacement electric bike into the West End all summer.

 

When you are a working mother (what other sort is there by the way?) - times of being at home with the children are so short and precious and go so fast. The two weeks I wrested from the demands of the workplace end tomorrow when I go to my new contract. I was interested to read in the paper that the most stressed segment of society is men on fixed-term contracts. I have done these most of my working life, in a vain attempt to achieve some balance between home and work. The other fact that popped up is that women with young children are the most discriminated sector of society - more than any other - in the workplace.

These two facts about my working life in tandem must leave me facing the secure ward then. But not in fact. I love constant change and learning different things, meeting different people and bouncing around from magazines to newspapers and the internet. Possibly I have a fashionable disorder like ADT. Of course we would as a family been much more secure if I had been offered at the right times permanent well-paid jobs - but that is where the discrimination came in. Sometimes it was stated blatently, sometimes more subtly - but I realise now it was always there. And now Trevor Phillips, a man who speaks sense, has pointed it out.

So, new journey. New everything. Lotus notes. Even biros. We will see how it goes.

It is the last day of my little holiday from work. I haven't achieved everything I set out to do, but I have done some of it, and very valuable sitting down and talking about things has taken place, which in the rush and wildness of me going out every day simply can't happen. I haven't finished editing my book. In fact I have got no further than putting it down beside my computer and locating the editing file  in Explore. But I do hope to publish this summer now. There isn't too much to do now anyway.

I did manage to shed some stuff on Ebay, clothes too good to go straight to charity, and I came home from my baking course at Le Manoir au Quat'Saisons to find that it had all sold. For peanuts really, but I don't mind. At least people want these clothes, a pair of Boden trousers hardly worn, a pretty Whistles dress, a Ghost shirt, an M&S Limited Collection dress and a pair of Katherine Hamnett trousers. None of it fits me any more and the idea is that it never will again.... I hope. I did a sum today, to work out how much weight I still need to lose. If I lost another 19 lbs, which I have done since January 9, I would be 9stone, which is what I was on my wedding day - and quite skinny really. Not sure I want to go all the way down there - ribs showing already like an old mummy as opposed to Mummy. I lost another pound last week, in spite of being taken out to lunch twice. I think a lb a week slowly and steadily til the summer now.

The baking course was interesting. I had asked to do the more advanced one, but was told I had to do the basic one first. That was fine, but I did hear a lot of stuff I knew already. However, it gave me the confidence to make pizza again from scratch which is brilliant. This overpriced dish is sold for such an incredible multiplication of its ingredients price, that it is not surprising people have made fortunes. I think there might be a gap in the market though for the real thing... maybe a business idea in the bud.

Did you know that Mozart's librettist Da Ponte went to America after the composer died and opened a pizza restaurant in New Jersey? Did Mozart ever eat pizza? Probably not, he stuck to German food - dumplings, pork products and cabbage I should think, washed down with copious quantities of wine and beer. We went on a date in New Delhi in 1985, Ghostbusters followed by pizza. It gets everywhere doesn't it? This simple disc of dough spread with a little tomato sauce, and at its most basic, sprinkled with torn mozzarella. The chef who taught us said he thought the very best mozzarella came from Marks & Spencer. When I was a young teenager I stayed on a buffalo, tomato and sunflower farm near Naples. There we were given so much fresh mozza that I became sick of it. Now I find most of what you get in the UK quite revoltingly stale. It should be firm and bouncy all the way through, not kind of gungy in the middle. Yuk!

Help, my house is filling up with paper aeroplanes. No 2 Boy has developed a passion for them, and every piece of paper that sits still long enough resembles Concord within seconds of its discovery. They are well made and accurate, but there are so many of them!

He is also able to sit still and listen to a 'chapter book' now, which is such a relief, as I hit a kind of carpet chewing plateau with picture books when I simply cannot bear to open another one. That is with the exception of Dr Seuss, many of whose volumes I still have time for, particularly Horton Hatches the Egg and the one about the green trousers that give the protagonist a terrible fright on numerous occasions, until in fact the protagonist realises the trousers are just as frightened of him. Whereupon they become friends. A better less about discrimination I haven't come across, and it is thoroughly funny. So, No 1 Boy started reading The Witches to his small brother - complete delight, he sits and listens with every pore. I realised I hadn't read it before, and the older ones read it to themselves. It is truly horrid, I must stay. I am reading Death's Acre at the moment, the memoirs of a forensic pathologist. And the Grand High Witch's rotting face is at least as horrible as anything in there - and without the cheerful tone. You do wonder what was going through Dahl's head, when the GHW removes her pretty-girl mask to reveal this disgusting putrifying wrech underneath, and then plots to wipe out all the children of England. Dark and dangerous his attitude I feel.

I had lunch in the Wolsley again today, and ate steak tartar, which should not bust my diet, served with a lovely little gem salad and some purple sprouting broccoli.
Compared to the tedious food I ate at the Boxwood on Friday, it was a revelation of flavourful simplicity. Followed by fruit salad and various sorbets. Trudy Styler, wife of Sting, was there. There are always a few stars to spot - not that she is one. We agreed that any plastic surgery she has had is of the very best and highest quality. Then my companion, who doesn't mince her words, told me that models have their first face lifts at 24 (!) and that it ages them fast so they keep having to have more surgery. In the end your nostrils would be on the top of your head like a whale by the time you were my age.

Repaired to Gordon Ramsey's Boxwood Cafe in the Berkeley Hotel for lunch with a kindly PR. I very seldom have time for lunch with PRs - if you accepted all of them, that is all you would do. But this one had worked with me last year, and I am meant to be pleasing myself a bit at the moment, and wanted to see how my old stamping ground was getting on. When I was at Cambridge I worked in the kitchens as a  salad hand in the holidays - preparing a cold buffet for The Perroquet - another restaurant in the hotel. I wore my hair in a pony tail and baseball boots on my feet, so obviously the chefs called me Elvis. And I had to be quick on those feet - the pastry chefs in their cool glass box (to protect the cream from kitchen smells) were a menace. The keeper of the store room would be  in love with one of us every week - this devotion only manifested itself by letting us have whatever we liked that week - even caviar, hearts of palm and lobster if we were lucky, but strictly for garnish only.

I was allowed to do exactly what I liked really, bar a few classic essentials such as tomato salad. Which was extraordinary if you think that I was an undergraduate with no cooking or food training of any kind – this was in the late 1970s, when things were probably a bit floppier. I had a lovely time innovating, finely slicing both avocado and sweet pears and interleaving them, dressing with a light lemony vinaigrette etc. The head chef, a very small Frenchman, would come and rest his chin on my shoulder from time to time and enjoy what I was doing from a technical point of view. He never stopped me. It was very badly paid, but I was unworldly and enjoyed myself – I slept under some old curtains in an empty house belonging to some cousins, and was never hungry due to cooking all day. I was young and the sun shone.

Anyway, I was looking forward to some delicious and beautifully prepared food – Gordon Ramsey is after all such a superstar. What a disappointment! The food was dull, the ingredients NOT first class, and the descriptions on the menu misleading and inaccurate to put it mildly.

I chose a ceviche of organic salmon to begin. Ceviche is dish popular throughout Latin America, introduced to the UK by Robert Carrier in the 1960s. The defining process is ‘curing’ fish in lemon or other fruit juice overnight, so that it goes opaque and is infused with delicious fruity sourness. Then it can be served in a number of ways – l  like to make a salad with avocadoes, tomatoes and peppers, with a vinaigrette sauce. What appeared on my plate were some fatty and floppy slices of completely raw farmed salmon that tasted of nothing - no 'curing' had been attempted. A tasteless dressing had been sprinkled over the top, with a bit of cress. Underseasoned, NOT ceviche and dull – fattiness in salmon is a sign of poor husbandry. I ate it after liberal grindings of salt and pepper, because I was hungry and mindful of omega 3s. I chose a ‘vegetarian’ main course that, according to the menu, majored on artichokes – sounded light and delicious. Wasn’t. Was a brick of oily potato slices interspersed with small amounts of finely chopped ordinary mushrooms. There were only two miniature slices of artichoke. With it came a ‘tomato’ vinaigrette – well it was orangish in colour, but tasted of nothing at all. That just got dissected and pushed around the plate.

Ah, pudding. Ordered a chocolate fondant – this is a fun trick you can do at home. You make a rich chocolate batter, and cook it in individual moulds for a brief time so that the outside cooks and the inside remains a delicious rich chocolate sauce. What attracted me to the dish was its accompanying ‘salt caramel’ – I love salt in sweet things, and anticipated just a delicious taste as we were sharing. What came was the fondant, sitting in lonely and unembellished brown-ness on a large white plate. There was a cup of tasteless but light iced milk lost among the salt and pepper on the table. When asked where the ‘salt caramel’ was, a patronising manager type person explained that it was inside the chocolate fondant, and had melted and disappeared. Well, why put it on the menu then if it simply an ingredient. A more likely explanation is that they forgot to put it on the plate. And I don't like being patronised.

We drank water as it was lunchtime.The prices were high as well. I recommend the chefs re-examine what is written on the menu, and try to replicate it, for fear of disappointing their more knowledgeable clients. It is not enough just to slap the name Gordon Ramsey on a restaurant. If this is what he presides over, I am not surprised he got such a pasting in New York.

Apart from that I had a nice relaxing time with a sweet girl. But that doesn’t stop me from pointing out the lazy way in which she and I were treated. I have an excellent palate and a wide knowledge of food, which I used years ago to entertain the clientele of the Berkeley Hotel. What a pity the current crop of chefs don’t do the same thing today (not that I was a chef!).

O dear, with so much to do before I start my new job, of course I find things that are far from vital and do them instead. Such as putting a whole lot of nice clothes I have shrunk from fitting onto Ebay. I draped them over the pear tree in the garden as the flash on my camera is broken and the sun was shining. Other Ebay members told me how much they liked the pictures! Well a pear tree makes a nice change from a coathanger or mannequin I suppose. I also found myself investigating replating candlesticks - a worn old pair that belonged to my grandparents have been bugging me for ages. And then I looked at www.healthierweight.co.uk - now I have stopped the diet officially I need to keep the link to it to keep motivated - you can order the shakes and stuff off the site and carry on keeping calories down that way until you feel confident of doing it yourself.
The shakes have a notably appetite suppressing effect due to their protein content, which is a great help with Littlest's teatime for instance, my weakest moment.
But writing copy? Well, that I really must do today.  A deadline always hangs over me like a little black cloud, ready to break with reproaches any minute on my silly empty head. I will have to email my fellow journalist friend to send me a strict-schoolmistress email telling me to get on with it I think.
As for finishing the edit on the proof of my novel... I haven't even located it and the first week has drifted by, very enjoyably I must say.

Eldest is 18 today. So officially grown up. There was a time, when women all had the same hairdo and men wore ties that adulthood commenced at 21 - and it really did commence too. There was none of this hanging around into your late-20s in jeans and trainers and living at home. No eternal students. You got married, moved out, set up housekeeping, got a job. Grew up. So they lowered the age, and I can't remember why, I was too young when it happened. As a result, adulthood is meant to kick in when you are still at school - which must fix in some people's minds the idea that 'Yeah, I'm an adult!!! What does it feel like? Well I go to school, come home, Mum does my washing and feeds me. I have no responsibilities beyond having a good time and passing exams. That must be what adulthood is all about!! Yeah. What fun!! Let's carry on doing that for a while."

Not that Eldest holds these views at all. But to me 21 (when I was a complete jelly of immaturity and ridiculousness myself admittedly - probably worse than 18 as we females at the time didn't have many role models of adult women behaving like adults in the real world of work  and money) still sounds a bit more solid and likely. And at least you might possibly have finished or be finishing university by then.

Eldest is completely amazing and wonderful. And I hastened to assure her that she didn't have to start paying rent suddenly, or anything like that. She has chosen to do an art foundation in her year off, then apply to university when she has her A levels. This strikes me as enormously mature, and showing a deep understanding of our willingness to support education in any way we can. I met so many teens in India when I was there at a fairly grown up 25 who hadn't a clue - taking drugs (which makes you very vulnerable to police abuse in India - in spite of so-called religious applications), dressing without respect for the locals (short shorts) and generally carrying on as if they were in West London rather than a big strange and wonderful country, where  anything goes.

This morning she had presents in our bed - Husband gave her a good camera having consulted her tutor-to-be on the right sort. And she had lots of girly stuff like a sort of stocking. Then I made her pancakes, bacon and maple syrup for breakfast, before Husband took her off to the orthodontist - she has some secondary teeth missing and is patiently wearing a brace to fix the gaps. This evening we repair to her school to see The Importance of Being Ernest - she directed and takes a small part, before taking both teenagers out to supper. Which I must research now. Happy day - the sun shines as it did on Dulwich Hospital where she was born (now pulled down - good thing too, I don't think anything else would have created the necessary cockroach Armageddon required). My best and easiest birth oddly, and my first. Although the results are all equally delightful.

From when I was about 10, my parents rented a farmhouse on a shabby farm in Sussex. It was an interesting old house with a rare Horsham stone roof, and low rooms and doorways. You had to bend double to get through one door, where it had been cut under a beam to join one side of the house to another. We would run through without stopping and down the steps on the other side, but I remember dull thuds as friends attempted to follow without looking properly.

On the farm was a barn that gradually filled with barley after harvest, and in there we would play on every day when the weather was too bad to be outside. Or just when we felt like it. I had friends living opposite, and we would dig ourselves into the barley for long interesting conversations, or try to run around in it, or build collapsing mountains. It was a happy place for us - no doubt dangerously illegal now. I doubt we would be allowed in the health and safety conscious present.
Anyway, I am sitting here in the shed typing, rather chilly - although spring does seem to have arrived outside. On my lap is a 'wheat bottle' - the smell of which hangs about me all day in a kind of comforting haze. It is one of those things you put in the microwave to heat up, and it is the only way I can keep my hands warm when in here on chilly days. The smell takes me straight back to those mounds of golden barley grains in the late 1960s.  The farmer eventually put in a modern metal silo - a tall green tower for storing the barley.

This we used for its accoustical effect. We would stick our heads through the side and sing the Pie Jesu from Faure's requiem at the top of our voices. We were about 16 at the time.

In a sincere effort to relax, I went for a shoulders, back and neck massage this morning at Virgin Active. It was pretty good, but the trouble is, you lie there with your head on one side, heavily relaxed  and end up with a slightly stiff neck. So I am now sitting here in my cabin, with my back feeling good, and my heated wheat bag balanced on my shoulders in an attempt not  to seize up again.

And I must face up to my deadlines, so get writing. I will try to blog every day while I am having these freelancing weeks, because it undoubtedly gets the fingers going.

Well, here's me at home trying to sort myself out. But the deluge of shere stuff is a bit overwhelming. I took No 2 Boy to school, trotting rather pathetically after his bicycle borne form, and then walked on to the  Virgin Active in Acton to knock some of those old calories on the head. The official 8-week diet comes to an end tomorrow, so feel all fired up to lose gradually some more pounds until I get down to the magic single figures (and squeeze back into absolutely everything that I like - even dresses that are timeless and made by my amazingly creative mother).  Talking of squeezing into dresses, I went into Eldest's room the other day where she was entertaining some friends and found Jamie, a slender whip of a boy, wearing my red silk Madame X dress - made for me by my mother for a dance we gave in the mid-1980s in a scruffy tent in the parents' garden in Kent - over his jeans and T-shirt.  I think it was just a good  idea at the time, and he looked absolutely gorgeous. I think ball gowns over men's casuals are perhaps a look that hasn't been explored before. The straps are slender diamante and it has a vaguely Edwardian air with bow and mini-bustle - although I cannot hope to bring to my appearance quite the embonpoint of the original Madame X.
Yesterday, I went to church with No 2 Boy, who settled into Sunday School and wanted to make a crucifix out of drinking straws which he brought proudly to me  half way through the service. It had a flesh-pink fluffy ball on the crux.
'What is that,' I asked.
'Jesus' head.'
'Why hasn't he got a body?'
'Because it would be big and fat as all there is is fluffy balls.'
He has seen pictures, he knows what kind of figure Jesus had.
At the end of the service, a elderly gentleman came up to me to say he had enjoyed hearing me sing. Of all the compliments that are paid, this one gives me the most pleasure and delight. I love singing, and used to do a lot, such as singing a part in the Threepenny Opera at Edinburgh, when I was at Cambridge. But very seldom does anyone comment (don't you find that people  will withold the positive - but be quite free with the negative? I do.)
Anyway, I smiled at him and said how much I appreciated what he said, and that he had said what he thought. I told him about my father, when we were standing side by side in Westminster Abbey at Christmas 2004 - the last sustained time we had together before he died.
 No 1 Boy was a chorister, and Daddy turned to me at the end of the service, and said: ' I wondered where he got his voice from, but now I realise it is from you.'  You might think it odd that he didn't  know I could make a nice noise, being my father and all, but that  is how things were between him and me. The blessing is that the last memories I have of him are loving and generous and moving.  He died suddenly a couple of months later.

It came to me quite suddenly that there was something missing out of my life. So I went to Argos, flicked through that daunting doorstep of a catalogue, and chose my firs t bread machine. Naturally, being the kind of bod I am, I chose one that was reduced by twenty pounds due to being an end of line. It is by a perfectly good maker, and looks shiny and metallic, not white and squat. I bore it home in triumph, stopping to buy the correct 'hard' flour on the way in both wholemeal and white. I already have lots of yeast at home, due to a constantly frustrated desire to make my own bread by hand (time....). Another thing that got me to this purchase is the content of commercial bread. Although we do buy  nice bread at farmers' markets sometimes, this cannot happen every day, so commercial bread with its overload of salt does find its way into our house. The trouble with it is additives - quite a lot of fat for one thing in what should traditionally be a low fat product - as well as preservatives, far too much salt and flavourings and colourings of various kinds.

If you make bread at home, you can use organic flour (I use Dove's Farm), water, and only a teaspoon of salt and another of yeast. That has to be a better option. I was afraid it might be a bit heavy, but the miraculous machine produces bread that is as light as anything with a gorgeous smooth firm crust. I add various seeds to improve the children's omega intake, and feel very generally pleased with this acquisition. I made the two boys sandwiches for lunch today from newly made bread, with home made mayonnaise, ham and lettuce,  two products that people increasingly buy ready made. The mayonnaise is made with cold-pressed rapeseed oil, as well as standard sunflower oil, again introducing more good fats into these slender creatures' diets.

O, and I was watching Charlton Heston, James Stewart and Gloria Graham in the Greatest Show on Earth on my fuzzy kitchen telly at the same time.

And the dead do speak to us, by the way. I was reading a cookery book of my  mother's called the Art of Fine Baking,  looking for a brioche recipe which is what I am going to do next - and there in her writing by the 'coffee cake' recipe was 'makes two vast loaves'.  'Vast' was a very 'her' word. Her voice sounded clearly in my head, and even nearly 14 years later, it made me cry with longing for her.

After  a long and stimulating job interview this morning, where every idea seemed to go down well, I headed for Great Ormonde Street to give  No 2 Boy's friend who is there for  the time being her birthday present. She is out of intensive care, and was asleep, feverish, as an infection has got into her line that drains the fluid from her head. I cannot begin to imagine the anxiety her mother is going through. I hope my reaction was appropriate. I could only stroke her daughter's arm and wish I had healing powers. Her long black lashes lay on her cheeks like false ones, giving her an exotic air. She breathed quite fast, and felt warm, not burning hot, which was a relief. Then she went down to the theatre to have her line changed. And I forcibly removed her mother from the hospital, stuffed her into a passing taxi and took her to an utterly frivolous lunch.
It was a celebration of 'girls' day' a Japanes festival that I  think is meant for little girls not big ones, at a restaurant in Regent Street called Cocoon. We were greeted with pink champagne, and feasted on sushi - again, I am seeing what eating proper food does for me after the seven weeks of diet, and so far it seems fine. I then had a Thai beef salad, which was delicious after all the diet food, sour and flavoursome, but without the hot chilli and lemon grass kick you get in an authentic Thai restaurant.
We sat at a table with two psychologists, who had a matchmaking agency called 70:30 - which was specifically to find millionaires suitably spouses. Great idea! they also take on non-millionaires if they are well brought up enough and with the right attitude.
By the end of it, friend's mother was smiling and laughing, and commenting entertainingly on some of the less thought-out outfits worn by her fellow guests. So I hope she felt better - so stressful to be in the hospital all the time, although of course, what else would you do when your child is in danger.
Popped her on a bus back to the hospital when the call came through that her daughter was out of surgery, and went home via a bit of research into Eldest's 18th birthday presents.

I have now finished a very happy two months features editing in the light-hearted and  frankly slightly frantic atmosphere of an esteemed and very old publication. First published in the 18th century,Tatler has seen a few changes over the last 300 years, including colour photographed and not a few flashes of nipple.  I  have decided to take a couple of weeks off to calm down and deal with an enormous tidal wave of other work, that I have been hopefully ignoring while  tattling. No deadlines lost yet, but I nearly panicked today when gmail crashed - all day long I haven't been able to access email, leaving me unable to send any work I have done, or communicate with my various commissioners.

This morning I interviewed Dr Ashton, who set up the Healthier Weight programme a few years ago. He deals with all kinds of obesity. As an epidemiologist, he is interested in excess fat and the devastating effect it has on people'shealth. I tried out his programme for purposes of sheer vanity, and was pleased to discover that my blood and blood pressure are all very healthy.  He is such an interesting man, and there is no doubt his programme works in reducing people's weight to within healthier limits - even if they put a bit back on,he will have reformed their habits in order to improve their health.

More about him next time. The doorbell just rang, and there was Tim Snaith of www.50cycles.co.uk with my new electric bike. I bought my first one in 2005 to commut e up to the West End without getting too sweaty going up Notting Hill. Alas it did n ot live up to its promise. After about six months it no longer fired on all cylinders, and instead of taking everyone on at the lights,I was left standing as it were. So I gave up on it, and used it only to cycle round the neighbourhood sans battery. But Tim after trying repeatedly to mend it,finally gave up,and in a case of extreme customer service has just delivered a replacement - a newer model in slinky matte dark grey, it looks gorgeous. I can't wait to try it out tomorrow. Thanks Tim! The electric bike is very new technology so bound to have some teething pains, but as a method of commuting around London, I would recommend it to anyone. You still pedal and take exercise,but it is just a little help,plus you go faster and don't end up so sweaty.

Today I experimented for the first time in over seven weeks eating food for lunch, as opposed to soup or a protein shake. And I am delighted to report that my stomach has definitely shrunk. I had a little sashimi from Itsu, and I couldn't really finish it. Wonderful. No more bottomless pit. It isn't emotional eating with me, it is babies, sitting in front of a computer, no time to exercise and a love of good food. And it doesn't take much to tip you over into excess calories. My metabolic base rate is about 1400 calories a day - what you consume if you lie still. More activity leads to calorie burn, but you need to find a deficit of 3,500 calories in a week to lose just one pound of weight. I did ask the health educator about shrunken stomachs (as opposed to heads), as I had read elsewhere that it is perfectly possible - but she didn't seem to know whether the course did or not. Well I think it does.

I have lost 17 and a half pounds. There is no doubt at all that losing weight makes you feel good. I can understand why people who don't have other things in their life to make them feel good would want to carry on. It is like having babies. It makes you feel good, but having too many can be bad for your body and your purse - never mind your career. (I am now officially in love with Trevor Phillips - who has pointed out that women with young children are the most discrimated group in the workplace by such a long way that we are over the horizon and round the other side of the planet, compared to a selection of much more vocal groups). One more week to go, and then I will slow down a bit for the last few pounds. I will keep a pair of trousers that were made for my 10th wedding anniverary party handy for glaring me into submission food wise. Maybe I should staple them to the fridge.

"Will you please leave your  perfumes? Because  I  want  to  show  my  little boys what your perfumes and scents were like."
OK, I say.
No 2 Boy is sitting opposite me eating fried rice with courgettes and frankfurters. And returning to his usual subjects, you know, how old is God?

He wants to know if the people we bought this house from are in heaven. No, I say, they are in Acton, or Spain. Did we buy this house  in a shop? Sort of.

Now we must set off on foot for the gym. Much saner than driving there, but not always possible due to tight time slots and always too much to do beforehand.

Husband heard loud yells from upstairs this morning. I was in No 1 Boy;s bedroom checking his BMI because he had been quite alarmed to have jumped almost a stone in weight very quickly. I pointed out that I had also had to buy him yet more trousers due ankle bone exposure only too soon after the last trouser run which might account for it. We measured him, and he seems to be 182cm now - weighing in at about 10st 6lbs. After a lot of fumbling around with the calculator - we worked out that his BMI is about 19, which is absolutely fine for a young person - being the low fat end of average. The weight gain as suspected entirely accounted for by growth spurts. So there we were attempting to do Maths when Eldest came in clutching a letter, her face lit up with joy. Yes, she had done it! Got into her first choice of art school unconditionally for an art foundation in her year off before university. This is such joyful news - isn't it lovely when things go to plan? I hope she really enjoys it and expands her horizons - we were thinking of what to do if she didn't get in. There was a second choice, and I had started thinking about art courses in Italy and so on. Which we might still make happen for her summer holidays, but she got in!

Husband meanwhile had rushed towards the stairs fearing all kinds of awful things from the screams and yells.I screamed my head off when I found my A Level results in the post box near thedoor, and my mother rushed to me nearly tripping on the stairs. I remember it well. The sun coming through the window.

Having announced her triumph, she too wanted her BMI calculated. She is a little under 19, perfectly perfect for her age and so pretty. And No 2 Boy, at just six, has made that peculiar leap they make - which is why I am never surprised really that teachers don't know a single successful formula for teaching reading. He can read. And he couldn't last week. And in preparation he started eating enormous amounts of food. I always noticed this with the other two - vast ingestion, then massive leap forward, physical or mental. And they do watch television, and they are all beautifully slim. So what have I done different? Apart from the years of my life spent in parks in all weathers - where other children are often notably absent? And the cooking of food from scratch most days. O, and vanishingly little 'treats' of Macdonalds or similar. And no sweets in the house and no automatic sweetened yoghurts or puddings or biscuits. And some control of the television. Common sense really.

What has happened to modesty? The great British tradition of seaside changing, as until recently practised even in single-sex changing rooms, seems to have evaporated. I find it quite hideous to be confronted by naked bodies, in spite of years of girls' boarding school, and hesitate to take No 2 Boy in there to change for swimming. What is it about these women that they stand about so displaying their dimples (Rubens would love it in there) to all comers. And from every angle. Please, ladies, no one in there wants to look. Dress in sections and spare us.

I have been reviewing books this week, and had forgotten how completely enjoyable this is - you read the book, and then you comment on it and quote from it. Done. In a long career I have written all kinds of different features - the most difficult are research-rich ones, where you can drown in information before boiling it down into a coherent feature. I remember trying to write a 50th memorial piece about the Spanish Civil War when I was young and inexperienced and being paralysed by all the verbiage that I absorbed. In those days, I was a member of the London Library - first hand accounts were just the start of rich seam I mined exhaustively.

For fun I read my way through the entire works of authors like Michael Arlen (only very few of his slick and sophisticated Mayfair novels have survived outside the London Library - such as the Green Hat). The London Library is a venerable private institution in St James Square, very eccentric and with a priceless collection of wonderful and often unique books - many forgotten and lost to the general reader.

The Science and Miscellaneous section was I believe the emotional origin of my fascination with the Internet. With Science put firmly in its intellectual place, you could spend hours wandering the stacks reading about Maori funeral practises, the origins of the teddy bear, the molecular structure of DNA and how to spot fake Chippendale and Meissen. It was arranged alphabetically by subject - quite mad but deliciously eclectic. Now I do the same wandering brain thing without stirring from my computer, which is probably why I have to go to the gym once more. When I was pregnant with my first baby, I was working on a magazine as usual until the last months, and used to go in there to do 'research' - falling gratefully asleep in the big red leather armchairs, the chosen volume dropping from my hand.

You also had to wear trousers in the London Library stacks. The floors of the stacks were metal grids.

Writing on very slow gym computer with sticky keyboard, and very sticky space bar. So won't write much. The very good news is that our young friend in hospital is breathing on her own again, which is wonderful. We hope to see her again soon, but of course she was being kept quiet.

I have tried to sign up No 1 Boy for the Virgin Active gym, but he is classified as a child in spite of being nearly 6ft tall, so would not be able to come on his own after school. And I don't get home earlier enough. Which is a bit annoying. He had a nice swim and a lounge in the Jacuzzi though, and thinks it is nice.

I have momentarily lost sight of No 2 Boy, so will have to sign off. Tomorrow we go down to Kent to a service in the church near where my late parents lived. We have at last got something resembling a memorial to them down there, and it is being put in the church and blessed - my mother's ashes are far away in Scotland, my father's in Dover in his father's grave. I feel we are at last bringing them together in some way.

I was never one of those girls that men worship from afar. Or at all really. I was never showered with Valentines like some of my more minxy friends, who had men swooning at their feet. Sigh. I did once get a rose in my pigeon hole at Cambridge  with an enigmatic message in French. On reflection it seems very likely it was in the wrong pigeon hole. Husband invited me on our first date at a Brazilian dance my brothers had organised on February 14 1984. And we have been known to dine out on the strength of it. I await developments.

Meanwhile, last night I came in from my slimming meeting (have actually and officially lost 13 and a half pounds) to make a heart shaped chocolate cake for No 2 Boy's Valentine disco. He was quite specific about his requirements, but I was horrifed to find no powdered sugar in the house, although Husband had loyally purchased pink food colouring. This morning I did a chocolate glaze and sprinkled it with hundreds and thousands - the annoying thing about these today is that the colour spectrum is orange and turquoise. Why? It used to be pink and baby blue.

The nicest thing about losing weight is fitting back into clothes of which one has despaired. The other very good thing about Healthier Weight is that I don't panic when I step on the bathroom scales and note my weight has gone down. For years after my mother died I associated weight loss with cancer, and had irrational feelings even though I knew I was on a diet. The support I get from team leader Jane means I don't panic, just feel pleased, as I now have the mathematical formula for weight loss

Yesterday, my young friend's brother felt unable to be at school, so No 1 Boy brought him home, fed him and played with him on the XBox to keep his mind off his sister in hospital. But, as I was sitting on the bus, feeling damp and disconsolate, a text came through, saying, "Sleeping Beauty is waking up. Consultant cautiously optimistic." The joy brought tears to my eyes, and at home I found the boys far more relaxed as they had been told as well. There is a long journey still to come, but the worst prospects do seem to be dropping slightly. Thank God. But as a measure of the character of these children's mother - when her son was with my son, she was conscious of a certain element of 'bunking off' even if the excuse was particularly good!

I bought No 2 Boy a new dressing gown, and new trainers. I had a bad case of the guilts over the weekend, because I suddenly realised his feet had grown a whole size without me noticing. And they can be so easily damaged, I fiddled with his toes until he became irritated with me, worried that they looked a little curled. I am a great advocate of the tail end of sales. The moment when the shop is so desperate to get rid  of stock that the reductions are balm to the heart of a bargain hunter. I bought him leather trainers very much reduced, but exactly what I was looking for - and this is the key, don't buy something you wouldn't usually want very much just because it is reduced, and an adorable dressing gown in checked cotton with a fleece lining (our house is drafty). He insisted on going to bed in it, and I removed it as he slept, as it was wet with his sweat. I got them to knock some more off because I noticed the pocket was stitched on upside down - as Husband said, he can read it better from up there (ie from above!).

Our new au pair seems to be settling in. I have given her directions to a good public college where she can sign up for English lessons, and she did fine yesterday picking up No 2 Boy. The only thing was, I warned her of how convincing he could be when he says Mummy lets him do something. And I found him with a huge box of tictacs, which I had bought by mistake (my one eye sometimes prevents me from seeing what size things are) of which he had eaten about half. When questions, the au pair of course told me that he had said Mummy bought them for him. In fact they are for breath freshening purposes, this diet can lead to ketosis, which makes your breath smell - but only sometimes and easily sorted out by a fruit or a meal.

I have lost a stone now, since Christmas, so well on my way, and very happy about it. Even Husband has noticed, and he is notably unbothered at least verbally by what size I am. This gives me great pleasure.

I am back in the Gym, typing away as No 2 Boy holds onto my shoulder and jiggles gently, before telling me he is hungry. (Impossible - he has had a huge plate of pancakes and bacon this morning) - but the cafe is tempting. After a series of incidents which raising the stress levels in the household exponentially in the mornings, I decided to wheel on the big guns - a proper star chart. In Hammersmith, I purchased a large sheet of stiff card, a pack of stars, pens etc to make same. I also found lots of motivational stickers with smileys, congrats of various kinds and endless positive messages. Could I find black blobs or frownie stickers? NO. And the staff in the various shops looked a bit shocked when I asked for them. So all behaviour these days is 'good' - some might be 'inappropriate' but none is ever downright awful. In spite of parents' experience to the contrary.

So I will have to improvise with a black pen. The blob might get larger and larger, but I hope not. It was all explained to No 2 Boy, and he likes his chart, that it was a star chart not a blob chart and it would be a great pity to start it off with a blob. To demonstrate, I stuck a selection of gold and silver stars all round the edge. So  he gets gold for being good immediately  - ie getting dressed and facilitating the pleasantness of family life generally. A silver star if he starts off badly but manages to make a better decision within a certain time frame. And a black blob if he is intractable. Suffise it to say, he managed a silver star this morning, which was a great relief. And solemnly told his father that 'it was a star chart, not a blob chart' - so that message has been 'internalised' anyway!

As to me, I have lost nearly a stone in weight in about a month. I feel great. My nicest clothes are beginning to fit me again, and my tummy no longer - as a American writer put it after the birth of her child - lies down beside me on the bed like a little dog. Another month to go, and I can't recommend this kind of diet highly enough. Another friend of mine is on the Lighter Life version - again controlled eating for a while, then a management section where you learn to control your eating impulses and keep the weight off. She is thrilled, but you need to have to lose 3 stone for that one, and I had two only to lose. Discovering Healthier Weight was wonderful.

My little friend in hospital is apparently stable. We can't see her at the moment, as she needs to be kept very quiet. We continue to think and pray.

We are in a state of waiting at the moment, because a friend of No 1 Boy's whose mother is a good old friend of ours, is in intensive care at a leading children's hospital, having had a haemorrhage in her brain due to a very rare condition of her blood vessels. It started with a terrible headache and suspected meningitis a couple of days ago. Thank goodness there was access to the best possible treatment, but it is very touch and go, and all we can do is pray and offer practical support. There is nothing else you can say really.

Except write a bit about this lovely girl. I first saw her when she was about three. White skin, large dark eyes with endless thick dark lashes and smooth, shining dark hair - so straight it was like black treacle, couldn't be parted. She was at a very smart nursery school with No 1 Boy in Notting Hill Gate, where the children came home every lunchtime with something quite obviously done by the teachers - nice young ladies who cut and pasted bits of paper in the shape of squirrels, suns and flowers on behalf of our offspring. I didn't like this much I must say, and I found most of the other parents a bit alarming. Lots of make up, shining bells of hair and proper clothing at drop off time. It was before the age of the SUV, but they were those kind of mothers - many American. One stood out, and I started talking to her at a preposterously elaborate children's party in a large church in Kensington. She was quite obviously not one of them, although she looked good - but she had IRONY! She had wit and sparkle (she still does). I have always had American friends, I am naturally drawn to Americans because of my lovely godfather from Washington DC - who was a real East Coast intellectual with the warmest heart and kindest nature. The glossy mothers couldn't cope with me at all. They thought I was strange when I invited them to tea - we lived at that time in the parents-in-law's house, which is very old boho and rather old-fashioned and charming. To them it was horrifying, scruffy and worrying, but to my new friend - a confirmed anglophile - it was fascinating. She understood.

Now, 11 years late, her lovely daughter lies waiting for the outcome of this event. And we wait with her, only knowing that the best possible medical attention is right beside her. And that she enormously loved, and always will be.

Littlest, now he is six, will be officially known as No 2 Boy from now on. I realise his party passed without comment. Well, you try gathering a group of around 12 boys and a few girls into a smallish house for the afternoon, and see what happens. They do what my mother used to call ragging. ie jumping on eachother and scrapping like puppies in a basket. No 2 Boy with enormous ambition and confidence, which bodes well for his future, also invited as many of his sister's friends as he could remember to his party. Eldest is 17 - so we had a good group of willing teenagers. Husband roped them in, and everyone went to the park for a game of football to tire them out a bit. One little girl wore a blue satin princess dress and slippers, so I asked her if she would like to stay with me in the house. Not a bit of it, I found a pair of wellies that fitted and off she went gamely as a kind of football fairy. No 2 Boy had requested a Pirates of the Caribbean cake, so I made a large chocolate cake, covered it with marbled blue icing, and created waves with blue royal icing. I am afraid I cheated a bit and bought a Pirates boat complete with pirates, and pirate candles, but the waves were nice, and decorated with silver bobbles as shiny foam. No 2 Boy was a bit disappointed that he couldn't eat the boat though.

They all came back, and we had some rather chaotic games of pass the parcel and musical bumps, and everyone seemed to have a nice time. In our seventeen years of parenting, we have never submitted to the fascism of the party bag - but there were only two children who seemed to want one, and one little boy didn't want to go home. So I think it was a success. We had some relieved looking parents (they had had a Saturday afternoon off) drinking fizzy wine and eating sandwiches in the kitchen at the end. And the teenagers hoovered up everything else - including their special grown-up pina colada flavour jelly (a slightly worrying opaque white wobbly affair).

The quest for an au pair continues. Lots of nice sounding girls are in touch. It is just a question now of choosing one from so many good prospect to be our temporary neice.

As an exile from my shed, I am using computers in the Virgin Active Gym in Acton. The machines are a bit bewildering - they have changed a bit since I last did any intensive training, but I think that classes might work better for me, with the occasional wild ride on a fixed bicycle - which I managed ths morning. I would much rather cycle on the road, but cold dark nghts and the traffic through central London put me off at this time of year.

We need some help now as well, and we have gone onto the website where we found our last lovely Polish au pair. We had Asia last summer, living in Littlest's bedroom (now he is six, perhaps he should be called No 2 Boy rather than Littlest? What do you think?). Then Husband had a brain wave - we have put up a proper wall across the end of the sitting room, creating a nice room with lots of book shelves for any potential au pair to be private and happy with her own television, music etc (we even had the wall sound proofed!) and poked through an old closed up door that dates from when there were two rooms. As Husband pointed out, we simply don't use that end of the room now, except for piano practise, and the piano is against the new wall. Oddly enough, it sort of makes the sitting room look bigger.

Next thing is to get rid of more junk, and clear a space, get a nice bed and generally create a new bed sitting room. Our builders are hard at work filling the house with a strong glue smell. It should be ready to sort out this weekend, and then we hope to welcome a kind of new 'neice' into our house. When my sisters children were younger, they would come and stay to help, and it evolved into au pairs, from Croatia, Sweden, France and Poland. Nearly all of them delightful. The key to being a good au pair, and being a good host family, is flexibility. Coming as we do from large noisy families, Husband and I should be pretty welcoming by now.

We had an incredibly complicated meeting for the Healthier Weight thing I am doing on Tuesday. It involved the Law of Thermodynamics, and a lot of adding up and dividing to reach an understanding of just how to lose a pound of yellow fat (there is a representation of this stuff on the table in front of us - like a bulgy shiny yellow sponge monster from outer thigh).

If you are not that overweight, your Base Metabolic Rate or BMR is lower - as it 'takes less fuel to keep a smaller car ticking over'. So you need to consume even less calories in order to reach the calorie deficit needed to shed fat. Each pound of fat is 3500 calories, so you have to miss out on multiples of that every week in order to reduce (as it used to be called). The diet is 850 calories - so, having done the sum I came out with the rate of 2.2lbs of weight loss a week - whereas my colleagues whose BMR is higher, get to lose around 5 to six pounds each week. So that explains why I have found it so hard to lose weight. The only way to get this to go up is to exercise more. We are already fitted with pedometers to make sure we do our 10,000 steps a day, which is surprisingly easy, but now we must up the activity in order to lose more weight while taking in the same amount of calories. The amazing thing about this diet is that I simply don't feel unmanageably hungry, which is the only way it is possible to eat this few calories. I also feel amazingly well.

So, off to the local Virgin Active, in Acton (very spacious with lovely tennis courts outside) which has a special offer on, and doesn't lock you in for one of those horrible years that people go on paying for long after they have relapsed into sofa-bound gloom once again. I have booked in for two months, with Littlest coming with me into the very nice children's area and pool. Which means I can take him with me, leave him happily occupied, and try to raise my BMR in classes and on the bikes. I just hope it doesn't make me hungry.

I haven't been regularly to the gym for a few years, and used to rather enjoy a circuit training class, so am hoping to find the same buzz here. It also has free internet access, so tomorrow when I need to write at home where the internet is still down, I will be in there, training and writing and drinking their good black coffee.

Will let you know how I get on. Meanwhile, I have lost about 9lbs in just over three weeks. Which is hugely encouraging.

OK, so Husband has closed down a business, and in the process closed down the Internet at home while he moves all his communications into the same place. Cue me on deadline Friday - no Internet, and plenty of attempts to get on line by closing down bits of the network and rebooting. Cue, enormous frustration and deadline not met. Only today did it all become clear, which means I am corresponding with you, dear readers, from an Internet 'cafe' in the Uxbridge Road. We are squeezed so close together that it reminds me of a dormitory in a hippie hostel I stayed in in New Dehli in 1985. I had come back into New Delhi because I have finally been rather ill, after two months of being fine, and also to meet not-yet-Husband, who was coming to join me in my travels. In Kajuraho to visit temples which originally had been surrounded by water, and are covered in ravishing, sinuous carvings, I had eaten some dodgy rice, and was so ill that I didn't realise my bizarre symptoms were anything to worry about. Two days later and my skin became doughy, classic symptom of real dehydration, and I had to go into hospital. There I was treated, thank goodness not with a drip, behind a screen. Also behind the screen with the doctor and me were about four other people with undefinted roles in my healing - possibly spectators. If you stayed still for long enough in India, a group of spectators usually gathered, but I didn't expect this in hospital. When I got home and told my doctor what my symptoms had been - the shedding of water, but I won't go into details as they are a bit horrid - she told me that I had had cholera. Now, I am not sure if that was right - it was definitely dysentery, but cholera?

Anyway, back to the hostel. The beds in the mixed dorm were jammed close together. The idea was to snuggle into what we called our maggot bags - white sheet bags with a flap to go over pillow, and go to sleep regardless of who else was in the room. I went to sleep with the beds beside me unoccupied. I woke up with a ravishingly beautiful face within inches of mine, breathing quietly in sleep. He looked like something divine from Valhalla - all blond and tanned and even featured. I lay there looking at him for a bit, before getting up and moving to somewhere where I could recover in private. We never spoke, but it was an interesting moment in five months of interesting moments. Another one: in another hippie hostel in Benares I was sharing a room with my friend Charlotte, and there was a spare charpoi (Indian bedstead strung with rope) on the other wall. I awoke in the night to the brightest possible moonlight streaming into the room. On the third charpoi were two rats on their hind legs, dancing. Do rats dance? Or was I dreaming?

What mother is not racked with guilt? In magazines you read that this is because we go out to work. But I have never felt guilty about that. I was earning a living, and setting a good example of industry, and paying the mortgage - what's to feel guilty about? I did take five years as a freelance when the older two were at primary school, rushing to deadlines at 3pm, and then belting to the playground where I felt somewhat uncomfortable as I wasn't part of the cosy coffee set.

It had its major upsides - I had time to do proper circuit training so got nice and fit. But it was quite lonely as well, sitting in my office, watching the cherry tree opposite blossom, grown scab coloured leaves, and then shed them, through the long days. I couldn't have a mummy-type social life, because I was working in the day. It wasn't by any means all bad, and the children got a lot of my company - not always a delightful experience I am sure. Anyway, the guilt I feel is for being myself, when I am meant to be an angel.

A mother should be perfect, loving and patient, and able to say exactly the right thing at all times. Well, I am not. I am cross, and tired sometimes. Oddly enough, this diet, although low in calories, has given me energy and I feel very well. Perhaps eating much less is much better for us altogether. They do say it prolongs your life.

Today is Littlest's sixth birthday. He won't be six til 10.20pm this evening, when he was born. So he always spends his birthday the age he was before. We had presents in bed, but it was all such a rush, we couldn't celebrate bringing him this far with reasonable success. Later, perhaps, and at the weekend when he is having a small party we can have a day that is all about him.

I just hope that the majority of the time we are reasonably happy, and that is what the children remember. But I would so have loved to have given them the kind of childhood where they write later in life, "I had the perfect childhood, running wild in the fields, and coming home to a slap up tea of home made scones and cream and jam..." Well, I have managed that during brief holidays, but their childhood is urban and grey and not very free.

They are loved though. Perhaps that is all that matters.

I only lost a pound this week, but then so did three or four of the other women in my group. Second week phenomenon apparently - but I have lost nearly half a stone in two weeks so now know what is possible. And they have a sophisticated machine that shows it is fat that has gone, not anything else like water or muscle. So a pound is two pats of butter, and my trousers are undoubtedly looser. The 10,000 steps are easy to achieve really - you just have to make sure you walk about a bit. Really, it isn't many - our ancestors did this in the first few hours of every day, which is why they were stronger and fitter than us in many ways. Examination of women's skeletons from the Tudor age show very strong bones, and no osteoporosis at all as they walked to market and back every day and worked hard both inside and outside the house. One chap who drives an hour to work found it hard though, he also has a short lunchbreak. But he is bound to work it out somehow.

The boys rushed out this morning for a quick snowball fight, which I caught on camera. Snow is such a rare thing in England that I try to record it, for possible Christmas card use this year. And we had an interview with the headmaster about Littlest's hitting - really fairly normal in small boys but made to seem like a terrible thing which is so upsetting. They hadn't been telling us about it - kept us completely in the dark and then came down like a ton of bricks. Not a pleasant experience....

Cold hands. Cold tea, and a need to go back indoors, but realise haven't blogged for a while.

My two weeks at the Tatler have been a blast. Completely different atmosphere from Vogue, and very different to my last session there (which lasted a year) under a different editor. There is a kind of wildness, wit and amusement value all day long. It is much less formal, but everyone works their socks off, because there aren't really many of them and it is very text heavy. My idea of fun, plenty to do, and  everyone doing it.

This weekend, Husband took No 1 Boy to Derbyshire for a walk. They rang me from the top of Kinder Scout, as I watched Littlest's swimming lesson. They had an amazing time, and I had made this more comfortable for my big son by buying him a pair of size 11 Goretex walking boots in the Clarks sale. They look quite groovy, and were much reduced in a way that pleases this bargain-hunter's heart. And, unlike so many walking boots, they were comfortable from kick off. Usually, there is a whole kind of arcane thing where you have to suffer in order to wear your boots in, but I had investigated the insides and they felt nice and soft.

Part of the new diet is doing 10,000 steps a day - they fit you with a pedometer which you are expected to attach to your trousers. Well, no trousers as I tend to wear dresses for work. So I attached the little thing to my pants, and it ticked up such an enormous amount of steps that I didn't quite believe it - 15,000. The next day, I had it on my trousers as I escorted Littlest around the neighbourhood, and it came to a more realistic 10,000 at the end of the day, including all housework. It isn'at nearly as daunting as it seems. Just walking to the Tube instead of taking the bus, seems to account for most of it. Most encouraging. Excellent exercise, easily obtained - my favourite sort - you get somewhere while you are doing it.

Will wear a belt tomorrow with my dress. I think the pants are unduly mobile and encourage it to double-count (or something - all sounds a bit worrying!)

I am afraid I had to blog this, but I did manage to lose 5 and a half pounds in the first week of the new diet, and I have learned something really interesting. High protein shakes really do stop you from feeling hungry, and that is the most useful thing about this diet I think. I am not a snacker, but I do get hungry when dieting, so this is completely wonderful. I met with the group last night, and we all had headaches in the first two days, but drinking more water and getting used to it eliminated this problem.

When I have finished the diet, I will make smoothies with protein powder like they do in the US to replace some meals to keep the weight under control (as well as getting back on the bike and walking a lot). I have a pedometer attached to my pants to measure my steps. The prescription is 10,000 a day, and I have already done about 4,000 by walking to the tube instead of taking the bus. So that should work particularly if I do the same at the end of the day as well.

I am hoping to get back into my wedding dress and as it were stay there, at the end of this. The idea is to avoid middle aged spread, but I also learned that I have raised cholesterol in spite of a very healthy low fat diet (I just eat too much - ie too big helpings - which is why I put on weight - quite simple really! Pure greed and love of good food). Lovely nurse Helen tells me the raised cholesterol is due to me being 'a bit overweight' and it will go down as soon as my weight is right - hopefully at the end of the eight week Healthier Weight programme. Another very good reason to get this thing under control.

It isn't even mid-January, and there is heat in the sun. As we pottered back from church this morning - Littlest wobbling slightly on an old bike of No 1 Boy's that is on the large side for him - I saw a Red Admiral  butterfly in perfect condition, alite on the tarpaulin that covers the sofa we are currently trying to 'freecycle'. If it was a butterfly that was overwintering, it would have got a bit tatty by now. I fear it has hatched out early in the heat of the sun, but where from? It is very mysterious.  Where do the caterpillars find enough to eat? Do the crysalises go into hibernation? If someone has some answers, please let me know.
But it bodes ill for the stability of our wildlife and climate. And the birds were yelling their heads off in a very spring like way yesterday as well.
Church is at the end of the road. A perfectly pleasant modern building, from which drift clouds of incense in the London style (very very high). But so pleasant and exuberant is Father Ian, the young vicar, that it mitigates the outward manifestations of high-churchness that I can find a bit camp and mawkish in other hands. There used to be a huge, Gothic, brick church there - alas, it was torn down to make way for housing etc, and this new small church on the grounds of 'dry rot' - probably not. The congregation is expanding, and I wonder how long Father Ian's attractive style will fit inside such an inadequate building.
 It has a horrid little open space in the middle, into which all the detritus of the Uxbridge Road blows and then can't blow out again. I felt incensed by it every time I walked past to take Littlest to Sunday school, so I decided to do something about it. With Father Ian's permission, and armed with stout black rubber gloves, boots and secateurs, I plunged in. The most part of the rubbish, apart from carrier bags, was the cellophane covering of cigarette packets - the places was lines and laminated and mosaiced with them. People stroll along from the newsagent peeling them off and chucking them around in eager anticipation of that first, delightful, death-dealing suck of chemical smoke. Then the wind takes them, whisks them up and over, and into the little space, and plasters them in layers in the clay. Nothing like an enclosed task to attract me - it is open-ended ones I hate - like housework. I like to work fast and hard, and have something to show for it at the end. So, polishing shoes, changing beds, emptying dishwashers etc yes, vague muddling about with duster and hoover, NO.

Anyway, after an hour of scrabbling around with the rubber gloves, wild pruning, and wrenching, and scraping, and gathering, the little space looked a bit muddy but essentially clean and tidy. I think I pulled up quite a nice fuchsia by mistake, but never mind. There was a lso a white heather which took a bit of a battering, but I am sure they will grow back again. And roses positively like rough treatment - like masochists, it encourages them.
This virtuous activity was also good for the new diet - as I could enter an hour's gardening into my little record book. I have been experimenting with the shakes, adding bran, barleygrass powder etc, to make them taste a little more 'real'. Think I have got the hang of it now. Hope it shows on the scales at the meeting on Tuesday.

Having watched two men close to me marry without having even the most basic conversations about what the other person felt or thought on a range of vital subjects (one married a woman with whom he didn't even share an language... and both are now divorced), and having not really covered the bases myself, I thought I would adapt this list from the US as it seems like a very good idea to get all this straight before going up the aisle. I will have been married twenty years this year, so it is much too late for me and we have managed to muddle along somehow, but I hope people will be more sensible now. Also, a wedding is not a marriage - I see so many people getting het up about the wedding and planning all sorts of silly details, much encouraged by a millions-of-pounds industry set up to feed off exactly the kind of anxiety about the shade of tulle to wrap the sugared almonds in (sugared almonds? why?). When in fact that is one day, and the rest of your life is many days. And sugared almonds feature on very few of them.

) Have we discussed whether or not to have children, and if the answer is yes, who is going to look after them?

2) What do we both believe about the earning and spending of money? Are our ideas similar? Do we have a joint account, and if so what is it used to pay for? (so many divorce petitions for unreasonable behaviour cite 'financial irresponsibility' as a major factor).

3) How do we look after our home? Who does what in the way of cooking, cleaning etc?

4) Do we know about each other's health? Both physical and mental?

5) Do we show how much we love each other by being affectionate, not just passionate?

6) Can we comfortably and openly discuss our sexual needs, preferences and fears?

7) Will there be a television in the bedroom? (Very American one this, but you could add playstation/Xbox I think).

8) Do we truly listen to each other and fairly consider one another’s ideas and complaints?

9) Have we reached a clear understanding of each other’s spiritual beliefs and needs, and have we discussed when and how our children will be exposed to religious/moral education? (good one, again very American, where they are more open to religion than in this godless country, but if the husband for instance sneers at the wife's fumbling attempts to teach the children about Jesus, then much hurt might be caused).

10) Do we like each other’s friends? (It is often said that men lose friends when they marry - but friends should be a swirling pattern full of change and variation, with a hard core of old old friends who are as close or closer than family. It is nice to pick up new friends along the way as a couple as well. One of the things that I really liked about my husband before I married him was how well he got on with all my friends.)

11) Do we value and respect each other’s parents, and is either of us concerned about whether the parents will interfere with the relationship? (VITAL - I know hardly anyone of my generation who hasn't had in-law problems at some time or another. My mother was a perfect mother in law, but she died so young and so early  in our marriage. My father was not such a picnic although Husband was extremely kind and forebearing.)

12) What does my family do that annoys you? (This is interesting, and good to get out of the way.)

13) Are there some things that you and I are NOT prepared to give up in the marriage? (Again, a good one. If the husband (as a boyfriend of mine did) expects for instance to spend every weekend in winter playing rugby and every summer cricket, then it is as well to know before the door slams shut).

14) If one of us were to be offered a career opportunity in a location far from the other’s family, are we prepared to move? (Again interesting, and very modern dilemma. In the past the woman would always follow the man. But what happens now?)

15) Does each of us feel fully confident in the other’s commitment to the marriage and believe that the bond can survive whatever challenges we may face? (This is the big general conversation, and the subject that gets skated over in the passionate love that leads most of us into marriage. You adore the other person so much that you almost suppress your personality in your desire to be with them for life and have their babies. So it is worth setting aside the passion for a few hours, and getting this one sorted out. With the horrible new idea of a 'starter wife' for instance, and the pre-nup culture that has come over here, marriages seem more and more conditional. ie 'I will stick around if you do exactly what I want....' But it can't be like that, life is too important, exciting, frightening and wonderful for half-measures and emotional meanness. It is worth discussing serious illness, death and grief, for instance the inability to have children or a disabled child, as well as more mundane things - it cannot prepare us, but at least we might find out if the other person is strong enough to cope and won't just scarper at the first dark cloud on the horizon.)

Well, I am a fresh-food kind of girl. I like lots of vegetables, and fruit as well, and freshly cooked food. And I go on a diet which is all processed food in little pouches, sachet and bowls, like a spaceman, but with water already added. Courtesy of a doctor-led company called Healthier Weight Centre. And I am finding it peculiar. But also quite a good way of doing it now it is so hard as I get older. Because you simply cannot eat anything else except what they provide - three 'shakes' ie whey powder mixed with other stuff that is not very healthy, but also vitamins. I have found that if you whizz it up with berries it is just about OK. On the first morning, I found swallowing the strawberry flavoured one neat for breakfast was a really terrible experience.
The other bits are soups, which are OK, particularly the pea and ham one, and ready meals, such as dahl, and stew, which are perfectly nice really.
But this morning, I  waited until I had cleared out a little garden down by the church before having this shake thing. And then it was bearable, particularly as I whizzed into it strawberries, blueberries and raspberries. It does seem to prevent hunger, and that is honestly the main thing.
The trouble with having lost baby and other weight before is that I don't really have any bad habits left to get rid of - apart from simply eating too much - but not high fat or processed food - and sitting in front of a computer all day. So doing it this way - eight weeks of virtually prescribed food - is probably best for me. After that I will go on to the ultra-healthy GI diet, as recommended to me by the food writer Rose Prince. She says it is nuts, seeds, and wholemeal stuff, with plenty of veg, and that is what I really enjoy anyway, so looking forward to that.
Also, no booze at  all for eight weeks. So that must be a good thing. They say that if you stick to it, you will drop 2 stone, and that is about what I need to do. My neighbour in the first meeting was there because her friend had just lost three stone in 2 months - but I am not really up for that.
The questionnaire was quite something - it went on a bit about sleep apnoea, which is when you are so fat round the neck that it virtually strangles you at night. Well my fat stays politely around my hind quarters (which is the healthiest place for it) apparently fat around your middle (like a beer belly) is 'metabolically active' - ie gets up to all sorts of hormonal, blood pressure raising and artery blocking tricks, while the more feminine fat distribution is relatively inactive (except when I run of course, when it is perhaps like the 'jello on springs' analogy that Tony Curtis uses for Marilyn Monroe's bottom in Some Like It Hot).
Thinking of that film, I was wondering if, in the future when we are entirely used to same sex 'marriages' - the last line of that immortally funny film won't be funny any more.
I am sure you all know it, but the film ends with Jack Lemmon fending off a proposal from his millionaire with the words, as he tears off his wig, 'I'm a man!' To which the reply is, 'Nobody's perfect.' It works for me every time.

Well, I have decided to embark upon a radical diet. Last time I did this it was because I didn't want to be fat and forty. It was too alliterative. Now I don't want to fix in place a middle aged spread that appeared post Littlest, and seems firmly determined to remain around my middle. So tonight I go to the Healthier Weight Centre, and have a good talking to from a strict sounding lady called Jane. I have already had a kind of medical from a beautiful Amazon called Helen, who confided to me that she herself had lost seven stone. Now that would be a bit radical for me - two will be just fine. But I feel a certain amount of trepidation as I put my dietary needs into the hands of an institution. Husband will get very restless, because he loves food and cooking, and he even quite likes my cooking. But he ain't going to get any of that for two months. So off I go... More soon if anyone is interested.

Once again I find myself back in a place where I used to be. Only this time it is the identical job on the identical magazine. Not just the same business, different magazine. Or same magazine, more elevated position. But filling in for the features editor of Tatler. I was doing that when Eldest was a toddler - the call came that the new editor was sitting there without staff and would I please come and help? So I did, and lasted a year before leaving to have No 1 Boy.  I start tomorrow, and wonder what this particular flashback will be like.
I tried venturing professionally away from magazines, first onto newspapers, which I loved. Then into the internet, which I very much enjoy as an entity, a research and communication tool, but find working in it curiously corporate and stuffy  for something that was started by geeks, scientists and hippies. The magazine world is much cooler and looser, the ideas can take flight much more easily. Funny really, when you think with the Internet you can put things up and pull them down in a trice. And a magazine takes three months to happen.
But then, the established glossies should be confident of doing what they do so well. Whereas the professional internet as I experienced it was full of scaredy cats who didn't dare rock the corporate boat. While all around them was a seething surf of people just desperate to communicate with each other throught this wonderful new medium. Websites will stand and fall on the strength of their contributors - it is by no means a free ride to a readership - and that is what is coming over the horizon. And the professional people who try to control the internet will not  be able to - and a good thing too.
This is the ultimate in consumer choice, and the instant feedback that many journalists dread is already here. A US journalist signed off his piece in a newspaper recently with a kind of weary disclaimer against emails, asking us please not to email him as he had already done the research and wasn't interested in what the grubby public had to say about his piece. Amusing, but I feel it will be ineffectual.

"Do slugs mind dying?" questioned Littlest as he sidled and skipped and dawdled and climbed onto walls and simply stopped to think (what the euphemistic term 'walking' actually means with a five year old) on our way home from school.  I thought that perhaps slugs were not equipped with the presence of mind to 'mind' anything much, driven merely by a need to feed and reproduce their slimy selves wherever possible.
This arose because I glanced up at the porch of a house. Painted cream, it has become frosted with algae no doubt due to a leaking gutter, and a slug (or possibly a snail) had meandered over it, ingesting the green and nutritious paste, leaving a creamy and winding trail behind it.
"Does it have a  mouth on its foot," Littlest asked when I explained what the marks meant. Good conclusion I thought. So we talked about  being a less complicated organism with combined foot, front, mouth etc. I have a sneaking pleasure in slugs. I like to look at very large ones that you find in dripping woods,  and revel in their many colourways. Shiny black with a yellow piping around the edge, chocolate brown with beige, slightly alarming flesh coloured - like something that was once human, but now really isn't but still animate.
In London, as we do with so many things, we get the plain grey variety that do not excite me visually. Snails in London are dull as well - on the Downs, where they live on chalk, their shells range from peachy pink to pale yellow, with shades of tortoiseshell and whorls of black - probably due to changes in diet. I collect these exquisite shells as you would on a beach, whenever we go walking, and they rattle about it my pockets for months, to be taken out and looked at all over again on a Tube train on a wet evening in February.

Just before I go on a rigorous diet to prevent middle age spread, I have been invited to the Wolsey for lunch. How lovely that is, but I have a cold that has removed my appetite and is only barely suppressed by sinister red and yellow capsules. Do I go in from the writing shed and begin the lengthy process of turning myself from raddled housewife with red nose and fluffy hair, into aging babe suitable for the incredibly trendy and fashionable Wolsey? What to do? Of course I have to do my best, because the people I am meeting are old friends from my university and baby-journalist days, and it will be a treat even if I have to stick to clear soup.
Last time I went to the Wolsey, there was Daniel Craig sitting with his back to me, displaying the geometrical perfection of his shoulder-waist ratio. I must say, when he turned round it was something of a disappointment. His face looks fine blown up on screen, but in real life it seems rather small and hairy and busy. I was reminded of a hermit crab, with all its feelers and front legs squeezing out of the front of its inadequate shell. Still, the back was deeply satisfying.

One of the best things about Christmas 2006 was a quintissentially British experience in a wood in Wales. We stayed with friends for a couple of days after the family party on the day, and cooked and ate two further Christmas dinners - turkey (which my friend was given by the butcher for faithful custom) and another a goose that we brought with us. I think it might have been an old Canada goose smothered by a malefactor in the park - it was somewhat stringy, not like a plump farmyard goose at all - evidence in the muscles of extensive migration I thought. Anyway, everyone seemed to like it with quince and apple sauce, fried sliced quince, red cabbage and potatoes roasted in goose fat.
In order to entertain and exercise us between the two feasts we were taken up to a castle on top of a hill, and then into a wood, armed with a picnic of rolls and Christmas ham. It rained steadily, Wales being on the West is very very wet. We stood beneath a leafless tree and made sandwiche and the children rolled about on rugs only lightly protecting them from the mud. Everything became soggy. But none of it mattered, because the pleasure was curiously extreme. Being this weird warm year, it wasn't cold, only soggy and very funny, and  as I said, British.  The joy of that kind of thing is the pleasure of friends - there was some talk of the alternative pleasure of lying on a yacht's deck sipping champagne - and the  slithering back down the hill to strip off, change into dry clothes and lounge in front of an open fire.  The rest of the time was taken up with No 1 Boy having  a lovely time slipping silently between the old farm buildings armed with a BB gun, stalking and being stalked by the twins and their younger brother. While Littlest and their smallest person had hot chocolate in a barn, and rushed about outslide getting muddy and wet and playing a sword in the stone game of their own devising. Very little screen time, no bad temper, and everyone out of bed at reasonable times.
Now I am taking No 1 Boy to the British Museum to see an exhibition of archeology from the air, as Littlest is back at school, and he doesn't go back til tomorrow.

I managed to mix a few cocktails last night. The pomegranite (sp?) one was the most popular. A good gaggle of cheerful neighbours of all ages down to nine months came to call, and Littlest spent the evening playing football in the hall with the daughter of one of them. The advantage of him being at the closest school, is that neighbours' children go there, so there is overlap in the street.  The disadvantage is the extreme lack of ambition around learning. Now I am working fewer hours, I intend to get much more involved and see what I can do about pushing things along and attending the school as a volunteer in the New Year.
There are NY resolutions to be made of course, but not until next week - first we go to Wales, leaving Eldest in charge and planning her  New Year's Eve party. She keeps saying that no adult need be present, but as she is borrowing Husband's parents house, we beg to differ.  In central London these days you need a bouncer at the very least.
Under the desk, No 1 Boy's rock tumbler tumbles noisily on, rather soothing sort of mineral noise - I suppose the sound of geological processes much speeded up.
 

Sister in Law very brightly gave Littlest a wonderful gold multi-functional book called Egyptology. He clasped it to himself and said with extremely sincere sincerity, "JUST what I always wanted." He spends ages looking - particularly at the lift-the-flap Tutankamen's tomb - culminating in a mummy which he peeps at regularly . I remember having a similar reaction to a Viking skeleton in my poetry book, illustrating a poem about the Vikings discovering America. Peeping and shivering, and then doing it again.

In the night he half woke, asking for his 'Chinese' book. We gave him Egyptology and found him clasping it like a teddy in the morning. We played a game called Senit from it this morning - I made up some rules which worked perfectly well - and he enjoyed it all enormously. No 1 Boy's rock tumbler is grinding away at my feet. We find it too noisy for the house, but he seems pleased with it. He gave me a foot bath. I am overwhelmed with the sweetness of this gift. Last night he filled it with warm water and plugged it in, insisting that I sit and bathe my feet in bubbles. It was delightful. Just sitting still is quite delightful.
Now the day is getting away from me. I have printed out a heiroglyphic alphabet for Littlest, and must prepare for our made cocktail party later. House is Augean stables to clean due to junk levels from emptying parental homes , plus need for a playroom which we don't have. Toys take up an appalling amount of room.

We got through that all right. A seething tide composed of four generations in the parents-in-law's house, all scrunching and ripping, sipping and supping, kissing and hugging, singing and dancing. Very bright and swirly is how I remember it. Now I am in the shed briefly looking for postcards, so I can invite the neighbours in for mad  cocktails tomorrow. During the course o f the Vogue List compilation I was sent a whole lot of odd fruit liqueurs such as guava, lychee and pomegratate. I intend to cut them with dry fizzy wine and serve them to the neighbours. I am not sure what the reaction will be, but also intend to serve what my father used to call 'blotting paper' to soak them up. So just a quick post today, hope everyone is having a good family time. Everyone this end seems to have calmed down and they are being nice to each other the majority of the time, which is always encouraging.

This morning in church I noticed various things stuck to my glasses. Hmmm, breathing a mist onto them had no effect, so I surrepticiously licked the lenses. The tiny spots were garlic from making lasagne yesterday - have you ever noticed that, allowed to dry, garlic is the stickiest stuff imaginabel. I have had a kind of organic snowstorm on my glasses for at least 24 hours. That is one of the only and very minor inconveniences of seeing with one eye. You don't notice when the lens is bespattered, lending you an air of disorganisation bordering on the clinical.

You might well wonder why I am blogging on Christmas Day. A domestic goddess like me will surely be  whipping herself into a frenzy of turkey stuffing, potato roasting, pudding boiling, sprout (whatever you do with them....ing) etc. But we go to the parents-in-law on Christmas Day for lunch, and they have five daughters who are all more than capable of cooking a lunch collectively - although Husband is doing the potatoes as we speak in the house. The shed is warm and cosy, No 1 Boy is tapping away chatting to his friend in Australia behind me, and the radiator has warmed the little wooden structure admirably. Last night was different - the teenagers went with Husband to Midnight Mass in Westminster Abbey, and I went into overdrive doing last bits of packing and stocking stuffing. Every year I fear I have not enough to create that curious shaped leg in my uncle's old shooting stockings, now sadly moth eaten I am ashamed to say.

And Littlest keeps coming in and asking for a present. The answer has to be NO, because we are hoping that the imperative of presents will finally get through to him that No means No, and no amount of kicking and screaming will change that. We have never given in to tantrums - which is the great spoiler of young children - and yet he goes on. He has already had a stocking full of coal, about which he was craftily cheerful (I think craftily, he might just have been cheerful - he is often unexpected) and suggested we could put it on our new fire. He was so good that he quickly got to open the reserve stocking. After that things deteriorated a bit, and in church of course he wanted to  join his new friends in running about. 

Now he is roaring in the garden, and you will all think what a heartless and unChristmassy mother I am. But seriously, he is a forceful personality, stubborn and determined - which are good things in life - I wish I had been better able to stand up for myself against work-place bullies over the years. He would be easy to spoil. Giving him what he wants does  have the desired effect - ie he is quiet for five minutes, but the consequences are not to be tolerated. I am old enough to know adults who were spoilt as children (the word NO was never said to them), and it is not pretty, and they are SO not happy. It is much harder and more painful to keep up the message that bad behaviour is never rewarded - because let's face it, out there in the world that is NOT the case very often. But those are not the kinds of rewards I want for my children.

My Christmas wish is peace on earth  - at least we aspire to this, even if the world of men cannot deliver. If we didn't have high ideals, then there would be nothing to live up to. And peace in my little family, loving hearts and warm wishes towards each other. No turning away, cold words, witholding of warmth. Those are the killers of family life, and goodness knows I am as guilty as the next person. We all need forgiveness.

My fingers are so cold that hitting the keys is quite painful, so I will have to keep this short. The writing shed is unheated at the moment, as I am the only one who works here right now. And feel stingy about turning on the radiator. Fast typing is simply not enough to improve lamentable circulation.

I left Vogue yesterday, clutching  a voucher for a beauty salon as a very kind and unexpected present. Thought only permanent staff were given such things. The beauty dept also gave me a bag  of goodies -  I feel I am presented out now and don't need Christmas at all. Vogue has been a terrific boost. Going back after so many years felt very familiar, some of the same faces still around and the same smell on the staircase - sort of dusty, took me straight to my youth via my nose, if you know what I mean.

Our organic deliveries arrived, and I have put all the Christmas meat into the outdoor fridge. Was a bit surprised when a friend pointed out that it is odd to keep a perfectly normal fridge in the garden. I am not sure why we do this, it is a space issue I think, but it is particularly good in winter as it is so cold, and in summer because you can chill wine just by the barbecue. But I do admit is looks a little odd unless you are used to it.
 We did spice the beef, with cardamon pods, juniper, cloves, salt and brown sugar. The most delicious way to serve beef. Then you slow cook it in a pot, and serve it in very thin slices hot and then cold in sandwiches. It is the old fashioned way of preserving meat, and it keeps in its coat of spices in the fridge just getting more fragrant and delicious. It is doing things like that that connect one to the pre-fridge days of British wintertime when all non-breeding stock were slaughtered as indoor feeding was virtually impossible and very expensive.
Must go in now, fingers going white, signalling  Reynaud's syndrome which is no joke...

People ebb away from London now. The river in Oxford Street, although still turbulent, is subtly thinner and weaker as the flow away from the city builds up. The office is very quiet. There is a new cliche about tumbleweed blowing between the desks, but it applies here.

Even the frenetic writing of Christmas cards has slowed down and all but ceased. It is a strange thing, this need that humans have to inject rhythm into their lives. Christmas is an excuse for a kind of ending, and then a beginning again, which is refreshing to the spirits. We stock up as if for a siege, when it is at the most two days of no shopping in most places and, where we live, probably none as there are so many Lebanese shops near us selling super-fresh giant bunches of mint, flat leaf parsley, coriander and dill; glowing juicy tomatoes on the branch; pale coloured mini courgettes; purple patent leather look aubergines; sweet peppers in jade, coral, blood stone, emerald and ivory; and wonderful plump fruit -pomegranites, mangos, grapes, yellow dates and heaps of little tangerines. The whole offering on the pavement putting supermarkets to shame.

Inside, tender halal lamb, minced and mixed with herbs and spices to make the most delicious hamburgers that my children adore. For them, we put with salad, mayonnaise and ketchup. For grown ups, we made a chopped herb salad, and tahin, a mix of yoghurt, tahini (sesame paste sold in big plastic pots), fresh crushed garlic, salt and lemon. Packed with calcium and completely delicious. Piles of baklava, the irresistible pastries soaked in syrup and layered with nuts; myriad tubs of olives in every colour and shape, their flavour different to the sanitised conventional British offering, more pungent and challenging, which doesn't stop Littlest liking them. Bricks of fresh fetta in its whey (again quite different to the mean little packs of oversalted, tasteless, white stuff you get in British shops), which you pluck out with tongs and take home to mix with chopped tomato, cucumber and mint, with more lemon and olive oil. And very fresh pitta bread. We were given some very good advice - only ever buy pitta when it feels really really soft - that means it is fresh. I haven't bought pitta anywhere else since, as it goes stale very fast indeed but most people don't know enough to tell.

The diet that is obtainable in these shops is simply and wildly superior to that which the expensive deception that the food processing industry would like us to consume. When you can see the fresh ingredients in front of you, there is no way that any bulking agents, fillers, flavourings, colourings and other cheap and nasty rubbish can be added without you noticing. I bet the people who do all their food shopping at Damas Gate and Naamah in the Uxbridge Road, would be found to have lower blood pressure, cleaner arterie, less abdominal fat, fewer heart attacks and generally better health than those who shop conventionally in the UK. Of course, such shops are not widely available to the general public, outside the places where immigrants live and shop.

But that is where I will be stocking up for Christmas feasting.

This year, for a change, I didn't write an enormous great 'what to buy for Christmas' piece. I did last year - choosing presents for difficult people - and it was a bit of this and that. I do wonder whether anyone every followed my words and bought what I suggested. Really, for almost anyone, including people you don't really like much, charity presents provide a wonderful answer. We have all got too much stuff - why not transfer the stuff to people who have far too little? Makes perfect sense to me. My sister has sent each of us a tap in South America. Brilliant.

The best one I bought last year was a kind of tsetse fly repellent thingy. Consisting of a blue blanket, a bucket and a kind of clothes horse, it needed to be soaked in cow's urine (not supplied) to attract the evil, disease spreading insects (actually, I must stop there, evolution is not the fault of the tsetse fly) and immerse them in insecticide. It had a kind of oppositional quality to the much vaunted pashmina (which Lisa Armstrong says will make a strong return next year - good, I thought, I have never stopped wearing, sleeping under, and generally benefitting from a camel-coloured 'pashmina' that belonged to my grandmother and which she used to keep herself warm while feeding her babies).

I also enjoyed buying shoes for children who didn't have any, and a bicycle for my delightful godson who has done some aid work - not for him to ride, but for a midwife in Africa, so she could get to the mothers in time to save their lives. He was delighted with his confirmation present, I am glad to say, confirming in my mind his special qualities.

I would like for Christmas, in no particular order, a sholley (for bringing back all the lovely produce available on the Uxbridge Road, Lebanese, Polish, Moroccan etc); a Marni dress (working at Vogue has convinced me only of this - that Marni suits a very wide range of women, and could even do something for me); NO SCENT (no one can buy scent for anyone else - this is because noses are all so different, unless they already know what the person wears, and then it is a bit of a samey old present anyway. My father gave me a bottle of Christian Dior Eau de Toilette for Christmas when I was 12 or 13. I thought I had opened the wrong present - but he assured me it was for me - that he was acknowledging that I wasn't a little girl any more. I still have it. Opening it fills me with nostalgia, not that helpful at this time of year.) Jewellery, I like the look of long chains of semi precious beads, interspersed with flat discs. SOAP. I love soap, and all bath stuffs. NO HOME STUFF. I have far too much of everything to the point of claustrophobia and a neurotic desire to redistribute quantities of it to FREECYCLE.

At this time of year, the papers are full of advice as to how to deal with the office party. Over a long career, I have been to many of these and would like to put on the record that no one has ever attempted to kiss me in the stationary cupboard, photocopy their bottoms or say something rude to the boss while I have been present. But then I think I have led a quite sheltered professional life. And I have never lost my job as a result of indiscretion.

At the big US ISP I worked for, the parties were lavish and fabulous. Whole families were often invited and there were clowns and chocolate fountains, dancing and lavish amounts of varied booze. When I first started at Vogue, the Christmas party took place in a private club in Knightsbridge, and the canapes consisted of soggy white toast with sardine and jelly balanced on top with wine to drink. Very different last night - although still in Knightsbridge just up the road - delicious canapes of some kind of truffly white dollop on crisp bases, prawns, little spoons of what seemed to be carpaccio, and copius Moet.

The place was crammed with mostly women, that being the nature of Conde Nast. It was quite a shock to me to work with men after the first five years of my career at Vogue. We went out together, but only in the most platonic way. I remember one gorgeous young man popping his head out of a partition and telling me, apropos of nothing at all, that homosexuality was not the answer to contraception. At the ISP, dating was positively encouraged - and couple of the year was announced at the Christmas party. People married and had babies, it was like some kind of colony on an alien planet.

"Are you happy being yourself?" questions Littlest from his nest of pillows, his pink face suddenly much older than his nearly-six years in the glow of his blue, shell-shaped nightlight.

He takes me aback when he does this. He is a very complex individual. I always see my children as people first, not babies, or toddlers, or teenagers. And they have certainly borne this out by their behaviour, what they say, their enduring characteristics. Bits of typical toddler or teenage behaviour seem merely bolted on to the core personality - the less desirable bits one hopes will drop away as they go into the next phase.

Littlest can hurt. He can do it when he wants, and he can do it with words as well as hands and feet - which is much more common in small boys. It is extraordinary that his brain works in such a way at such an early age. I think last night he wasn't trying specifically to hurt in fact, but he was trying to evade bedtime and cause a delay in the inevitable tumble into sleep.

I questioned him a bit, but he adopted his secret smile and wouldn't respond to my questioning him. I told him that I was fine with myself, although naturally one made adjustments when one's more glaring faults became too lurid for public display. He seemed contented with that, and snuggled down for kisses, hugs and the ritual words: "When will you come back?" "Any minute". "Will you keep some dinner for me?" (he is our only really foodie child).

Then I extricate myself from him and tumble down the stairs for the next bit - the herculean task of shifting No 1 Boy towards washing and dinner - like moving some enormous monument up a steep hill. I have spent money putting in a lovely shower to make the whole thing quicker and easier - family life and flow-through the bathroom much improved - but then he goes and has a bath.... reappearing months later clutching and damp and wrinkled book.

If you look at January Vogue, out now, there is a more up to date picture of me on the contributer's page. Taken by the same photographer, Dan Stevens, but some years late - ie about a month ago - than the one on the front of the website. Like that one, he positioned me in front of a window and photographed me in daylight. Nowhere to hide the advancing years under those circumstanced, but he always makes me laugh and forget that laughing might furrow up my face.
 The piece I did in this issue is about Shirley Oakes, a young actress still at university, whom I spotted in Dan's portfolio wearing an extraordinary 1970s dress. Dan told me she had inherited lots of vintage clothes, so I thought I would look into the story as it seemed straightforward and the clothes fascinating - cutting edge couture from the golden age.
In fact the story was a whole lot more interesting. The grandmother, Nancy Oakes, was the daughter of Sir Harry Oakes, a gold millionaire murdered in the Bahamas in 1943. Nancy's husband was put on trial but got off.  For more, plus pictures of Shirley looking exactly like her pretty grandmother, see January Vogue.
Last night, I went to a party given by Shirley's parents to launch her jewellery collection. In the course of our association, I had helped her land a small part in an English film called Dangerous Parking (Eldest is also in it as an extra). Well,  I asked Shirley if it had been all right.
"A baptism of fire," she said, smiling ruefully. 'O dear,' I thought. 'What have I done?'
 I think she has been plunged straight into that actress's dilemma - " I only take my clothes off if the part demands it" - and it did. It is a n interesting sounding film though, and I hope leads to other things for her.

Then I had to rush away to see Whipping It Up at the Bush Theatre, starring my friend Robert Bathurst. This has been a fantastic sell out success, a very funny play about the Whips offic e in the House of Commons in a n imagined future where the Tories have won by a three-seat margin, so the Whips' machinations to win the vote have reached crescendos of dirty trickery, not stopping at blackmail.
 We had a rushed drink with Robert afterwards, where  Husband, Eldest, Robert  and me all chattered 19 to the dozen, before rushing him to the Tube station so he could belt home to the country. The run has been extended so his wife and children are rather lacking in fatherly, pre-Christmas support, but there is nothing an actor likes more than acting to an appreciative audience, so it should be a happy one.

Last night was sister-in-law Emily Young's private view at the Fine Arts Society in New Bond Street. She is a petite and pretty woman, who found her artistic vocation in sculpture after painting for some years. Their grandmother was a sculptor - at a time when women sat about at home waiting to get married, she set off for Paris to study with Rodin and - according to her memoirs and other sister-in-law Louisa's biography - she hung on to her virtue vigorously in spite of the Bohemian onslaught (think La Boheme) from all and sundry, I imagine including Rodin himself. Who made several of his female pupils thoroughly miserable.

Anyway, Kathleen, the grandmother, was the last of a huge family and her birth killed her mother. Which was probably why she had more freedom. She created bronze portraits -both busts and full length, which can still be seen all over the place including in Westminster Abbey's Poet's Corner, and as war memorials, and married Robert Falcon Scott. She didn't know she was a widow until a year after his death, when she was told on the ship that was taking her to New Zealand to greet him. Their offspring was Peter Scott, the naturalist and artist, a thoroughly interesting man well ahead of his time in the conservation stakes. She then married Husband and his five sisters' grandfather and surprised everyone by producing their father at the age of 45.

The sculptural gene has manifested itself now in Emily - although her medium is stone, the older, more wildly patterned, more groined and boiled and crunched and volcanicised by the unimaginable forces of time. She then finds in the stone angel's faces and women's torsos and lunar discs aching to get out of its stony bondage. The pieces are usually only partly polished, so an angel's hair for instance is striations in the rock, and the natural broken textures provide a dynamic contrast with the smooth polished surfaces that she has worked.

The contrast between Emily and her enormous tons of rock is particularly touching. The party was hilarious and fun, with her sculptures downstairs and a huge collection of Ernest Shepherd cartoons upstairs. When I was young I would spend hours poring over old bound copies of Punch magazine, a British institution until it died an ignominious death a few years ago. Shepherd, most famous for the Winnie the Pooh illustrations, was a prolific cartoonist for Punch, and I would try my best to copy his light and easy style - needless to say my copies were galumphing in comparison. So last night was a double pleasure: Emily's lovely heads, gazing serenely into the distance, and Shepherd's adorable images of a past civilisation thickly hung on the walls upstairs. I have never seen so many red 'sold' dots.

I went for a job interview in the most peculiar office last week. It was slap bang on the south embankment of the Thames, with a large arched glass window debouching straight onto the pavement. I was lost in admiration for the lovely view initially, even under a grey sky 'earth hath nothing to show more fair'. Then I questioned the incumbent of the said office about it.

'Is it mirrored glass on the other side?' You had to assume this, as it was like a shop window otherwise. 'Oh no,' said the charming incumbant. 'They take photographs of me,' she said, only mildly resentful. 'I feel like a gold fish in a bowl. Oh, and they moon at me sometimes,' she added as an afterthought.

When I cleared out my father's house, I found bunches of knitting needles. They must have been my mother's, I imagine. I haven't done any knitting since I was ill in bed at prep school aged nine, and knitted a navy blue cardigan for my doll. I still have it, and simply could not remember how I had done it. It is perfectly made, with inset sleeves, proper buttonholes and ribbing around the cuffs and the bottom. I was so bewildered by this forgotten skill that I ignored the needles while taking a kind of prophilactic possession of them - against a day when I could once more remember how to knit.

Many years ago my aunt was editor of the Vogue Knitting Book, so I told her of my thwarted knitting ambitions. By return of post came an introductory publication dating from around my birth, which taught from basic to how to use one of those patterns that look like something MI5 has cooked up.

That also lay dormant for a while, as did some wool I had acquired at a school fete and rolled into ancipatory balls of red, blue and green. Then, on Monday, I managed to summon needles (pins in Scotland), Vogue Knitting Book and wool into the same space/time continuum - ie the sofa. I open the booklet at page one and stared and stared at the photograph of wool wrapped around a thumb. No matter what I did the wool refused to cast itself on, and I felt helpless and daft, stabbing the needles back into the ball of wool in frustration. I was simply too tired to remember the skill, whatever the stimulus.

The next night, I started earlier in the evening, determined this time to crack it, and giggling at the description of a certain knitting style as ideal 'for showing off pretty hands'. That dates it. I peeped sideways at Husband to see if he was becoming mesmerised by my hands, but he was watching television instead. In those days before television was very common, perhaps Husbands had time to admire the flash of their wives hands.

I cracked it, the stitches cast on, and I remembered both plain and purl. A nice looking smooth piece of knitting is gradually extruding itself from the needles. Littlest is fascinated and asked me to bring it upstairs to show him at bedtime the next day.

"Don't take it down again. Don't do it unless I am watching," he demanded. Obviously a built in audience for my pretty hands. I did though, I sneaked it down and carried on. It will be a jumper for his teddy. It is becoming quite addictive.

I still sigh and gasp at how much lower public institutions can go in supporting social disarray. Trudging along hip deep in the sludge this week is Ann Furedi, chief executive of the 'Pregnancy' advisory service, as quoted on the front of the Times today: "Having sex without repercussions is a right that should not be complicated by unwanted children..." Sorry? I read it again. Sex without repercussions? How does that work? We have horribly high STI rates among younger and younger people - leading to infertility, and our teenage pregnancies are off the scale. Libby Purvis, with whom I have always found myself agreeing, pointed out in her column a couple of weeks ago in the same newspaper, exactly what the repercussions of sex are. That, whatever people like Ms Furedi would like to think, it is not like a cheerful game of tennis on a sunny afternoon between friends (I was just going to say tennis, but then I remembered the ferocious nature of professional tennis).

She pointed to the many cases in the papers recently about fathers killing their children for reasons of sexual jealousy - one of the most powerful and irrational sensations known to man or woman. Nothing new of course - Medea did this to Jason - it isn't just men who kill children - women do it nearly as often - and those are NSPCC stats.

Sexual love is a kind of madness which can lead anything from wonderful relationships, great art and enduring love, to war (Trojan), murder (frequently), despair and suicide - to say nothing of the low-level misery of rejection, feeling used and unrequited love. That is no repercussions? And a right to this kind of tennis-type sex? What about our duty to life? to our fellow humans? to our potential children? When these people were growing up there was a tiny sliver of window in all the history of human affairs when syphillis had been defeated by penicillin, AIDS had not appeared, and the Pill was hailed as the answer to everything. But the golden age dissolved into first herpes, then AIDS - the Pill caused blood clots, and made many of us fat and miserable.

On the one hand, we learn that women who have had an abortion suffered twice the level of mental health problems and three times the risk of major depression. Which indicates that they mourn as they would a miscarriage - but possibly worse because compounded with guilt. So, 'no' consequences there then. On the other hand, 32% of women having abortions have had at least one previous one, risking infections and damage to their reproductive tract.

But then Ms Furedi is in the business of providing abortions, so she would say that, wouldn't she? But she is deluded if she thinks that sex can be without repercussions however easy it is to flush out the consequences.

In Sunday School, Littlest for a change did not try to escape every five minutes on the pretext of needing the loo. He made a very sparkly angel out of a paper plate which kept him glued (literally - the pritstick was located on his seat) to the chair. Then we had a rehearsal for the Christmas play. The author, Emma, who runs Bush Hall, a music centre nearby, and I, read and sang most of it, with intermittent moos and baas from the shy little boys present. Littlest did then make several bids for freedom, and I performed Away in the Manger with my back jammed against the exit.

I thought he wasn't really taking it in, until in the afternoon I was reading the papers in bed (to keep warm) when he came shyly in singing the theme song, composed by Emma. It goes, "Has anyone seen my friends, Eeeyore. Has anyone seen my friends?" And it is now playing a loop tape in my brain. So he was listening after all. The story is about a little donkey who can't find his friends, until he gets to the stable to find them all clustered about the manger. Very sweet. It will be a lovely performance. The only logical problem in my opinion is that the donkey was Mary's chief mode of transport that night, so how did she get there if the donkey is wandering around looking for his friends instead of doing his duty and carrying her to Bethlehem? Anyway, I am nitpicking and should be slapped down firmly.

I was saying in a previous post that Christmas is forever dimmed by the absence too soon in her life of my mother. But I am beginning to think that watching Littlest be a cow - and No 1 Boy singing with his Choir -  might just turn up the lights for me.

It's Friday, so I am back in the writing shed, but autumn has arrived and I have forgotten completely how to create any heat. Think I might have just tried to turn on the air con - necessary in high summer to prevent computers melting, but superfluous now.  Anyway, my nails are a bit purple, which is never a good thing. Long and elegant in the summer, they degenerate into sad flaky stumps in the winter due to poor circulation. A quick visit to a tropical country would do me a lot of good at this moment.

This evening, a friend is lending me her two children as she and her husband are getting away together for a night in a nice hotel. This is a very good thing for couples to do, and I like to encourage it. We are lucky enough to be able to leave Littlest with his siblings overnight as Eldest is now 17.

So we had a long conversation about routines, food preferences etc. I would find it difficult to take children whose routine is markedly different from that which we try nightly to impose upon Littlest, but I had a good feeling that these children would respond to the usual supper, bath, story, bed thing. The youngest is a miniature little girl with a will of reinforced concrete and the appetite of a bird. Parents never remember that their children are often much better behaved with others. The mother was rhapsodising about No 1 Boy - yes, he is a delight, but he is also to his parents not so nice all the time. Would be weird if he were. I think it is a sign of feeling safe, that you know you will not be rejected if you show the raw power of your bad mood.

Ah, family life. My childhood home was peaceful. I really don't have much memory of contact with my parents at all. From the earliest age we roamed about outside all the year round without supervision. Vivid flashes of memory do persist. Of my father in his yellow towelling dressing gown, coming down the passage to tell me we were going to France. I was sitting on my potty chair, which had a plastic quilted yellow back. I must have been three as my mother was still pregnant with my younger brother. Another later memory is of me left alone with a babysitter who happened to be Brown Owl. I was about six and had burned my finger, and was surrupticiously drinking the mix of bicarbonate of soda and water that my mother had given me to soothe it. I always did like strange tastes. Brown Owl enthused me with a desire to be a Brownie - and I did briefly join in dancing around the toadstool as a Gnome (best brownie division I always thought - what saddo wanted to be a Pixie?).

But then boarding school happened to me as soon as I was seven, and I couldn't be a part-time, holiday Brownie. My parents, in a mysterious and rather horrible flurry, moved us all from Kent to Surrey anyway, to a grim house high up on a hill and miles from the nearest village, where there was no one to play with at all. Brief glimpses of memory there are much gloomier - my mother weeping into the AGA for instance. But also being small enough to sit on an early wooden skateboard to career wildly down the hill, falling in a heap at the bottom. Feeding soft ginger biscuits to the cows. And my younger brother sticking a kitten head down into a jam jar - the brief moment of it fitting so neatly and looking astonished through the glass - potted cat - is still there in my mind.

Our youngest child is five, as previously mentioned. Last night when I was putting him to bed, he was as usual desperate to put off the fateful moment of sleep, so sought to engage me in increasingly vivid conversation. "The year 5s did an assembly today all about the Romans. When were the Romans?"

Me, "About two thousand years ago."

"OK, they played football and tennis."

"Really? I didn't know that".

"And they had chariot wheel races. They had wheels made of wood with a seat on them. Did they have plastic and metal and rubber?"

"No, they didn't have plastic and rubber. But they did have metal, iron, copper, gold and silver."

"O, ok. The wheels were made of wood and leather and iron. And they fell off all the time, but it didn't matter because they wore armour."

Image in head of Roman soldiers on primitive unicycles, bouncing off in all directions.

"Hmmm. I think they might have been chariot races - you know with horses, like we saw in France (a couple of summers ago we went to a mad and wonderful place in the Vendee where they stage full scale chariot races in a mini Colisseum as well as throwing a few handy Christians to the lions, tigers etc). The Romans were interesting because they had central heating and bathrooms as well. Now I think it is time for bed."

"No, no, and then the day before we had the Ancient Greeks (voice speeding up). When were they?"

"They were the civilisation before the Romans."

"OK. So there was a door made of paper. And a paper bathroom. And a paper loo. Decorated with gold and silver. Did they have diamonds?"

"Yes, but not in the bathrooms... Now, I really think we should have a song and go to sleep."

Bright little face peering at me through the gloom. I sing a bit. Eyes begin to droop. Peace. But the invention that bursts and burgeons under the pressure of bedtime is never less than amazing. The older two children laughed and laughed when I told them. Then we settled down to watch Volcano, a suitably ridiculous disaster movie with added lava. I was able to say pyroclastic flow a bit, which always makes me happy.

Is it advancing age, or have I always been like this? I think in fact this is simply a character trait that , as you get old, becomes enhanced by the sheer weight of daftness, duplicity and  down-right skulduggery that you experience every day. I found myself talking sternly to the radio. A female MP was waffling on about a 'raft of measures' - none of which she seemed prepared to describe or disclose, about how the lot of women has improved so much under Blair. And no one really challenged her - she went on and on talking as politicians do after 'media training' without saying anything interesting or of note - except that one woman pensioner a day coming in (perhaps the same one regular as clockwork) to say that she is better off now than she ever had been in her life before. This I do find strange I must say.
Anyway, there I was telling the radio please to get out of this woman exactly what the 'raft of measures' are. When I first became a mother in 1989, I found to my horror that I couldn't claim my childcare expenses against tax as a freelance journalist. And that, as I had only been in my job for 18 months, I wouldn't be able to take maternity leave. That has now changed, and in fact my editor gave me a contract to produce a certain number of pages per month for a fixed fee which really  helped. Although I was at the computer three days after Eldest was born, wrestling with some poorly written copy, when my temperature shot up to 102 as the milk came in.
As for childcare, we juggled and managed somehow. I had a very dodgy nanny three days a week (from an agency who had believed all her lies - she wasn't at all what she claimed to be, and it was only when another local nanny spilled the beans that we found out - where Eldest spent those early inarticulate months, I have no idea). My mother would do a day and Husband would do a day, and somehow we managed.
When No 1 Boy was a baby, and I badly needed to get back to work, I was told that, no, childcare help in the borough was not for the likes of me - ie married and wanting to earn a living. Things have changed a bit with Blair - I think the primary schools are a little less rubbish - although at the moment Littlest does seem to be going backwards. I do like his new school, but he is once again doing three letter words, that he did early last year in the other school.
Anyway, the next thing that made me spit at the radio was a feature on choristers. No 1 Boy was a chorister, and I am sure it did him good. It was a lot of hard work, but he still loves singing, and he did end up enjoying it. He still serves regularly in the Abbey now, and definitely feels part of it all. Now he is in a Church of England comp - which although fine, cannot and does not engage him in the same way.
But the woman doing the radio feature kept going on and on about 'relevance'. Is there a more annoying word in the English language? It is usually used as a sneer at some long cherished tradition, that people love, but that might just have some kind of middle-class connotation. And she flogged and flogged the word, until it bled crocodile tears. The choristers she interviewed just sounded so terrific, bright and bonny and thoroughly engaged. The dedicated parents driving them back and forth, loving and making sacrifices. So unlike the stereotypical image of the British family today, slobbing in front of various screens, vastly overweight, disengaged from society and each other, fatty foods heating separately in the microwave, that frankly I prefer the irrelevance of cathedral life by a very very long way.
Perhaps all 'culture' is irrelevant now? But you only have to have a quick scoot around the internet to see how engaged people of all classes and types and colours are with books, music, theatre, cinema etc. Relevance, who needs to be told what is by someone else with a politically correct axe to grind?
 

What is it with Uniqlo's advertising agency? Why do they think we will want to buy jumpers if they are displayed on the Underground loosely draped over the fragile forms of extremely thin and pale boys and girls. Of course, consumptive tended to have a hectic flush, so it is probably the wrong description. Perhaps lead poisoning would be a better old-fashioned affliction? Anyway, I feel the opposite of a need to pass through this shop's doors - low prices or no low prices - the models looks simply awful, not helped by stark lighting. You imagine them posing hopefully under neon strips. Before crawling back under whatever rock harboured their pallor previously.

My eyes always are irresistibly attracted to the written word. Sometimes I deliberately don't put any reading matter in my bag. This is agony, but it is an attempt to give my eye a rest. All the way up the escalators at Oxford Circus there are pictures from the different ages of George Michael, from bouffant and undecided, to gay, middle aged and proud. Each one is neatly punctuated with chewing gum, which does make me feel queasy.

Poor man keeps being found in stationary vehicles, late at night, snoring peacefully around London. It doesn't seem such a wicked thing to do, just very odd. It has been attributed to the soporific effects that occur after indulgence in a certain drug prevalent in clubs. So you are high, and then you are asleep - I suppose with just enough warning to pull over to the side of the road. Honestly, at his age. The best I can get up to these days is a little wine - and I have to be careful to have eaten beforehand or feel very strange.

Still weirdly warm here in West London. Cycled frantically to school with Littlest, who still refuses to use his brakes, tootling along on the pavement beside me - until he vanished. He had shot straight across a junction while I turned left - and of course I go immediately into mad woman mode calling his name and peering wildly around. The instinct is strong and deeply rooted in our animal selves. Look at sheep calling frantically for out-of-sight lambs. Well I am the same, an old yew trotting back and forth, yellowing fleece decorated like a Christmas tree with bits of stray vegetation, calling and calling for my progeny. I am sure other mothers aren't quite so daft - the pavements are thick with parents and children a high proportion of which know Littlest, at least by sight - and it might be a function of having just the one seeing eye that makes me so frantic when he slips out of sight.

It is so unfair on little children, all the rushing we have to do to get anywhere. Dawdling, idling, squatting down to examine very small things on the ground is more their style - and it is deeply enjoyable sometimes deliberately to make myself slow down and look with them as a snail slowly puts out its horns, and a spider spins its web.

But when the rush dies down, and the world slows, how lost I feel.  I always found it difficult to adapt to different rhythms. I  am always happy with too much to do, too many projects, balls spinning in the air. I remember we were invited once to stay for ten days with some kind people in the Normandy countryside over Christmas. I went nearly mad with boredom when I should have been trying to recharge myself for the next frantic year. Perhaps I suffer from the newly fashionable adult hyperactivity - or perhaps I just have a very low boredom threshold.

Immersed as I was in entertaining two five-year-olds, I didn't see that the afternoon had somewhat got away from me - until, help! it was 4.30pm , I was damp, grubby and dishevelled, and I had to be tidily arranged and in Oxford by 6.45 for dinner in Brasenose College. I flung myself into bath, decided hair left over from Vogue 90th party would do, shoved myself into tight underwear and new party dress. Pushed tooth brush, nightie and cleansing cream into a helpfully available (ie on bedroom floor) organic jute shopper and haired out of the house and into the car. Of course at that hour on a Friday night, the traffic was rammed all the way to the Green, so I jumped out with a hasty kiss and farewell, and into the Tube (was going to take the Oxford Tube bus, but with the traffic like that had a hasty rethink). Got to Paddington and ran down the steps jumping into the nearest vaguely likely train - my travel arrangement are often along the lines of shoot now, ask questions later - luckily the second stop was Oxford.

I examined my shining pink face in my powder compact and made myself up from foundation outwards, before glancing at the Standard Lite newspaper to see a debate going on whereby a young man was crossly remarking on how he didn't like it when women did this in public. Honestly, I couldn't care  - I kept my elbows to myself and did it as fast as I could, right down to the glitter eyeliner that the beauty editor at Vogue has not only given me permission to wear, but also given me.
We arrived in Oxford Station in pouring rain about an hour later, so more skittering around corners and I was  on a bus. Now, I went to Cambridge so Oxford is a mystery to me, but kind fellow passengers told me where to get off, and a white haired old don on a bicycle directed me through the wet evening, up a street off the High, and into the Porters Lodge. There, my friend Mike met me to take me into the Senior Common Room to meet his wife and the rest of the assembled brains - pulling my boots off and my party shoes on on the way. Didn't want the assembled academics to think that Voguettes thought flat pixie boots suitable for High Table.
We paraded solemnly down the centre of Hall, past the serried ranks of undergrads in gowns, all bathed in flattering candlelight. I sat on the Master's left hand, and very nice he was too - he is an empirical physicist, and when I shyly confided that I found theoretical physics made my brain itch, particularly the super strings theory, he heartily agreed. We then got onto the need to teach five-year-olds physics, which is simply how the physical world is, and therefore essential information. I vowed to myself to do more gas-solid-liquid stuff with Littlest as soon as possible - and I am sure we can somehow do refraction in the bath. The food and wine were exemplary. The conversation lively and charming. The grace and dismissal both in Latin, the service wonderful.
Then we withdrew to the Senior Common Room for Dessert. For the benefit of my US readers, dessert in the traditional sense in England is a course after pudding, where you are offered fruit, both fresh and dried, cheese, chocolates and sweetmeats, all washed down with sweet wines such as port and Madeira. I had Sauternes, as the others give me a headache, and sat next to a constitutional expert, and a US scientist who confessed to having subscribed to French Vogue when growing up in Lebanan: "My mother thought I was gay," he confided. "But I am not!"
Opposite was a Swedish philosopher, and the constitutionalist and he got into a lively debate about exactly how many Muslims Mr Blair had or had not freed. (Lots, if you take Bosnia into consideration by the way).
Then it was coffee in yet another nice room, lined with good paintings including two Stanley Spencers of a former master in pencil. Then Mike and Anne took me back to their house to sleep, from which blissful comfort I was awakened by their boiler in the early hours, which sounded like an aeroplane taking off in the attic. It was such a good way to spend an evening - I hope I will be invited again.

Fridays are sometimes a day when I can slightly catch up with myself. I don't go to the office, so I can do things like talk to Eric our builder who is patching up our poor cracked house. We have retrieved a stove from a flat my sister in law bought to exhibit her sculpture, and want to fit it in place of the one we bought in 1999, which is now crumbling in all areas (door won't stay shut with propping with stool, knobs falling off, extractor hood given up ghost and no possibility of any spares). Ridiculously short life. Really annoying. Anyway, the new-old one from the flat is a SMEG (a brand I have hitherto avoided ). I thought there was a committee somewhere that checked when things were imported into different countries that the brand name didn't have unfortunate connotation. Obviously the process broke down here, but the equipment is very good so I am glad to have it. With any luck it will last a bit  longer. Examining the separate oven and hob when they arrived, it was quite clear that the top had hardly been used, and the oven not at all. Good news for us, as pristine though very dusty.

I had to go to IKEA to buy a piece of work surface in which to embed the gas hob. While in there, and it was early so not too  crowded, I was overwhelmed with a sensation of grief. I think it was looking at all the Christmas stuff. It suddenly came to me why I don't really enjoy Christmas as I used to - it is to do with losing my mother. She absolutely loved Christmas until the end of  her life, and always made a marvellous one for all or any of the family and stray friends who turned up. There was a kind of hushed thrill about it. Turning up on Christmas Eve - her lovely tree glowing in the hall - the pleasure of being with her and of sleeping in my home - long talking sessions in the kitchen as we cooked together - later her joy in my children. It was her apotheosis really, all her ability to make things beautiful, to cook delicious fresh English food, to have a welcoming home came to a kind of peak of pleasure and excitement. My father too was good at this time of year, because he loved entertaining, and would beetle off to get some special offer or other on wine from Tesco to keep everyone topped up.

Since Mummy died in 1993, I have been a  bit at a loss. For a few years I managed to escape with friends and my own stray siblings to a cottage in the country which was a good substitute as I did lots of cooking and I love my friends. But then Husband's parents have had a whole-family Christmas for years and years. No one , apart from me going first to my own home and then to the cottage, has ducked out. It is a lovely day, but it is not my lovely day. Every year I do really enjoy it, but .... Isn't it ridiculous at my stage of life to mind? I am trying to think about how to get back that special Christmas sensation. I try the trick of buying the one new special bobble for the tree, of making a Christmas pudding and getting everyone to stir it, of enjoying buying and making presents. Of going and singing carols, sipping mulled wine, giving thanks for my blessings. But the ghost of Christmas past will not be conjured up. Perhaps I should just shrug and get on with making it nice for my children as I hope I always do.

One nice thing happened during my father's last Christmas - 2005. He came to the Abbey with us and stood beside me in that beautiful place, belting out the carols in his fine baritone and looking proudly at his grandson singing celestial music on the other side of the Choir. At the end he said, 'I often wondered where your son's voice came from, but now I realise it's from you.' Probably the nicest thing he ever said to me, and one of the last. He died not long afterwards.


 

Well, that was fun. My feet were a little sore from wearing high heels on a stone floor. Now marble is hardwearing, easy to clean and smart, but gosh it plays havoc with the balls of the feet elegantly elevated in black suede. And mine were by no means the highest. Of course there is a kind of window between about 16 and 40 when high-heels are fine - after that, strictly hostilities-only.

We arrived right at the beginning at the Serpentine Gallery, looking clean and clear without an exhibition except for the big, blown up, pictures from the issue. One Mario Testino of the models, and one Bailey of himself with Jean Shrimpton. Other images, of Kate Moss by Nick Knight, were projected on the white walls.

To drink there were pink and orange cocktails, which looked beautiful and actually smelt really nice - particularly the mandarin martinis. But not for me. I haven't drunk spirits for years really. But there was lots of Moet in those glasses moulded (reputedly but highly unlikelyly) on the breasts of poor Marie Antoinette, like little dishes on stems. For years they were considered unfashionable, but now the height of fashion again - just as I inherit some from my father's cupboard.

There were three grades of photographer. The ones out by the entrance in the dark. The ones just inside with the Vogue printed wall for people like the beautiful and tiny Thandie Newton, model Lily Cole and designer Zandra Rhodes to pose against. Then inside were the social photographers like my old friend from Tatler days, Dafydd Jones, wandering about catching those celestial combinations, when the stars move close to eachother in promising conjunction. One very pretty couple moved very close indeed, to the extent that that classic sentence: 'Get a room' possibly needed to be expressed.

I spent half an hour escorting my first Vogue editor Miss Miller around the luckily fairly empty rooms, locating people for her to talk to like Manolo Blahnik and Bruce Oldfield. I think she felt a bit constrained to begin with, but warmed up and laughed as I conjured up some ancient memories for her entertainment.

There were the usual recidivists outside under large umbrellas smoking - it was perhaps the most fun bit of the party. One pretty girl was moaning that it was raining, but she couldn't resist - and why did all the most amusing people insist on smoking? Husband arrived and quickly found himself out there with many old friends (he has given up smoking - I hope and think).

The standard of looks was very very high. Kate Moss made a brief appearance but didn't take her coat off - the jostling photographers were a bit much. More really beautiful girls wherever you looked - not just models, but writers, journalists, photographers and others - wearing all kinds of things, but with enormous aplomb including vintage, Hennes and designer. All with stratospheric heels and beautifully done, golden streaked hair. There was an after party at Volstead, where everyone danced til after 1am. But I am afraid I chickened out with the thought of dealing with Littlest this morning. He wanted a mohican, and threw a tantrum when denied - not really allowed at school and his floppy blond locks would need a ton of gel. So I was mighty glad to be hangover free and well-slept in anticipation. Hangovers and small children REALLY don't mix.

The Vogue offices are beginning to look as no doubt people expect them to - absolutely stuffed with really glamorous and put-together girls. We have all had our hair done - straightened, curled, smoothed and polished. Some of us have had our make up done too. I grilled the nice young Norman make up artist about his credentials, as he painted my eyelids purple and broke out the glitter eye liner at my request. It turns out he used to be a special effects artist, with a particular expertise in Klingons for Star Trek. What a pity my Pa is no longer alive - he loved Star Trek and would have sat up and taken notice if he thought I had been made up by a Klingon specialist.

 Long ago, when I was still at university, I did the Vogue Talent Contest. I couldn't even type, so my friend who was more adept, sat up with me all night typing up my scribbled creations just before the deadline. Miraculously, I got through to the next round, where you went into the Vogue offices and had lunch. It was the day after my finals, which had been horribly traumatic for various reasons (another blog I think) so I was kind of post-traumatic. I put on a dress my mother had made, in yellow cotton, slapped on some make up, and went down to Liverpool Street on the train from Cambridge. Making my way to Vogue House, I was trembling with nerves. I was seated beside the completely formidable editor, Miss Miller, who alarmed me completely. I got no further with the competition, and was simply a finalist, I am sure because I didn't open my mouth. The only person I spoke to turned out to be the secretary of the gardening editor of House & Garden (nice girl). I then went on to work in various capacities for Vogue for five years, which is how I kicked off my somewhat varied career.

Tonight, for the Vogue Party, I have been asked to 'look after' Miss Miller. I am not sure what this will be like, but of course I am very happy to do so. She did give me my first job after all, and that is really a major thank you, isn't it? And thanking people is very good for you. I am one of only a couple of people who worked for her all those years ago still connected with the magazine.

Tomorrow is the Vogue Party - to celebrate the previously menioned Vogue List, but most importantly the 90th birthday of British Vogue itself. The talk in the office is all of what everyone is wearing, while still getting down to the serious business of getting January and February Vogues off the blocks. I have spent the day talking to radio  audiences all over the country - particularly on the South Coast where they picked up our piec e in the Vogue List on the gorgeous East Beach Cafe at Little hamptom. Designed by rising architect Thomas Heatherwick, it is  completely modern in that it doesn't seem to have any walls or a roof, but looks like a large and graceful piec e of driftwood on the beach.
 Wonderful, I can't wait to go, particularly if the food lives up to the architecture.
Meanwhile, in the office the girls are talking about vintage, designer, designer vintage, high street and what shoes to wear once they have the dress.  It might be news to some of you, but Vogue is not exclusively designer clad at all. It is about style here, not expense - they do all look amazing every day. Lovely visually after working at an ISP where looking a dreadful mess was a kind of badge of honour.

One gorgeous blonde suggests that her chosen garment makes her look like a potato (soooo not the case). Another is trying on shoes lent to her by the fashion features team. Tomorrow I will try to remember to bring my party dress and shoes with me to the office. I did buy something, but from an unknown Indian label, and because the shape suits me. My shoes are Georgina Goodman, but from what used to be called Evans Outsize, for whom the designer has done a range (not designer prices). You have to choose a size smaller than your usual, but the designs are very cheerful - mine black suede sandals with red and orange beads on the front.
I have a blow dry booked for lunchtime, and a make up artist is popping in to touch us up (more of a trowel job for me ).

We all agree that eyes and cameras will be on th e models and other celebs on the very long party list, and not on us, but we still want to make an effort.
More afterwards....

I edited a gorgeous, bright and breezy supplement to go with the amazing 90th anniversary issue of Vogue (out now with a cover that brings together literally dozens of brilliant cover designs from the last ninety years). So, the next thing is radio. The supplement was a blast to do, it is all about predicting what's just over the horizon - and the whole team pulled together to help me with their quirky ideas. Definitely not just for their specialist areas either - and lots of good jokes from everyone as well.

So, doing radio is a laugh. There is a presenter, and there is me, trying to find a quiet spot somewhere so loud crashes don't pervade the airwaves. It is a conversation all right, but not as we know it. Quite fun really, except you never know what they are going to ask, and you fear sometimes you have said something completely mad.

When I worked for a big US company, we were given media training - a kind of damage limitation exercise to stop us from opening our mouths and putting our collective foot in it. I protested that - unlike my colleagues - I had worked in the UK media for many years and was well up on media law etc. But this didn't wash, and I spent a day being trained.

Some of it was silly - a fake television interview. Done plenty of real ones, didn't need this, and felt self-conscious in a way I don't when on the real radio or television. One segment that was interesting was the damage limitation: and Thomas Cook in the recent appalling case in Greece, as far as I can tell from the media - never did this segment or ignored its training if it did. During my training, we were shown two different real cases - a poisoned soft drink (appallingly handled - widespread panic and catastrophic loss of sales) and a coach crash (very well handled - company profile enhanced by calm, dignified response and very effective help to the survivors and relatives).

The main thing seemed to be very fast reactions. Send qualified sensible intelligent people to the spot immediately. Make sure everyone with the slightest interest (other customers first, media second) are properly informed and updated. This makes perfect sense in commercial terms as well as human ones. In this case the most horrible, terrifying and hurtful misinformation was the first thing to leak out - a suicide pact - probably the least likely scenario. The local police looked everywhere but in the right place to begin with. I would like to know where that thoroughly derogatory idea came from... In the end, this case came down to low low standards of maintenance, which allowed carbon monoxide to poison the family. So human error and carelessness were to blame - as they are so often all over the world. Even owning up rapidly could have helped.

The family had shut all the windows and turned on the air conditioning to avoid the mosquitos. So even the hotel's mosquite controls weren't working properly. The other holidaymakers were kept completely uninformed, and were obviously worried and frightened as well. Thomas Cook is an old and respectable company, they really should have known better than to allow all concerned to suffer more as a result of a lack of media training. Putting the hotel staff in prison will make no difference at all. Making sure it never happens again through rigorous inspections just might.

Now, rats don't particularly bother me. I'd rather not, if you know what I mean, but they are a fact of life and just need to be discouraged from sharing the same internal space with humans. They love what people provide so carelessly, and we have so much in common with them that psychology researchers use them constantly to study human behaviour. Incidentally, when did you last hear of one of these animal liberation people wanting to free or protect a rat? I don't think I ever have.

We provide them with everything they need: roomy accommodation with good infrastructure to allow for convenient travel (London's drains); large quantities of nutritious, high-calorie food (fast food outlets' and other dustbins); warmth and even companionship (some people claim they are very good, clean, intelligent and friendly pets). I was brought up on a farm, and rats scuttled and scurried around near the grain stores and silos. They certainly don't disgust or frighten me .

This morning, our neighbour was outside my front door. A rat had jumped from my fence into her garden, and she was convinced that I was in some way to blame. My garden, in spite of all my shovelling, has a few last apples lying around, which might easily attract an omniverous rat with fruity tastes, but it is not strewn with rubbish or otherwise attractive to the rodents. It is said that in London you are never more than a few metres from a rat anyway, but they are nocturnal so we don't usually see them. I do confess that I felt quite shaken by this curious accusation - not by the rat but by the curious blaming. But, as her very nice daughter in law explained a bit later, she lives alone and things do get a bit out of proportion for her, poor woman. I suggested she call the pest people on the council, and even offered to do it for her. This didn't go down too well. I am not sure what else she expected me to do. We used to shoot them on the Sussex farm, but I am not sure me striding into her garden armed with a 4:10 would do much good either.

It wouldn't be the pest people she would call at that point, it would be the police. The 1970s were more innocent times, and our house was full of guns. My father kept one on  my bedroom floor as it overlooked my mother's vegetable garden, and he could pot the pigeons eating her cabbages conveniently from the window. I would sometimes step on the little brass cartridge cases with a bare foot, but we never came to any other harm. Funny how gun crime is so much more common now  that guns are so much more restricted, and that even when people  did have guns they didn't have the ghastly accidents involving children that they do daily in the US. I wonder why that might be? Possibly because the British have a long tradition of shooting for the pot; while in the US their domestic tradition is perhaps more to focussed on larger prey.

Littlest and I have taken to going to church at the end of the road. For a long time I found  this difficult. I didn't like the temporary vicar, who seemed to assume that I agreed with him about the ordination of women (negative). My feelings are the very opposite. Women vicars are propping up the Church of England all over the country. When he came to talk to us when Eldest was wanting confirmation, I just felt repulsed by his obvious misogyny, his bristly head and angry, not-listening way of being in my house.

We have no car on Sundays, and the nearest very compatible church is miles away. But I thought I would give the new vicar a spin a  couple of weeks ago. My problem is that I was brought up in the Anglican tradition in a country village. All very straightforward, to begin with not much changed since the reign of Elizabeth I. Strictly no incense or Marian devotions...

In London for some strange reason churches are polarised between what is disparagingly called 'happy clappy' and so high you would think you were in a Catholic church. Now, I am not a Catholic. In some ways it would be convenient and useful if I were. Some of the best state schools around here are Catholic - and I am sure No 1 Boy would have thrived at Cardinal Vaughan - but o how they sniffed at our tentative application, in spite of his five years as a chorister. He is in a Church of England school now, and take communion on Thursday mornings instead of assembly. Makes sense to me.

I have learned a lesson though. Unlike any other institution, where the people are the most important thing, a church should really be about the spirit not the flesh. Because the flesh can be very weak....

Long ago, when my mother lay dying in Yorkshire, on another rainy autumn evening like tonight: I simply could not bear it - just for a moment I could not go on behaving very well. We were setting off with a baby and a small child in the car up to Yorkshire - probably to say goodbye. I knew she hadn't much longer for this world, and I had hit the bottom. I ran away from the car , and the loading and the babies, and into the nearest church - in Ladbroke Grove in West London - I think it is called St Johns. Now very trendy Notting Hill - this was 1993, when the area was (and actually still is) poor and rough. I looked perfectly respectable, properly dressed in jeans and a jersey and jacket, with leather boots (it was September). There was a tiny evening service going on in one of the side chapels to my relief. I joined the small group worshipping. Tears were pouring down my face, and I snuffled into my handkerchief and tried to stifle my sobs. My beloved mother had not sought treatment for a deadly cancer until it was really much too late - her favourite sister had died 18 months before, and she had found her just after she had ceased to breathe. My mother was plunged into depression and I am sure the lowered resistance let the cancer get a hold. It was really the most ghastly time, and I had a baby in the middle of it.

I tried very much to be discreet in church. Didn't want to disturb the worship of the other people. Then the vicar came to the end  of Evening prayer. They all filed out, respectable, middle aged and pious enought to go to church on a weekday evening around 6pm. The vicar went past me as well. They didn't even look at me. Not one of them reached out a hand at the moment when it would have made such a difference. I left that church desolate, determined to pull myself together and face my mother's death, but with no comfort from that particular "Christian" community. Up in Yorkshire, I had an intense and very comforting spiritual experience in my brother in law's church, which could not have been more different, but that is another story...

That night, all I could think was, I wish there had been a Samaritan there to give me a hug.

When we had Littlest in our early forties, I was a little worried about being such an ancient mother that people would think he was my grandchild. I needn't have. The trend for coming to parenthood later is fairly widespread now among our generation, and we fit in quite neatly. In fact, some of the Dads in the special Diwali assembly this morning, really did look like grandfathers, so I think Husband felt quite youthful. Particularly as we had some very close friends to dinner last night, and they congratulated him on his hair. When he was little, he had white blond straight hair, as a young boy he had a straw coloured pudding basin cut, as adolescence, testosterone kicked in and his hair went 'hair-coloured' (as a friend calls that English mid brown) and curly. Now the wings of Mills-and-Boon-hero silver over his ears are extending round to the back of his head and making a bid for the summit as well. It is such a pretty colour. Mine, meanwhile, is a bit grey and has been for ages, it doesn't seem to get any more so, but if I drop my guard (and the chemicals) for an instant, it begins to look as if someone has tipped talcum powder onto my head. The grey hairs make it look dusty. Which got me thinking about why powdering the hair became so fashionable in the 18th-century. Could it be perhaps that there were not nearly as many older person around in those days, so the young attempted to imitate the gravitas of the old? Or was it kind of reverse dyeing - making the whole lot white to hide the occasional grey? Anyway, quite late in the game, the government clocked the fact that it was popular, and imposed a 'powder tax' - which of course killed of the fashion stone dead. Except for footmen - I suppose people who had footmen could afford it, but they went on powdering their hair well into the middle of the 20th century. My great grandmother had footmen until she died  between the wars.
Every evening at dusk, they would bring in the standard lamps, plug them in and switch them on.This was because she had grown up with oil lamps, and couldn't bear to see lighting equipment during the hours of daylight. During WWI, my grandmother, her daughter, went to nurse in France. When she came home after the war, having seen and dealt with dreadful things and met all kinds of people she had been completely sheltered from before, her perception of home had shifted radically. She found her mother carrying on as before, and was so horrified that she bought a bicycle of f one of the footmen and went to Oxford to nurse th e returning students through the Spanish flu epidemic.
However, I don't think her radicalisation lasted, because my mother was brought up in a very old fashioned way, and attempted to do the same with her own children. Needless to say, the 1960s arrived and all her attempts to bring us up as nice little Edwardians came to little or nothing. I believe in trying to seive out the good from the past, and mix it with the good of the present. It is no good clinging to outmoded views. But what is funny is how things considered completely in the past are having a moment again - such as good manners (courses are available for business people in Paris so they can learn proper manners - it makes economic sense; and proper discipline for children (look at the success of SuperNanny). I think it is dreadfully unfair to bring up children without manners - adults can't bear it, and that colours their attitude to the children. When you have given a present to a child every Christmas, and not once been thanked at all, and been greeted with a parent-supported scowl every time you heave into view, it does slightly cloud your view of the poor child.
Today I must go back into the studio to do another photo shoot, and be photographed myself. Expect an updated image on the front of the website, by a coincidence from the same photographer, any time soon.

As we walked back from our weekly meeting with Littlest's head teacher, we passed a dustcart  parked by the side of the road. Something caught our eye, and we turned back. The driver, in his high visibility waistcoat, was getting on down in the cab to some sounds that we couldnt' t hear. His fluorescent stripes dipped and wove in the darkness of the cab, gracefully as if underwater. We passed some men eating breakfast outside a cafe - it is warm and tender in London with a lovely mist through which the sun is beginning to burn. One was eating chips laced Jackson Pollock style with brown sauce. Now, this is a low I have never aspired to - but Husband tells me that there is a certain moment in hunger when the lubrication of brown sauce is the only solution. For US readers, brown sauce also works well as a metal cleaner.

Last night we went to a party given for the launch of Tom Parker Bowles' food book, The Year of Eating Dangerously. As we had to put Littlest to bed, while washing, curling hair, making up, etc, we arrived quite late, after his mother Camilla had left. Apparently her body guard is a burly woman. If I was in that position, it would be good to have a woman looking after me. I approve of this.  Kensington Place, run by a neighbour of ours here in West London, was 'rammed' - new word for crammed - with pretty young things and good looking men. Plus the sprinkling of old hacks like me. The food was excellent - whole Parmesan cheeses sprinkled with walnuts, chanterelles on toast, some of the best canapes we have had, in a canape strewn week.

The night before I was at the enormous Freize opening - a huge tent crammed with art dealers and buyers in the middle of Regents Park. We got a little lost on the way, and had a lovely walk through the twilit park past herbaceous borders which smelt delicious in the gloom. My friend had her portrait painted by Dinos Chapman. He caught her exactly - her lovely pallor and vigorous red hair. Her large green eyes. The Chapman brothers were painting portraits which are going to be hung in Manchester. In March the subject will be able to claim them. Another acquaintance had been painted with bunny ears and a tiny head - I was so pleased that my friend appeared as herself.

Last night I was woken by Littlest who as usual had kicked off his duvet. I stumbled in to rectify matters, and realised that Eldest was still out, it was a school night, and 1.30am. I know that soon I will have no right to know where she is every moment of every 24 hours, and that these are the last months during which my concern can translate directly into action - ie texting her to find out where she had got to. Apparently the band - her favourites, Yeti - didn't come on til 10.30 to an empty venue poor things, and she eventually got a lift home in a taxi from their PR lady who lives not far away. It seems to illustrate what must have been so normal in the past, when people had big families spanning the years of their fertility - where you attended to the nursery needs of one and the quite different, more grown up needs of another. In the past you would be nursing a baby while organising a wedding. Now people tend to have a clutch of babies, usually two, close together, so everything happens at once, and needs are not that different. Two at primary school, two at secondary school, two leave home.... I am lucky in that Littlest will not leave me until I am in my dotage. Not that I intend to dote, fumble, shuffle, limp or otherwise proceed.

No 1 Boy meanwhile slumbered on. I have had to buy all kinds of new and comfortable bedding as he gets so cold. So jersey pillow case, sheet and duvet cover, and soft mattress top, do seem to be doing the trick. it is because he has very little natural warm covering, growing like a weed and ruining his appetite for real food with sweets. Yesterday, he carried a candle in the Abbey, dressed in the ancient vestments of the church, and I felt so proud. Today, I have persuaded him to go into a music competition, and had to farm Littlest out while I attended to the early beginnings of his GCSEs, and the correct management of his school diary. When I am tired, I feel a bit pulled around by them all. But wouldn't change a thing...

Today I spent the morning in David Bailey's studio. He looks like an old bear, wandering benevolently around, swearing cheerfully and brandishing a cigar. When he is working,  his sensational confidence in what he does after so many years makes you grin like a fool. Barbara Hulanicki and Jasper Conran were being photographed together had never met before and were slightly nervous. He touched them gently, moving their fingers and delicately tucking their hair behind their ears. When he had  finished he told them to Fuck Off.
The day before, I was in the studio as well with Lily Cole and Marie Helvin. There is a big fuss going on at the moment about models being too thin. A girl in Uraguy died of a heart attack recently, because apparently she had been starving herself. But she wasn't even a full time model, and didn't seem to want a career as one either, so the whole story seems very odd. Also there was a story in the Daily Mail by Liz Jones, a journalist who boasts that she never eats more than 800 calories a day in order to maintain her figure (the norm is nearer 2000, and when I am dieting I eat about 1500). And she had the cheek to talk about the poor girls in such a disparaging way, and go around the shows asking rude questions of uncomfortable fashion editors. I happen to know that the fashion editors in particular (at least the top ones I know) take great and motherly care o f the young girls in their charge. Any hint of an eating disorder wouldn't be tolerated - and I don't think I am being naive.
My own 17 year old daughter who is not tall enough to model, is very slim. She loses weight easily, but eats perfectly normally (except that it is difficult to get veg down her, fuss pot). Young girls should be slim. I worry far more about the ones that go wobbling around in Hammersmith with beer bellies under their pink track suit tops, some as young as nine (although that surely can't be beer that has had the damaging effect).
Lily Cole is fed up with being questioned about her weight. she sat and ate a large plate of salad, rice and chicken. She looked very nicely covered to me, but is incredibly tall. As my mother said, when the health visitor was trying to pressure me into bottle feeding Eldest, 'As long as they have cheeks top and bottom, what happens in the middle doesn't matter.' Lily definitely has cheeks top and bottom.

Young girls should. Cheekbones come later.
 When you see those awful spreads in the downmarket magazines that point out in gloating detail the understandable bulges of celebrities on the beach, and then turn around to attack the poor girls on the catwalk, really it is beyond... as they say.
Catwalk shows are about the clothes. Not the bodies inside. The girls are very very tall. It would be normal and healthy to be slim, and I doubt any of them are a size 00 - as model sizes are an 8/10. One of the designers I interviewed today told me in the 1970s they only ever sold 8 and 10 - they tried a 12, but no one bought it. There is no doubt at all that people have got a great deal bigger in the last 30 years. Me included!

In Littlest's book bag yesterday was a form about after school activities that he had carefully filled in in pencil. At the bottom was a credible, wavy, unreadable (as so many signatures are) signature.

"Awwww," says Eldest. "His first forgery..."

We had to accept last year very much a second choice primary school for Littlest. It is big, and had recently been revived by a new superhead, who had performed miracles. He said he would stay five years, and we believed him, but he resigned after Littlest had been there two terms. We also noticed that Littlest had become a lot naughtier and more violent, but in a funny way we sort of accepted it, just thinking it was part of his character and trying hard to curb it at home. It can be painful to be punched even by a five year old, and he would not hesitate to lash out, not minding who he was hitting. I did actually find it very upsetting, and found myself wincing back from him in fear that he would hit my face. This is a terrible thing to say about a five year old, but we simply were not sure what to do.
Husband decided he wanted Littlest to go to the first choice primary school, as the superhead was leaving and we didn 't know what would happen next. He managed to get a place for Littlest, and I was pleased even when told by parents at the original school that this was not a good move. However, it is much closer, and they don't have to wear a uniform, which means no horrible little grey poly trousers rubbing their legs, and the possibility of wearing dark coloured tops to prevent the dreadful  staining that Littlest goes in for at mealtimes.
Off he went on his first day, joining a class which contained quite a few children from his nursery, which made him feel right at home immediately. But within a week, I had been called in by the headmaster. Littlest had been hitting, and they have a zero tolerance policy, quite rightly. My heart sank, but also lifted with relief that someone else would be helping us with this problem. Littlest is no bully, he just lashes out when he feels transgressed, instead of using gentler methods of negotiation. We saw the head again this morning, and an improvement had been noted. I certainly felt that the head was on Littlest's case, but in a good way, and that the message, which had been a bit lax and soft at the previous school, would help us to improve Littlest's behaviour instead of making it worse. The head spoke of his great potential - which could so easily be wasted if he got labelled as trouble.
I hope things will improve now. I realise it has been getting much worse over the last year, without us really noticing. I am afraid it must have been the rufty tufty culture at the previous primary that was to blame.

Yesterday, I drove out with a crew to photograph in the countryside.The house had a lovely garden, and I sat in the long grass while the pictures were being taken playing with the photographer's 13 month old puppy lurcher - a kind of skinny, hairy mix of greyhound or whippet and other hairier creatures like deer hounds, a favourite kind of dog of mine - while they got on with it. I recorded in my notebook how much happier I am this time this year than last. Last year I was stuck in a job that was becoming increasingly uncomfortable, due to leadership issues and a kind of all round mess-up - I could see what was going on, but from within I could do nothing. When it all came to an abrupt end in December, my one sensation was extreme  relief, no matter how hairy it was financially.
Anyway, this year, I am acting features editor of a leading glossy magazine, where I started my career after Cambridge. I am busy and stretched, and producing plenty of what I think of as work. OK, so I am not saving the world - although I am taking warm stuff surplus to requirements to a homeless project as soon as I get the car back - but at least I am earning and happy and occupied.
It has been very interesting going back to where I came from, because it makes me realise why I disliked other jobs so much. There is no culture of pointless meetings designed to boost the egos of the feeble and useless. Things get done snappily, and if they don't get done, there are consequences. When I worked for a leading ISP, you could get away with not doing anything, because there was no leadership - and in fact the leadership there was seemed out of its depth at every step of the way. I hate not doing anything. It makes me very unhappy and bored. If I had been less puritanical, I would have perhaps written another novel while sitting there. But I didn't.
Littlest has started at another, closer, primary school, where he is joining his old friends from nursery. Afterwards, he gets taken to his old primary's local park to see that lot of friends, so I hope is enjoying the best of both worlds currently. No 1 Boy has gone of f to meet a girl he met at his nursery 12 years ago (they have seen each other often since) at the local Mall. Eldest is gallery hopping and looking at art with friends - an excellent development. I am waiting for Husband to get back from the market, so I can go shopping at the cash and carry for things lik e washing powder. Dull, but necessary. The good thing about bulk buying is that you don't have to do it very often.

One of the nicest things about our odyssey to Thailand was sitting beside Eldest sharing her iPod and reading in the sunshine. She remained resolutely pearly white, which on the young, and with her bleached hair, looks exotic and divine. No lard bolsters for a 17 year old. I took a major Fake Bake session before I went to avoid that unfortunate look. The lovely thing about the iPod generation is that they can roam all over time for musical treats - they are not confined as we were by the record companies' releases. So they rediscover and enjoy everything from Fleetwood Mac to ELO - which we thought were consigned to the auditory attic. Music is going through a very good period now, after the mostly awful 1990s. I am enjoying Hot Chip right now, on my assistant's iPod - she replaces Eldest in my life during office hours. Men sometimes have an office wife. I have an office daughter...

Us British do like  to talk about the weather, but today's is madder than most. Bright hot sunshine, intersposed with grey chill, followed by wild rain, and then the cycle starts again, and repeats at ten minute intervals. Eldest went off the Reading on Friday, with a school friend, a tent, sleeping bags etc. There she bounced energetically in front of Muse - we thought we could see a little white spot jumping up and down on the televsion.  But the programme editor didn't have the imagination to accommodate anxious parents at home, by providing close ups of the crowd. She came back late last night with our friend the rock critic, and without the sleeping bags. Some little toerag - well able to afford the ticket but without the nous to bring their own - snuck into Eldest 's tent during Muse euphoria, and stole the sleeping bags. Off they went to the Welfare tent, where the blankets were inadequate to keep out the August chill, and she didn't catch a wink until the sun came up. Anway, she seems to have had a lovely time - in spite of a bruised ear where a flying crowd surfer landed on her - although school friend became a bit paranoid about the stolen bags.

Gloom seems to have descended on the household. Husband promised an expedition, but nothing has happened, so I sit here in a rare moment of idleness (I have sewn on nametapes for next term, and am contemplating doing some ironing) blogging and trying to buy Littlest a new Cushtie on Ebay - did I mention that Eldest got that stolen as well?
No 1 Boy has two cats to feed during their owners holidays, and likes to hang out petting the said cats and combing the friends' libraries for further reading matter.  O well, it is something to do, as we cannot have cats due to my allergy - I am even allergic to No 1 Boy if he comes home with cat dander on his hands, and he has to be pleaded with to wash them.
Hope something happens today, rather than just a supermarket shop, which is how it looks like shaping up.....

If you are at all squeamish, it is possible that you shouldn't read this post, because it is about parasites. Now, as anyone with small children knows, their nice healthy little persons provide the perfect playground for at least two benign (relatively) but annoying little critters. One, nits. Hmmmm. Littlest has been remarkably free of them, but Eldest has very fine, very thick hair, which was long when she was younger, now it is a bleached blonde crop and looks fab. Anyway, hunting the little beasts through that tangled forest was never going to work. We tried almost everything, except mayonnaise (recommended on one mad website). They laughed at us from  the glades of her head. Then I discovered a Polish remedy - simple acetic acid (vinegar) mixed with I think Lobelia extract. You just rub the greenish liquid into the hair, leave overnight and wash in the morning. Voila. No nits. Ever again in her case. No 1 Boy used to go back to the Choir School with them sometimes - greatly to my embarrassment. Because that was a school where only one's child ever was any kind of trouble - all the other little boys were angels (not). Most infuriating.
Anyway, they both also used to get threadworms because they sucked and bit their fingers. Littest has avoided this so far, as he didn't. But recently he has been cutting molars, and putting his fingers in his mouth as a result. So, last night,  I detected them. Rummaging in the medicine  cupboard, I came across worming pills that dated back to 2003. O well, with the chemist closed I thought I would try it. Couldn't quite see what would happen to pills that were a little old. I dosed him.
He looked at me impishly. 'What if the mummy wormintrude (family word fo r this affliction) had a look and found her little wormintrude had a Littlest? And I looked out smiling,' he remarked surreally.
So there you are. Family life. Utterly off the scale.
I am in the shed gearing up to write a couple of travel pieces and as usual, I have to blog, settle Littlest, make sure family is ticking over, before I can start. But I hope I can now. If only my toes weren't so cold, and I didn't so want a cup of fresh coffee and maybe a little breakfast.....

Littlest and I looking at the papers in the morning. Him a bit restless. I point at a photograph of a turkey. 'What do you think that is,' I ask. I am not sure he knows what a nice black turkey looks like.

'A herring,' he responds.

I turn to him. 'Why do you think it is a herring?'

Secret smile lurks in the corners of his mouth: 'Because it is fish.'

Haveing gone straight back to work on Monday, I have been jet lagged all week. Bananas and carrot juice do help, but I felt as if I had an unfair hangover every morning.  I last through the working day, then collapse into rattiness and exhaustion at about 9pm at night. Is it worth is? Well, I do think the two teenagers in particular got a great deal out of flying so far to such a foreign place, and it should stick in their memories. We came back to results of AS Levels. Eldest has got three B grades overall, but plenty of As for modules. In particular I think the art one is poorly organised. Her results show the massive improvement she has made over the year: module 1, D; module 2, B; module 3, A of course, as she had hit the heights. Anyway, it is possible to up grades by retaking certain modules, and this might be worth doing according to my friend who is just a touch ahead of me on the educating stakes.
Littlest to Eldest: 'You aren't really very pretty. You haven't got a rose in your hair.' Eldest just laughs.

Anyway, I need to write lots today and one way and another I am floppy and tired. Went out this morning to look for information in the library, but nothing useful. Lurked in the charity shop, buying books half price, and now have cycled home through torrential monsoon style rain to the writing shed to get down to it. Telephone rings, it is my friend on the media pages of a newpaper. Opportunity to put off the moment of writing by giving her some stories for the media diary. Have they sent me a cheque yet? No they haven't. Although it isn't a vast amount, it is a little and everything helps.

No 1 Boy's shoulders are still fairly revolting with peeling scabby sunburn, and he tells me merrily that the doctor told him not to have a bath. I fail to believe him, and send him to wash his dark and wayward hair.
Littlest has his friend over, dressed very effectively as a mini Jack Sparrow - Littlest in more traditional pirate pants and the top of skeleton pyjamas. They were making 'soup' with windfalls in the summer house.
Now I really cannot put off this work any longer....

Now, no one wouldn't call me a tight wad. I have seen at first hand the disastrous consequences of living beyond the means available, and am usually very careful. But, readers, I bought an upgrade to get us back from Thailand without going bananas. It wasn't in fact that appalling, rather less than I expected, but still a whacking amount of money that could be used for any number of other things that need doing. But there we are. Instead of being crammed with a restless Littlest into a battery chicken situation, we had slightly more space - in fact we had six seats among the five of us, and that made a huge difference. The food was slightly better too. I had never heard of EVA airways until a few weeks ago when our friend the travel agent accessed the tickets for us. It is Taiwanese, and absolutely fine - in fact I found it better than long-haul via British Airways. The service is friendlier and the tolerance of small children enhanced. It was fine to fly in bucket class with just the teenagers, who are languid enough not to want to climb over the seats. But with Littlest, and I was feeling quite drained from an early start, an upgrade seemed a necessity not a luxury.

We were very glad of it when the flight went on and on, as on the little map we could see our plane making repeated visits to Chelmsford by air (not on the schedule) as it waited to get into congested Heathrow. We were just glad we hadn't tried to go on holiday this week, as Heathrow has now downgraded from pretty horrible to completely unbearable. What is it with airport design? As Husband carried a sleeping three stone five year old several miles to baggage claim? Why is flying so completely inhuman, unless you are young and fit and healthy? And yet, people who are not do it every day. I don't think I want to for a while now.

The children are hugely enhanced by their adventure. They are sort of purring, when No 1 Boy isn't wincing from his sunburn (wouldn't listen to his mother). I am so glad I did it although it was not tight-wad behaviour to fly my little family across the world to bask in the sun, play in the sparkling monsoon waves, meet people from all over the world, and eat interesting mad meals from the extensive international buffet. Curry and a cupcake anyone? Not exactly relaxing, but very boosting to family unity and fun.

I have to keep it short here.... it costs a bit to blog so typing like fury. Littlest and I have met some interesting mini beasts and other flora and fauna here - including a dead squid, a squashed mega millipede (I was interested that a disgusted and alarmed reaction I had to same when 10 has disappeared - I suppose I have seen a lot worse since), sensitive plant - just minding its own business in the middle of the tropical grass that grows toughly everywhere. I stroked its gentle leaves and it furled shyly. At night it was strictly closed for business. On the beach there was a bit of plastic with goose head barnacles on it - 'They said hello to me before you came,' Littlest explained. Indeed they poked out their tiny fans and waved.... We have just been on a small tour of the south side of Phuket, including Phuket town which is charming but not very interesting. Anyway, I need a swim now as I am sweating a lot. It is humid but pleasant with a warm wind and sea, here on Kata beach in Thailand....

Husband and Littlest followed us to Thailand yesterday, and arrived last night at nine o clock local time. Littlest surprisingly perky for someone recovering from a sore tummy, and wanting to stay up to watch the show. Lots of children of all ages dressed up and dancing away on the stage. There is a lot of charm in Club Med, a sort of unselfconscious, unforced jollity among the young person or GOs who run everything. They come from all over the world - except England. Perhaps we simply cannot do the tolerant, amused, charming thing that everyone else can do. Pity. I think both my older children would enjoy a job of this kind, although they are a bit languid. Littlest did a bungie jump in a harness, which he enjoyed, although I was preoccupied with the laundry so missed it by moments. I want the teenagers to try the trapeze, but they have both chickened out. No 1 Boy is asserting his independence, by ordering numerous mocktails, talking to the teenager girls, and refusing to eat with us. O well. As long as he is having a good time. His shoulders have gone a bit red, which I feel bad about, in spite of putting on sun cream, and I cannot get him to wear a T shirt.

This morning, we were meant to go by boat to some islands called Phi Phi, but it was so rough, I could just envisage everyone throwing up, so weakly cancelled at the last minute. Time behaves oddly here, I thought we were in plenty of time, but it turned out to be 45 minutes later than I thought it was. Everyone is quite tired, so it is good to take is easy a bit. I hope Littlest recovers soon, because he is at his most wild and friable, and determined to do exactly what he wants. It is explained every time that tantrums will not change things, and they never do. I am hoping he will learn soon....

Eldest just looks beautiful and bleached blonde with her short haircut. I am so proud of her. Hope she can make some friends too.

It didn't start as well as it might have. Littlest was complaining of a head ache intermittently, and then a tummy ache. Then, while I was packing, Husband took No 1 Boy and his friends to the local water park, and Littlest to try out his new floaty waistcoat before we came here. But he threw up four times in the car, and although pink and without a temperature, was obviously not fit for 13 hours of flying. In the night he seemed worse, and had the dreaded pain in the neck which can mean meningitis which we are always alert for. He had no other symptoms, except headache and vomiting. By the way, do any of you have a tip for getting rid of the smell of sick from a car? We have done extensive cleaning, but it lingers and we dread getting back from Thailand to that! Anyway, we rang NHS direct, but they couldn't tell us anything we didn't know. By this time, he was really tragic, so we got in the car and went to the brand spanking new and virtually empty A&E at the new Middlesex Hospital. Last time we went there it was like the third world, with flooded loos and ripped upholstery and wandering drunks and other disassaffected beings. This time is the old place had disappeared completely, and it was brand spanking new. Littlest threw up some more, and it was about two in the morning. We were seen quite quickly, and he was examined very carefully, pee and blood samples taken. Lovely staff, not too busy to look after us. Husband has as readers will know an interest in local politics, and says the new hospital is underused and deep in the red, but it suited us that night.

In the end they kept us in, and we slept in the empty children's ward, with Littlest intermittently waking to be given sips of water etc. He threw up some more, but it was genuinely nothing serious, and he is now on his way a day late with Husband to join us here in this warm and welcoming paradise to the south of Phuket island, off Thailand. Eldest is still asleep. I have sent No 1 Boy off to do some activities with other teenagers.

The only trace of the tsunami is a book of photos by the reception desk, called La Vague (Club Med is a french company). The place was damaged and then upgraded, and it looks as luxurious as the mega luxe hotels we stayed in on Mauritius. But it has homely touches as well, like a laundrette - much needed as No 1 Boy left most of his things behind, and Littlest is not a clean child..

Last night, we went to bed and I was woken several times by texts from Husband reporting progress. Then by No 1 Boy coming in from next door saying he had had a very vivid nightmare, I find that travelling can do this, and thought there was a horrible fight and argument going on. He slept in the double bed with me, very quiet and still sleeper, unlike when he was a baby, when he thrashed and ratchetted around forcing husband and me apart. He admitted over a breakfast which include coconut, banana and chestnut jam, that he had been reading a violent book the night before. I bought him some long fashionable bathing trunks this morning, for about eighteen pounds, and he is now happy. The flowery ones I bought him in Mauritius seem to embarrass him, and I do want him to be comfortable and make friends in this lovely place. More soon.

Another lovely morning, and it is Saturday. But I feel drained after a week in a steaming hot office, with air conditioning variable to absent. When I worked in the same office 20 years ago, there weren't any computers in the editorial office and no air con was needed. We went into a meeting room yesterday and it was cool and comfortable without the computers. I do find computers make everything easier, but the heat was too much. I am sure companies would save a fortune if only the heat from the computers was somehow recycled. The time is getting close when nothing can be wasted, and I hope the philosophy that prevailed during the war will reassert itself voluntarily and not through horrible necessity soon. Water for instance.We are on drought orders here in West London. But in Malvern they have had water metres since the 19th century, they have no shortage problems at all. Water metres make people concentrate on water and its value. Wasting it is so common. I have seen people carelessly leaving hoses on all night, without guilt or qualm, simply to 'clean out the fish pond'. Makes my blood boil.
The water companies are substantially to blame. Driven by their enormous profits and the politicians by their usual timidity when it comes to voters, they won't do anything that changes the status quo. Water metres mean the consumer consumes less of their product, so why install them. They waste water overwhelmingly by leaky pipes as well. So watering the garden is a pain, and we are sharing baths as much as we can.
This morning, Littlest wanted to show me a 'beautiful snail'. So we both crouched down to examine the creature as it made its way across our still damp and cool terrace. 'What are those lines?' he asked. I explained about the eyes on stalks. He bent closer. 'I can see little tiny black bits on the ends,' he said with a secret smile. Then I looked up and saw, seemingly suspended in nothing, a spiders web just catching the early morning sun. I couldn't even see where the other end was connected. We stared and the yellow, tan and buff spider and he  wrangled his way up his web to grab a fly that had fallen victim to his engineering. Stunning. Who needs a safari in Africa?

Last week I spent four days painting in Italy. I will be writing about it soon for various publications, but am not going to shoot the bolt here. I t was an extremely energetic time, as the painting completely took me into a different place where I had boundless energy. There are a few activities that do this to me - riding, painting, writing, reading are the main ones. Where however drained you felt to begin with, energy returns as enthusiasm kicks in.

Since working once more on a fashion magazine, I notice so much more acutely what people wear. In particular I notice that many people walk around London with their labels sticking out - defiant little flags at the back of their necks. I long to lunge forward on the tube and tuck them in, but how weird would that be to have that done to you on a hot underground train full of swaying commuters. When I have eliminated the label displayers (and expensive labels know their place and stay neatly tucked down - it is only cheap ones, attached to flimsy fabric, that fly so free), I start to examine how people have chosen what they are wearing.

At White City, where I sometimes get on the Central Line - when I am not on my electric bike - out flow the BBC employees into the vast and all consuming maw of the British Broadcasting Corporation. There are young girls in small dresses, high on the thigh; Tristans (long hair young men with sensitive faces and incipient moustaches) in jeans and T shirts; executives in executive things - which are uncomfortably stiff in the summer. I flow in the other way, today in a dress like a Bridget Riley painting - diagonal black and white stripes, which I hope has a trompe l'oeuil effect and bewilders spectators away from my proportions.

I don't hope to compete in the office, where Prada and YSL are the order of the day. One employee laughed gently when I told her where my BR came from - The British Home Stores, not glamorous at all. But I hope at least to be clean and cool and neat. They are all a pleasure to look at. At the ISP where I so disliked working, there was a culture of deep and depressing grunge. Broken trainers, disgusting old jeans, drooping faded T shirts on the young men - and they simply were not good looking enough to transcend their sartorial arrangements. The girls faded into dressing the same, unless they had bags of character and dared to stick out. The picture editor has just hove into view wearing a little yellow top with smocking on it - don't think I have ever seen an adult successfully wearing smocking before.

My aunt worked here in the fifties and early sixties. She always looked amazing. Quite different from the other women, including my mother. I realise now, she was simply ahead of the curve in her narrow skirts when everyone else was wearing full ones. I was only four when she stopped to get married, and I was her bridesmaid. She remembers me as saying, having heard about someone wanting a 'quiet wedding'. 'I don't want a quiet wedding. I want a loud wedding like Aunt Deb.' And I did too on a sunny day in April 1987, have a very loud wedding that ended with a small orchestra, and a breakaway party of guests fighting with a chef in a local restaurant and overturning the pudding trolley - now that dates it....

Husband and I went to a party last night. It was to celebrate an eminent hatter who is the same generation as us called Stephen Jones. He is an amazing success story, starting with nothing but talent, and making a business  in the 1980s when nobody actually wore hats any more. Now, here we are in the 2000s, and a huge and lovely party was thrown for him in an extraordinary house in Kensington that was built to the highest possible spec in 1905. It is covered all over, inside and out, with turquoise tiles that have an oily atttractive sheen. There is a large garden behind the house, and Husband in his planters hat complete with pigeon feather, and me with a few lovely artificial flowers on a comb in my hair (supplied at the door to the feebly hatless) held court in a white and cushioned pavilion. Waitresses came by with such things as cone shaped glasses filled with vivid little cold soups; tiny fish and chips; and other delicious small things. We dranks cold drinks, and  admired all the hats. There was a middle aged man with no hair, a paunch and a huge beard - biker style - sporting a black feathered bird shape mounted on elastic around his bald cranium; There were some very very pretty boys in top hats. There was the model Erin O'Connor in a hat which  was a n airy nothing of black straw with the outline of a top hat cut into it. A mere suggestion of a hat, mounted on a band on her dark dark hair.
There were large floppy straws; pill boxes with veils, all kinds of variations on the topper - as that is a signature Jones look - teeny ones, shiny ones, gold ones, high ones, low ones. Then the house manager discovered Husband and I reading about the house and looking at the original architectural plans on the back stairs. He was so pleased that someone was taking an interest that he took us upstairs to admire the bathrooms. And they were in deed magnificent, in that they had simply restored the Edwardian state of the art plumbing. The decor was very dull and safe sadly, and did not live up to the flamboyance of the house itself. There is scope for a designer's eye there, to take the theme of turquoise and peacocks and Eastern promise and spin it into something quite unique. Eldest babysat,  and Littlest threw the second tantrum of the day at the idea of us going out. He was exhausted after a long and active day playing and learning, ending up wonderfully dirty and ready for his bath.

This evening, I came home barely able to put one foot in front of the other, which was unlike me. And I hadn't even had a particularly exhausting day. I think it was the competing demands of the generations that do it. It was my turn to help out with my father in law. My mother in law is still in hospital - her knee op has not gone quite according to plan and they are having to drain the wound and keep her on antibiotics at the  moment. Which is of course worrying at her age. She wishes she had never consented to have it done. On to p of that she has shingles - as my surgeon friend who came to tea yesterday said, that means her immune system is not working hard enough. Anyway, that leaves my f in l at home pretty much alone, although one sister lives in a flat behind the house. I like his company very much, so it isn't a problem being with him at all. What made me nervous was dealing with the conflicting demands of him and his grand son, who resembles his younger self so closely. Husband was doing a roaring trade in the freshest possible organic fruit and veg today, so it was down to me.
I suggested the piano as a diversion to them both, and went downstairs to get some coffee. When I came back, they were sitting side by side on the piano stool with Littlest's fair head bent close to his grandfather's, concentrating like anything on pressing the keys with his smal l fingers. F in L has short, broad , paws like a mole, strong and agile, and he plays the piano beautifully.
The reason why someone needs to be with him, is that he has som e short term memory loss, but it is almost imperceptible in normal circumstances and if he isn't tired or stressed. We discussed King Lear, and his recall was total. It is just things that have happened recently that either lodge or don't, quite arbitarily. For instance, he had no trouble remembering and preparing for the advent of their new carer this evening. And asked me to help him make her bedroom pleasant, but he didn't remember that he had had another angioplasty quite recently, from which he immediately bounced  back in good form.
I took both of them to the Princess Diana playground, and  even though he has macular degeneration which makes it hard to see, he enjoyed watching the little children trot about. Littlest was unusually good at leaving - on the promise that we would come back later.
We had lunch. Littlest wouldn't eat mushrooms, but balanced his green French beans in rows on his buttered toast and enjoyed it very much.
The oldest sister then appeared, and kindly took over, with a view to taking F in L to visit his wife in hospital. The Ps in L are amazing really, an advertisement for enduring marriage, the meeting of two minds, the need for the lubrication of forgiveness and the ability to survive through to the last chapters intact - because perhaps that is the time when you need that person with whom you vowed to stay until one or both of you die, the most.

I have a friend who likes to live outside the UK, although now she is living here as she has small children. For a time she lived in Japan, and I remember her telling me about such an affluent society that exists in Tokyo.  She saw a tramp sitting under a bridge sucking a lobster claw.
Anyway, Littlest and I went out cycling today, him on cycle me trotting frantically on foot , to his swimming less on. The pavement was strewn with small, soft, colourful objects. I simply could not identify them from a distance. As I got closer, I tried to make sense of these soft, cellophane wrapped, multcoloured objects, which were somehow disgusting in the way that discarded food is. Then I realised what I was looking at - sushi - lots of it, all over the pavement, plus Japanese salad, sauces, noodles - and some distance away a bag labelled Wasabi. Someone's very expensive and untouched takeaway. What was it doing strewn around Shepherds Bush. When we came back, some kind person had cleared it back, so Littlest didn't have to weave around the pavement. A mystery.

Following on from the penguin episode (see below) in the destruction of any sense I might have that my body hasn't been ruined by child-bearing, comes this Arctic Episode from my friend Lily, 4:

"Mummy, I hate Woolworths. "
"No you don't darling, they sell My Little Ponies."
"Mummy what do Woolworths eat?"
"What do you mean? Woolworths doesn't eat anything, it's a shop."
Cue rage..."Woolworths!! WOOLWORTHS!! Do Woolworths eat dead fish or
alive fish? Woolworths you told me about in the ice and the snow."
"Ah, you mean walruses."

In England, we are inclined to look down on the American pursuit of happiness, as being rather beneath. I remember my mother poo pooing it, alon g with holidays and other frivolities. Yet, looking back, I realise she simply wasn't very happy, and didn't feel she was entitled to be, for various obscure reasons to do with  I think the position she was born in in her family (the second of four girls). She was pretty , amusing and charming, she had the most heart-breaking smile - I am looking at a dim black and white photo of her sitting in a n open 1940s car, smiling at my father who is taking the picture, and with whom she was, at that time, hopelessly in love. The trouble was, she had been brought up to believe that men were better than women, and the men in her family were 'perfect' - including her father, who was no doubt delightful and a complete gentleman, without known vices, loving and kind - and interested in his children in a way men of that generation weren't necessarily. ie he read to them, nodding off as he did so, as he was tired after coming home from work.
When it came to perfection, my father was not in that bracket. The spoilt youngest of a large family, with a famous and often absent father, and an older brother who was idolised, he was a character who could be easily led. I am sure if my mother had not had these strange and unhelpful notions of perfection, she could have steered him into happier courses. But if you don't see men as human and therefore fragile and flawed, and you marry one who so obviously is, then the disappointment must be crushing. My father was not a simple, upright, downright, straightforward English gentleman, which is what she needed. His very difference was what attracted her - dark and good-looking, with extravagent ideas and somewhat eccentric, she fell for him desperately. And why not? these days a passionate affair would have been followed by disillusion, and break up, and moving on with lessons learned. In those days you had to marry your mistakes.
Anyway, as we children always say, we wouldn't be here if they hadn't. So there we are.
The pursuit of happiness as a science has come to the UK now, and I think this is quite right as long as it doesn't become an excuse for selfishness. Leaving emotional wreckage, particularly children, in your wake as you barrel along towards personal happiness is not the right course.
There are various exercises you can complete to increase your happiness. One is saying thank you. When I read about this, I immediately wrote to an old lady who was very kind to me when I was a teenager. My mother had no idea how to entertain a modern teen, and I languished at home in the country with nothing to do , except slop around the countryside on my rather dull pony, until I left school. This lady, Mrs L, had twins when she was in her forties, who were at school with me, and lived in London.
Mrs L didn't mind how often I came to stay, and welcomed me into her house for weeks at a time. So I had a ball with the twins and their friends in the 1970s Kings Road. This included regular visits to the original Rocky Horror Show. She also inspired me because she was a working mother, owning her own company, which she had entered as a first job at 19 during the war, when the men had been called up. She was amazingly successful, and energetic. Anyway, I followed up my letter with a visit one evening, and found her much aged and diminished. We sat and drank cold white wine, while I told her how much I loved her, and how grateful I was fo r her kindness to a lonely teenager.

She died not long afterwards, and I was so glad I  had.
Happiness has a great deal to do with being grateful for what you have, without denying anything that is making you unhappy at the time, but without letting yourself sit passively in present without doing anything about it. And you would never know you were happy if you didn't realise sometimes that you weren't.
Today in London we remember those who died and were injured in the suicide bombings - may they rest in peace and find comfort.

Yesterday I had what is called a 'treatment' - which in beauty salon speak is anything from a facial to a massage to a waxing really. You have to surrender yourself to the hands of a stranger in a darkened basement, with most of your clothing removed,  but this one was mostly extremely good. It was a Thai massage, some of which involved pressing acupressure points through the towel, which felt pleasant but a bit strange. Then there was a reasonably vigorous full body massage, including unknotting the macrame that is my shoulders and upper back. All scented with lemon  grass, which is bracing rather than relaxing. The only drawback, and even that fades into the background after a while unless you engage with it intellectually, is the aural soup that accompanies these 'eastern' beauty treatments. Vague bells and guitar twangles, that go on and on and never reach any kind of climax - you wonder at the performers' patience. They must be lulled into a kind of zen calm as they pluck at their exotic instruments - not on a terrace overlooking a tropical sea, bu t in a recording studio. It occurred to me that you can probably create this sound on a computer these days - you just programme in a few essential oils, a bit of cod eastern philosophy, a list of suitably exotic instruments and a playing time of say four hours, mix a sea breeze, the rustle of a palm tree and the smell of coconuts and bingo, you have ambience music for any number of darkened treatment rooms full of naked pampered and slightly oily ladies.

I am sorry I am unable to blog so frequently at the moment, but I  am working for  a magazine most enjoyable four days a week, and get home to the maelstrom of teenagers and Littlest, bathtime, stories , 'Have you done your homework?' 'I don't want to be in the first Maths set (repeated almost as endlessly as the aural soup - and in spite of getting the highest mark - an 8 - in his recent SATS exams). Then if Husband is still working, getting a nutritious dinner cooked and on the table before No 1 Boy is too tired to eat. All this is much easier in warm weather, as doors can be thrown open onto the garden and a certain ease prevails, but there is no time to blog as by the time that lot  is done, I am finding it hard to focus on the headlines let alone write anything that makes sense.


We are going to recruit an au pair for the summer, and I have had a mailbox full of  applications from delightful sounding girls, and boys, particularly from Eastern Europe. Littlest can bed down in our room over the summer holidays, and our helper can have his room. We have had many au pairs in the past, for the other two, and mostly very successful. It only went wrong when there was a n unhelpful outside influence. We had a Croatian in the mid nineties, whose friends kept telling her she could claim refugee status and live like them off the state, with no need to be an au pair. And we had a girl who was an only child, who couldn't deal with full on family life in all its glory. The worst and first, was a girl (who turned out to be married with a child, which is against the rules) who had come over here to pursue a relationship with a man she had met on holiday the summer before. She lasted four hours. I left her in the sitting room with fourteen month old No 1 Boy to play with him for an hour while I did a bit of work in the next room. She came into my office about twenty minutes later, carrying him, and complaining about his behaviour. It turned out she had sat on the sofa and watched while he got out the glass Christmas bobbles and crushed them in his little fat fists.

Littlest will go to a holiday playscheme, these have improved so much since the others were small, and the au pair will be an extra pair of hands at home. The best ones have always become part of the family - like my neices when they come to stay - and we follow their progress eagerly when they leave us. One of our  nicest was a white blonde and very pretty Swedish girl who used to wear a T shirt that said 'Natural blonde - please speak slowly' - she now has a chemistry PHd. So wish me luck in picking another lovely, intelligent, funny and family-minded girl this time.

I come into the writing shed after a lovely long day in the garden evading my deadline and watching the little children playing in the sunshine. Only one fly in the ointment, No 1 Boy has been in here, and the traces of his sticky fingers are all o ver the keyboard and mouse. Not the nicest thing to deal with on a hot day.

Suddenly, I felt like Sangria. So invited our lovely neighbours, and two younger girl friends, plus at least one child into my garden. I rushed out to buy ice, and mixed less than half a bottle of red wine, with Tropicana and SevenUP. It is not like me to use brand names, but this drink is really only nice when made with those two products. SevenUP is aspartame free, which is a good thing. Husband does not let artificial anything much into the house.
Realise how relaxed and happy I feel, now I am having a nice time in an office, and how having a horrible time impinges its bitter juice into all aspects of your life. It makes you tired, dealing with others' angst, anger, frustration and uncertainty, which is inevitably taken out on you.  I found myself exhausted, weepy, and bad tempered, and family life definitely suffered. I also dreaded the idea of another office, as if I had been malevolently innoculated against going out of the shed to work. But I can feel a slow unfurling of satisfaction. I am looking forward to going to work for the first time literally for years. How sad is that? Making sure that one is happy and content, in spite of the eight hours spent in an office?

So much of our life is spent working, and life can be made so hard by poor management, nonsense 'leadership', indecisive and sad, having one's time wasted by stupid 'initiatives' and 'research' which go nowhere and just cost the company thousands of pounds. I was deeply uncomfortable with the whole concept of management, which to one company I worked for seemed to mean not doing any work, but supervising the work of people whose job you couldn't in a million years actually do yourself. To go back into a place where someon e bright, experienced and determined is truly in charge of a successful product that functions like a quirky machine, is simply a delight. The person in charge also does what I recognise as work, ie writing, herself.

Anyway, that means a much happier me, which can only be good for the familly.

'You are like a penguin you know, Mummy.' Littlest is in my arms, blissful. His face turned up to mine. I am just thinking that the trouble with having children later in life is that you begin to get long sighted, so cannot focus on their adorable features very close to, but have to position them further away in order to admire.

'O yes?' I had a kind of inkling about what might be coming.  As it is my day of not going into the office, we were indulging in a bit of a cuddle in the morning.

'Your tummy is so skinny that it nearly wraps down your legs like a baby penguin is under you,' he explains. And not skinny  in a good way, you understand. Skinny in an emergency (with sirens blaring and blue lights flashing) tummy tuck kind of way. The kind you see on the televsion, until your husband tells you to turn it off. And you avert your eye as rolls and rolls of skin and fat are removed from some unfortunate woman who has lost 22st. ie more than two of me, just in lost weight.

I looked at myself in the mirror in my bra and pants. It  honestly doesn't look that bad. I still have the waist that we all need to avoid heart disease. A few stretch marks like the Nile delta from carrying enormous babies.  But not the great flange that Littlest describes so eloquently. It is quite probable that he thinks baby penguins are sweet and simply wants to be one. On the other hand....

'I don't look that bad,' I say to Littlest. 'Ah,' he replies. 'That's 'cos you've got your pants on.'

 We are lucky enough to have a decent sized garden for London, although the soil is a dismal mix of clay (these houses were built on old clay pits used for brick making, so the shrinkage in hot weather causes terrible cracking) and sand. If you want to grow anything, you have to pile in the organic matter inorder to have something other than solid clay to deal with. I was brought up in Kent, on clay, and remember when very young seeing cracks where old puddles had been. I had been told that cracks were the first sign of an earthquake - we were obsessed with archeology and passionate about Pompeii, Tutankamen and Ur of the Caldes. I was very very frightened that the world would begin to shake and my home would disappear down an enormous hole. But I never told anyone - perhaps I thought that if I didn't, it wouldn't happen. I think I still think like that  now sometimes.

Anyway, in the middle of our long thin lawn are two old cooking apple trees, side by side. They fruit quite well some years, and we have a lot of apple crumble, apple compote (which the boys love on their cereal, with yoghurt etc) and chutney. Littlest has taken to climbing as high as he can up them. Of course, my heart is in my mouth, because he is  so high above my head, but I cannot show any fear. I just offer to nip off some of the thinner branches that are 'getting in his way' ie not load bearing. I climbed trees like anything as a child. My mother was no where nearby so never bothered herself about it, and I remember my younger brother getting right to the top of a full grown tree, swaying in the high branches, a pale dot grinning he was so far away.

Littlest has very good balance, and the trees are nothing like as  large as the old cedars and others that I had access to. I am just very glad he is so active outside, right now playing with the neighbouring little girls. He is so hungry for company, and it is wonderful that there are children nearby. He hops across the deserted garden next door, and climbs over the fence, sure of a warm welcome. They come the other way as well.

It  is incredibly hot in the shed, but I simply must do some work. The trouble with going to an office again is that freelance has built up in a frightening way, and deadlines loom alarmingly.

While the rest of us have only the vaguest academic interest in the World Cup, Littlest is enraptured by 'David' and wants terribly to be involved.
This morning, he was up in the house with the teenagers watching a bit of Sponge Bob and eating pancakes, maple syrup and bacon, while I instal my nice piece of software I bought off Ebay. The intercom rings. 'Muuuuum, the World Cup starts today.'
'Yes, darling, I know,' me typing in the long customer number and hoping that because the software is second hand, I can still register and get updates of the slightly antiquated version of Final Draft I have purchased for Eldest and me to play with. It is scriptwriting software, and helps you draft things into a right form for filming. For me it will just be an interesting way of writing, for Eldest it might be a useful learning process as she is very interested in film. At the beginning of the summer holidays, she is going on a film making course courtesy of the Youth Hostelling Association's Do It 4 Real with which No 1 Boy enjoyed an activity week last year.
'Can we goand watch it?'
'Darling, it is in Germany, so not really, no.'
Begins to weep.
'But I want to see David.'
'I know, but we can't really go all the way to Germany today. Anyway, we haven't got tickets.'
'You can ring up the World Cup manager and get some,' - o the blinding faith of the small that we can do anything. Apart from thinking that I would rather attend the Retreat from Moscow, I mentioned to him that I had tried to win some tickets off a cereal packet for him. But, alas, we didn't buy the right packet.
He is calm again now, as I said he might be able to watch bits of it on television later.
David Beckham scored about ten goals, according the Littlest, who is perching on a computer monitor by my side. And Wayne Rooney scored about 11 goals, apparently. I know as little as him, so will just repeat what he is saying.
I filled a couple of cans this morning to water the vegetables and pots before it gets too hot. The update on the horrible tree is that it didn't even notice the poison, but a man from the council did come and see it, although I haven't heard the result yet.
Littlest is frantic to use his 'mad flower' but it is a hose attachment so that is a no. We would love to set up the paddling pool for him, but how many cans and buckets would it take? I think even a little water to play in is better than none.

On Saturday, we left Littlest with a manny, to play lots of football in the park and have a picnic in the park (Littlest wanted it done with proper ceremony and requested a 'picnic mat'), and set off for  the Barbican with the two older ones to see the Cheek by Jowl production of The Changeling. I remember this play from Eng Lit long ago, as the heroine has the amazing name of Beatrice Joanna (also shared by a very sinister character in a SAKI story - I think she is a werewolf but I might be misremembering). Anyway, yesterday's BJ falls in love while promised to another. So naturally she gets a hated servant called De Flores to murder her intended in order to clear the path to her new love. BAD IDEA.

Because of course De Flores loves her, and thinks the reward will be her person. She tries to give him a large cheque. So , well you can imagine. The removal of a substantial pair of knickers on the top of a desk. The trouble is she begins to enjoy it and the love for whom she did such an awful thing is rather cast aside.

He turns out anyway to have a thing about potions, including one you take to check if you are still a virgin. First you gape, then you sneeze, then you laugh hysterically apparently. It was a funny bit amid the horrors of murder, severed fingers, and other mayhem.

There is a whole sub plot that is usually left out that involves two noblemen disguising themselves as a fool and a madman in order to gain access to the local lunatic asylum, the head of which has a luscious young wife.
So you have horrible violence and comedy, rubbing up closely against each other in the  most disconcerting way. Rather like Green Wing, said Eldest. All staged in the main theatre at the Barbican, but unrecognisable in that there was steeply raked scaffolding seating within the stage area, and the play was staged backstage as it were with all the towering black painted bricks on display. The proper auditorium loomed dark and deserted behind us as we sat within the proscenium arch.
All brilliant . The teenagers I think were pleased. A member of the cast, whom I know quite well, did call me worrying that it might be a bit much for a 13 year old due to the genital mutilation etc. But it was hardly explicit! Just a bit of business with a bottom pressed against a glass door, eerily lit, and some splashing around of stage blood on a satin nightie.

Now it is Sunday night, and summer has started at last and I intend to cycle into the West End tomorrow to my new job. Risking helmet hair, sweaty pits and all. But I am desperate for exercise, and this is the only way I ever get any. Eldeest has her last bit of AS exam - mechanics - and No 1 Boy I am quite sure is not even vaguely ready for the onslaught.
All he wants to do is gain possession of this computer and IM his friends.

'CRASH! tinkle, tinkle, tinkle...'

I start from my bed, heart pounding, as the sound of an enormous amount of glass breaking disturbs my dozy reading.

The boys are undisturbed, but Eldest is wild eyed in the passage. I indicate that she should follow downstairs, but in my wake. We peer about, but all seems well. She thinks it came from the bathroom, so we peep in there. I am shaking.

The bathroom cabinet has loosed its mirrored door onto the floor, in a moment of inanimate petulance. That is all. It always was a rubbish old cupboard, found in a skip, but did its duty. I called Husband with shaking fingers up from the shed, where he was waiting to collect the consignment of organic produce for tomorrow's market. He kindly cleared it all up with newspaper wrappings and the hoover. I seemed to have decided to be a weak and feeble woman.

Eldest, who had been feeling grotty and sad earlier, seemed much cheered by the incident. Hugged us both and apologised, dear girl.

I have had so many jobs in my life. And yet I gaze around my new temporary office and see people who have been there for years and years. Does it prove me to be a flippertijibbet that  the longest job I ever had was five years, and that was right at the beginning of this career business? I think it has more to do with  having children and having a kind of life. Not one that results in a pension and rights and saved up accumulated brownie points, and promotion and self-esteem brought on by such matters, but a much messier business, involving dealing with children, elderly parents, restlessness, marriage and the other inescapable confusions of life.
I have never had maternity leave, in spite of working throughout my adult life. This is because with the job I had when I bore Eldest you had to be in the job for two years before you qualified, and I was too disorganised to realise this. Just longed for a  baby as soon as it became even vaguely feasible, ie  we were married and earning a bit each.
No 1 Boy came along during a dark time of family passings, where a job simply would have withered on the vine against competition from funerals and endless trips up north to see my mother as she faded from a robust 9st to 7 and falling. The last meal I made for her was a clarified consomme. I made a chicken stock, and then clarified it with egg white and egg shell, wh ich you then seive. A bit of fiddling while Rome burned I now see.
Then during the 1990s when I could have done with the security of a permanent job, I was only offered contracts and promised permanence, and let down again and again. The week I decided to go freelance again in order to look after the two older ones just at the magical point where their brains were burgeoning, and yet they still needed me to look after them, I was offered about five good permanent jobs one after the other. One, seven pages on the weekend section of a national broadsheet newspaper, sent me stamping angrily around the block, tears starting from my eyes. But I still said no to a full time job. It was, in retrospect, and from a strictly worldly point of view, the 'wrong' thing to do, to turn down all those jobs.
And yet, in that time I moved the family into a bigger home. Project managed complex building work, and wrote numerous articles on all kinds of subjects. And then I found I was pregnant with Littlest. I went back into full time work when he was six months old, as things could not be held off any longer.
Which was only a little later than the time I would have gone back if he hadn't happened along in all his nonchalent beauty.
So, I haven't scrabbled to the top. I am not silent on a peak in what now passes for Fleet Street. But I think I am OK and there are plenty of other things I want to do anyway including getting that self-publishing project finished!

On Saturday morning, we fled the city for Wiltshire, to a spidery cottage that belongs to my parents in law. Luckily, there are plenty of books to identify the wildlife, because there is always plenty of it, both dead and alive. A large and very deceased beetly thing  inhabited the stairs (wrong word). I picked it up, and laid it on the beetle pages of the insect book. A cockchafer. I thought for one horrible moment it might be a cockroach, being brownish.
Husband had to set off back to London to do his market, and I was with the boys but without a car in the depths of the bus-less countryside. To get them out of the house, I proposed a walk up to the petrol station on the main road to buy sweets. Horrible really, cars whizzing past on the narrow lanes. Walking in the country is no fun unless you are off the road. And the A4 was so unbelievably noisy, after the peace of the high, dry valley where we were staying.
Now we have swapped, and I am back in London as I have to attend the office tomorrow, and Husband is in the birdy idyll of the countryside with the boys.
I have a sneaky sort of pleasure at being allowed without demands, coupled with a strong sensation of missing those skinny arms and emphatic conversations, the shambling grace of my adolescent son and their father, whose presence is always something more than everyday. We walked today in young beech woods, the bluebells over in places but still flushing the undergrowth with that extraordinary shade. Trees were acid with early summer leaves, and there were exciting squalls of wind and rain, interspersed with sunshine. We were all somewhat muddy by the end of it.
How cold it is for May, but the birds even here in London are very noisy. I seem to need more hot baths even than in the winter - the British really only bathe to keep warm - as I keep expecting it to be warm, and my circulation tells me otherwise in no uncertain terms.

As to the mugging, the conversation apparently went like this:
'Give me your iPod.'
'I'd rather not.'
'I'd rather not hit you. Do you have any money.'
'Only loose change.'
And then it sort of petered out.....
He felt shaken afterwards, but I think was magnificently cool.

In the midst of having friend and children to supper, No 1 Boy suddenly told me he had been mugged. Only he didn't put it like that. Someone had 'asked' him for his iPod, and he has suggested that he didn't think he would hand it over. My heart quailed at the thought of what might have happened next. But what did in fact happen, was the horrible teenager in question then asked him what money he had - he only ever carries a couple of coins for lunch. 'Loose change,' replied No 1 Boy. Teenage toe rag did threaten to hit No 1 Boy, but somewhat half-heartedly as far as I can ascertain. Anyway, he seemed quite calm about it all and just walked on.
O dear, this is what I always fear. Young boys are actually more vulnerable than young girls. No 1 Boy is tall for his age, but still. there are such horrible people around.
And this was all while he was walking towards the park for his sponsored walk.

For supper I cooked two plump chickens, and made a mushroom gravy and new potatoes, broccoli and more of the lovely Suffolk asparagus that Husband is selling at the moment. I also tried to make red cabbage, but dealing with Littlest upstairs meant that I burnt it - just as our guests arrived - and felt an idiot. We had poire belle helene for pudding, as we have a glut of delicious pears. Then Eldest put on her current favourite film , Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.  We all shrieked with laughter, but the two older friend children were rather quiet. The eldest, a girl who is virtually No 1 Boy's twin, liked it, but her younger brother didn't really. Sat in silence beside me, while the ultimately compassionate story of three drag queens travelling through the Australian desert unfolded before his eyes. Hope he wasn't shocked, anyway.

One day in an office, and I was flattened. A little resistance from Littlest to sitting still for stories, and I just went to my bed and lay down with my eyes shut. Very feeble. I have only not been in an office for about five months, having done solid office work since 2001, so why one day should have this effect I do not know.

He came scurrying into my room and curled up beside me under the duvet. And we embraced for a while, until I realised it was nearly nine o'clock, which is far too late for him. I hope the shattering effect subsides, because I am looking forward to having friend and her children for supper this evening.

Oddly enough, it was after one week of a new job in this same office, in 1983, that I was so exhausted one Friday night I walked out in front of a bus. By an extraordinary fluke, and as some of my faithful readers will know, I got off almost scot free (one eye doesn't work any more - but, hey! that is why we have two!). It is strange to be back in this office, as it has changed in some ways but not in others. The stairs smell the same anyway.

It meant that proof reading Emma Lee Potter's entertaining 'Pop Idol' style children's novel has been a bit delayed. I will get on with it over the weekend, while Littlest performs ever more alarming feats on his climbing frame (hanging upside from bars about six foot from the ground is the latest).

This morning, he told me his dream. It was all about a pretty girl of 18. When questioned, he said he had been 18 as well, but she wasn't his girlfriend, just his friend. What was her name? O, we didn't have names, he said coolly.

Eldest is doing Eng Lit AS paper this morning. The hope is that the passion she conveys when she talks about the work translates into the written word. I do know she is more than able to write like a dream, and I feel very hopeful for her. I just pray that the right questions to set off her fuse are in the paper.

No 1 Boy is doing a sponsored walk. He was anxious about getting to the correct venue, and I hope wore a waterproof. I am assuming he would get in touch if he hadn't managed. Good way to get half a day off school I think raising funds for said school plus other charity.

It is well known that giving presents to men is not easy. Even nice easy men like Husband. Luckily he very often loses things I give him, so I can then give him another one of whatever it is. A few years ago I gave him some very nice plain black 'slides' for summer use. They have gone he knows not where. So thought would try again. Alas, went to TKMaxx and tried to find something nice and plain. Thought  I had succeeded with some Hush Puppy branded ones, but then they didn't fit. And one of those heavy duty cork screws that plunge in and out in a suitably macho way. It was broken when he removed it from the packaging. So I must trek back to do what we call 'reverse shopping'.
As yesterday was the last time for a while that I can give myself over to unadulaterated domesticity, I cooked one hell of a dinner if I say so myself. We bought asparagus on the way back from the Suffolk graveside of Monday, and I cooked them properly for once. My mother's last gift to me for my 35th birthday was going to be an asparagus kettle - a tall narrow pot with a basket inside so the bottoms are boiled and the tops are steamed. She died less than a month before that birthday, so I went out and bought one for myself. Which sounds like an odd thing to do actually. But every May it comes into its own for the brief and delicious harvest of English asparagus - the only sort that is genuinely worth eating.

I have been, to my shame, known to overcook it to a khaki slush. Last night I cooked each of four bundles separately for around five or six minutes, and then plunged them immediately into cold water to retain the bright green. Laborious but worth it. To go with them, I made a sauce of cream, lime juice, salt and pepper for dipping. I was going to make beef wellington, but the fillet that came was a bit small, while there also arrived the most enormous lamb leg you have ever seen. It was too big to go anywhere apart from in the oven. I stabbed it unmercifully and slipped anchovies, garlic and rosemary into the meat to flavour it.  I made roast potatoes, and steamed some broccoli. Many many years ago, while still at home with my parents, I thought I invented a completely new sauce, which was a light fresh mint Hollandaise to eat with roast lamb. Then I read about it somewhere. My guests last night, and No 1 Boy, said I could take credit for the invention. Which was nice. No one could in fact identify the herb.
For pudding, I made a rice pudding with raw full cream milk, and spice red wine pears - an iconic 1970s dinner party dish that Husband likes.
He was surprised that no one laughed at this rather 'Abigail's Party' confection.
Anyway, everyone looked suitably happy and replete at the end.
My friend Sarah's husband came wearing very old fashioned dancing pumps - which are slip on shoes with bows on the front, that gentlemen used to wear with black or white tie to dances. He wore them to exactly the right house, as Husband has a weakness for this arcane footwear as well and immediately rushed out into the hall and donned my late father's dancing pumps. I always think they make men look charmingly like Jeremy Fisher. Husband has a pair of his own as well, purchased early in our marriage in a sale. But they don't have the requisite bows.
Dancing pumps are not just for girls, you see.

I seem to have spent a lot o f time this year looking into neat square holes in grassy ground. Yesterday was the turn of Husband's step-grandmother's ashes , in their neat little wooden box, to be intered in  her husband's grave. He died in 1971. He was much older than her and was the father of my mother in law. His first wife died in a swiming accident when my mother in law was six. Poor little girl.

Her stepmother died a few days after my father last year at the age of 94. I went to visit her, at her request, but also because I was fond of her and wanted to say goodbye. I asked how she had met her husband. They were in Geneva, staring through glass walls at the League of Nations meeting for a n early session. A voice behind her said something a little doubtful about its effectiveness. She turned round, and he invited her out to lunch. You could see in her face that the lovely excitement of that moment, and all it implied, was still with her on her death bed. It rained a bit, and the graveyard was full of speedwell, buttercups, Queen Anne's lace and other lovely spring flowers. The hawthorn was covered in what looked like tiny striped pink and white roses, rather than the usual foaming cream. Birds sang, and it was very quiet.

We drove the parents in law, aunt, sisters and No 1 Boy, who insisted on coming, home through the rain and traffic in our seven-seater. I continually bless the day I bought that car, it has been amazingly useful for transporting all kinds of people, children and vegetables around. We listened to Humphrey Littleton together, on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, and everyone laughed. HL is a 'self-made man, who has lost the instructions'.

Today I cook for Husband's birthday, a rather grand and old fashioned meal at his request. It will be asparagus, beef wellington and spiced pears. And lots of friends to share it. Must go....

Husband has just gone on the long trek to the farm in East Anglia. The Hungry Gap is very nearly over, so he should bring back my poor misused car, with seats removed at the back, burgeoning with ultra-fresh organic British produce for the Farmers Market at Queens Park on Sunday. We will also benefit.
Last night I went to dinner with an old friend. We met when we were 18 in London. She didn't like me at all, because, in spite of being ravishingly beautiful (six foot tall, red hair, large eyes etc) she was rather shy, and I (horror of horrors) 'talked to boys'. This was because I had brothers I think, and didn't really mind the opposite sex all that much.
Anyway, I thought she was wonderful (all the while she was seething with resentment at my forwardness) and when I understood she was going to university in the West Country, with two of my best school friends, I highly recommended her to them. They made excellent friends with each other while there, and in fact shared a house. When the three years was up, and we were all back in London, I bumped  into her in Chelsea. Still under the illusion that she was a friend, I bounced at her and invited her to come and live in a house I was renting in Fulham. She visibly recoiled. But somehow, I didn't really notice.

Anyway, association with my closest friends at university must have endeared me by osmosis, because she did come and live in my house. And we had the most wonderful time, the four of us, as single girls in London in the early 1980s. I was working on a glossy magazine, and as such had masses of invitations. I was completely innocent and ridiculous really, and so immature that it makes me blush at the kind of things I got up to. But I always took one or more of my flatmates with me, or they took me to things, and we all introduced each other to each other's friends, and created such entertainment for ourselves. We also shared clothes, make up, shoes and deepest secrets as well. I am not the tidiest person, and one of them spent a Saturday once tidying my room as a nice surprise.

We were always cooking dinners - usually giant lasagne, fish pie or beef cooked in Guinness - and inviting more people than could really fit into the house to eat them. Everyone brought bottles. And sometimes we would field the odd banker who would bring champagne, and be pleased that they found themselves somewhere a little less then stuffy. Sloane Rangers (as they were dubbed by Harpers & Queen magazine in those days) could be old for their years, giving very stuffy cordon bleu dinner parties, with napkins and other alien accoutrements.Somewhere during all this, my old friend whom I saw last night, did begin to like me a bit. She is still around  nearly 30 years later, so I must have done something right.

None of them knew anything about food or how to cook. And when I was experimental, they would turn up their pretty noses at my hummus etc. My friend lived on an appalling diet of coca cola and cheesy wotsits (slug like puffy orange things that bear no know n relationship to nutrients). She hadn't a clue about how to cook a meal, and hadn't come across the idea of drinking water at all until she came to stay in my family home and discovered these strange people who drank water with meals.

Last night she cooked a dinner that blew my socks off. I had a proud feeling, as one does when a child does something brilliant that maybe, just maybe, you might have encouraged. She has come a very long way from the cheesy wotsit. She cooked artichoke risotto, stuffed red mullet with pine nuts, and panna cotta (little creamy mousses flavoured with lemon and vanilla, and served with fresh berries). We ate salad that she had 'cut and come again' from their beautiful vegetable garden in central London.

Honestly, you wouldn' t have done better in a restaurant. And she uses recipes and gets really stuck into interesting ingredients. Sunk as I am into repeating my effects, last  night's dinner has roused me from apathy. I am cooking for a small party for Husband's birthday next week, and will get out a recipe book or two and try something new.

No 1 Boy has volunteered to sing as part of his school's senior choir at a memorial service this evening. He is I think the only year 9 in the senior choir, and I hope gains quite a boost from sixth form girls who compliment him on his voice. Or voices, I should say, because he has two completely separate ones. The 'head' voice is still a clear and lovely soprano. Then he changes gear to sing bass. He went off last night in the gloom and drizzle for a rehearsal, where he sang Ave Verum Corpus, and the Lacrimosa, both Mozart.
I felt really proud of him for going to the extra trouble for someone he didn't know. She was head of sport at his school, and has died recently of breast cancer. Terribly sad, the whole school was plunged in grief for her and for her family.
My deputy at my last job is doing the MoonWalk, a fundraiser for breast cancer, where you have to walk 26 miles in the night wearing a decorated bra. Sounds mad, but also quite fun. I hope it is reasonably warm! You can contribute to the charity and her efforts here http://www.justgiving.com/sianrees
She is not a sporting person, I hasten to add, and was completely wiped out by a 15 mile walk, but I am sure she will be fine. I respect her enormously for putting herself through it.
At the same time and on a smaller scale, I am sponsorting a Spellathon for Littlest's class to raise funds for an outing in a bus! He breezed happily through all the spellings, even the more advanced ones. I am beginning to get that excited feeling I have felt before, that he is on the verge of cracking reading. They go from spelling things out to flying through the pages, without any intervening moment or action that I can detect. It is all rather mysterious. Eldest is going to school every day for some supported revision. I think she finds the school atmosphere more conducive of hard work. AS levels start next week, and are quite quickly over. Then she has to go back to school to start A2s, while the GCSE girls are all off for the summer.
She grumbles a bit, but seems to be fine to me. Are you fine, Eldest? We are having a treat of going to the theatre to cheer her on soon.

The main problem with self-publishing is proof reading.  There is no publisher to do a meticulous edit and make sure that every silly mistake is eliminated. In fact, I did a final proof read for a close relation who was being published  in the normal way, and found several typos, and a paragraph where someone came into a room twice without leaving it in between. And there was no supernatural theme.
So, the first proof was checked by my sister in law,  who is a writer and editor, and she found plenty of typos. But then, at the prompting of a friend, I did a complete new edit, which of course meant plenty of new mistakes creep in. It is very difficult indeed to see typos in your own copy, because you know it so well your eye skates and skids over the top without lighting on  mistakes.

It was proved recently that you can read quite well sentences where only the first and last letters of each word are in the right place. But when you are trained as a sub editor, which I was years ago on paper (they use computer programmes such as InDesign these days) you are taught close reading, where you read each letter in a word as you go along. At least I think that is what it is called. I have always been tremendously meticulous, but the annoying thing about this is one's general reading is constantly interrupted by typos. I know these blog posts are often littered with mistakes, but that is because of speed - I publish first drafts in my blog to get my fingers typing, before going on to something more lucrative.

Anyway, when I met Emma Lee Potter online, and we compared notes about self-publishing, I could see an opportunity for mutual benefit. I sent her my proof, and she printed it out and proof read it her end. I have done the same for her this end, and a fat proof sits beside me as I write. When done, I will post it back to her. She has made some very valuable comments, and I  have run some ideas for changing my blurb past her as well. So the cover is now finished and signed off at least, and I hope it is as it should be.

Now I have to transfer Emma's corrections to a Word doco, and send them back to AuthorHouse for transfer to my final proof.  Then I can only hope that the whole thing reads OK, and isn't too annoyingly faulty still. Professional publishers send out to several proof readers, and they still have mistakes. So I just hope it reads OK.

When I was 25 I lost nearly all the sight in my left eye. As  I had the classic accident that is used as a metaphore for death - ie I walked in front of a bus (completely by mistake I rush to add -silly me) I was grateful for the very small impairment that I did receive. Anyway, it makes me paranoid about the other one, so when Eldest peered into my eye and said it looked a bit weird, I had a look in the mirror.

The white, which had turned yellowish, had (look away now if off squeamish disposition) bulged up around the iris in the most sinister way. Luckily, Husband appeared and we went off to the Western Eye Hospital, who have seen me several times over the years for minor problems (thank goodness only minor) including grit, scratches and what seemed to be a migraine without the headache. It turned out there was a huge chunk of a new mascara I had bought that was lurking and irritating, and nothing worse. I came home with some of that horrid eye ointment that temporarily blinds you, and went straight to bed.

Fine today, and just clearing up loose ends this week before taking up my month's contract. The children were all as sweet as they could be once I had a sore eye, I have to say.

Today, Emma has sent back my marked up manuscript, so I can transfer to the corrections to a Word doco, and send them off for the last time. Clumsy way of doing it really, but Authorhouse does like to extract the last pennies possible. For an online publishing business, I would have thought they would have a better system for sending copy corrections. Never mind, will force me to proof it properly once more and hope it comes out with few mistakes in the end. Emma has said more nice things, but I can't put them in here, because, if any of you kind people are thinking of reading it one day, it might spoil the plot....

No 1 Boy had one of his sore throats, which made him grumpy and hard to winkle out. Eldest's study leave started today, but she went into school as usual and did lots of revising. Littlest was in play centre, and I rushed off to restore the straggling mess that is my hair to some kind of chick discipline at a local hairdresser. Figured they couldn't make too much of a mess of such a lot of hair. Two were closed, but the last one, which I have not enjoyed visiting before - the receptionist/manicurist is a charm-free zone, could do me just then and there. A silent, but handsome and skilled Moroccan plunged my head in the basin and got quickly on with washing my hair before my neck began to ache. Then he showed me to a chair, and with equal briskness began to 'cut in' to my hair. I showed him that I wanted about three inches off, and in a flurry of scissors, chunks of dark locks were scattered all over the floor. I decided to read OK and let him get on with it.

Half an hour later, while I groaned over the lovely Jordan licking her unfortunate husband, among other delights, my head was much neater. He then blow dried, and although it is a bit 'Rachel' it looked pretty good. I sailed out for my job interview feeling much more confident. Went home and put in contact lense, decent dress (Boden, black, wrapover) and coat (squashed blackberry suede - birthday present from Husband, he bought two in Makro - cash and carry - one red and one green). And boots, my only decent footwear - luckily the day was quite overcast. And make up of course. Haven't worn that for a while.
 Realised in my last frenzied flailing of throwing out that I had denuded myself of all useable eyeshadow, it being mostly about 20 years old.
Took with me a pair of LKBennet t boots, that had literally fallen apart at the front within a month of purchase in the Jan uary sales. After a bit of polite arguing, and offers of a credit note, I got my money back and sailed on towards the interview at a magazine I used to work for years ago. Half an hour later I came out with a month's contract to fill in and help in the features department.
Then we will see. I contacted my deputy from an earlier job as I was  in the West End, and we had a cosy lunch together. Then on to a seminar about my great great great grandmother, Julia Margaret Cameron, and other pioneers of photography. The first lecture was interesting, as it explained the science and chemistry behind the art of photography.
The second was a little dull as it dealt with photographic still lives, which don't grab me in sepia. I prefer paintings in nice bright colours.
I went to see a friend who runs a gallery and he told me the definition of an intellectual. 'A person who can be alone in a room with a tea cosy without putting it on his head'. Which reminded me of Littlest aged three, on being presented with several pairs of pre-loved knickers by a friend, went indoor and put several of them on over his clothes in a spirit of gratitude.
The donar said, in jocular fashion, 'Why don't you put them on your head?'
Littlest, without missing a beat, pulls out a label and says solemnly: 'It says, no on head!'
Lovely day altogether, which ended with a reasonably untroubled shopping expedition to get cereal, milk, organic mince for crabby patties, and biscuits. And now I have a sore and swollen eye for some reason, but all is quiet, and the door is open onto the warmish and dark garden that smells of lilies of the valley. 

Sunday morning, and it is grey and soft outside. The door of the cabin is shut, and my angle poise seems like the only light in here. How much light means -  so much more the older I get. I am sensitive to the gloom, but don't feel cast down, but when the sun shines it is such a joy.

I imagine almost everyone in the UK has read about the 11-year-old expectant mother, with the 20-a-day fag habit, and an advanced taste for vodka. She was drunk when she was impregnated by a 15 year old boy - who has been done, very unusually, for statutory rape. In most case the authorities shrug their shoulders about this kind of law-breaking, but perhaps 11 really is young enough, and far enough below the age of consent, to lead to action. I wasn't even capable of being pregnant at 11, not in fact for another four years.

Her mother, aged 34, with five children is 'proud of her' for choosing to keep the baby. My husband marvels atthe  mother's ability to grow a full-scale (although probably quite small) hard-drinking, fag-smoking woman (does she have a deep and gravelly voice?) in just over ten years. I'm hoping our Eldest won't ever feel the need to smoke. The slow unfolding into womanhood should happen at its own pace, with intellectual development taking up enormous amounts of time and energy.

We would rather she felt the need to be with us, fed by us, sheltered by us, loved and encouraged by us for as long as it takes, before she breaks the bonds and flies away. She can take flights of freedom whenever she wants, knowing we are here if she needs us.

The trouble with early pregnancy is that it has a paradoxically infantilising effect. If you have a baby, while you are still a child, you remain tied to your mother and cannot spread your wings and fly away. What would you do with the baby? Without enormous determination and strength of character, you just sink into a milky, nappyish state, at home and the risky outside world retreats again from beyond your grasp. And you fall straight out of your peer group at school. At 11 of course most of them are still children.

I haven't read a tabloid on the subject of this unfortunate child, but I imagine there is a picture or two (I cannot bear pictures of pregnant children), and in the case of the Daily Mail, a lot of wailing. I do feel like wailing actually, for all the silly little girls for whom there is no reason to wait, because there is nothing to wait for. For their stupid parents who do nothing to stop the decadent, often death-dealing slide into drink and smoking and worse. In their orbit there are no young men who are going to finish school, grow up, get jobs or a decent apprenticeship, set up homes and marry them.

One of my old school friends volunteers as an adult who supports young persons in police stations when they are arrested, in the absence of parents, making sure their rights are uphelf for instance. She was just finishing off one child, when another came in with his mother. Mother: 'Well I can't hang around her here, I've got a party to go to.' Duty officer turns to my friend, who is just about to go home after an exhausting couple of hours volunteering, deadpan: 'Mrs So and So has a party to go to, do you think you could stay for Darren as well?' My friend, also deadpan: 'Yes, of course.' Mother goes off to party, leaving 11-year-old miscreant in police custody, accompanied only by a complete stranger. When she has gone, rueful lifted eyebrows ensue. This is not uncommon.

Children don't see stable families with married parents. Only boys who will remain forever boys, with football and beer to sustain them. And girls like them pushing pushchairs, with cigarette in mouth, and two Bacardi Breezers (one lemon and one orange) in the other hand (seen in park at 3pm in the afternoon). What other fate is there in a world where all families are equally valid, and all behaviour neutral. These girls in the past would have been married in their teens, with a properly defined role in relation to home and man. It wasn't always wonderful of course, but certainties do help people to live - particularly if they don't have the imagination to create their own path.

The 11-year-old mother, her peers (called pramfaces by the naughty Popbitch) and her mother, are the females that feminism forgot in its headlong rush to get women out of the home. Don't get me wrong, I am a feminist, but my form of feminism means that both sexes, unless incapable for some real reason such as disability, need to grow up, look after themselves and the children, and take responsibility for their life and role.

Some women, and I know a few, want their role to be taking responsibility for home and children in the context of marriage to a breadwinner. Simple and straightforward. Children and home, while the man goes out to work and supports them. That is sadly available to very few now, as life is expensive, and both of you have to work to keep things going - and anyway, young men are encouraged to be marriage-averse. Ironic really, as it is men who benefit most happiness and health wise from marriage.

A new view is that happiness should be the business of government, not just protection of the people, which would lead to many changes in policy. Marriage would simply have to be encouraged, because it has an uncomfortable way of making people happy. But education needs to come first, appropriate to its audience, interesting, engaging, worth making an effort for, and leading to a better kind of life. It's not going to happen any time soon though....

As Littlest weaves and slurps behind me (Daddy made small pancakes!) I wanted to blog last night quickly before I am catapulted into the avalanche of children's activities that is now my Saturday. Swimming, music and children's parties. At least Husband has stopped campaigning, so it isn't quite such a lonely business. The Lib Dems sent me a huge and sweet smelling bunch of flowers yesterday, to thank me for my help and patience. I wasn't always very patient, and could be quite short, so this is very much appreciated and so unexpected.

I went with some trepidation to the 30-year school reunion last night. The twenty year one, which seems like yesterday, was a curiously muted affair where I felt that no one seemed to care less about anyone else's lives, so I talked only to those who had remained friends. I was also aware that my own aging process could stare me in the face when I saw a group of my exact contemporaries.

The joy was, not a bit of it. No one had changed a bit. No one looked middle aged, let alone aged from last time. Those with very fragile pale skin had a few lines, but it made no difference to their overall appearance. Their hair was bright and sleek, their clothes, while never overly elegant, were young and bright and pretty. Glancing at the group in the room, it would be hard to place at birth year 1957/8. And they were so nice, and full of chat, and friendliness. Many were missing, but none for sad reasons as far as I could tell.

Words tumbled over each other, as we all tried to get our stories told, at least in part. We compared everything from number of children (six was the greatest), to youngest age of children (Littlest is quite senior, the youngest was two). No one seemed to have divorced their most permanent husband. Jobs and careers didn't seem to be too interesting. It was duration of human contact, friendship and love that animated this group of well-educated, pleasant people. And some of them had risen very high at different stages of their lives.

One, a successful merchant banker in her time, and mother of four, now runs a charity that deals  with domestic violence; another having been an academic high flyer, runs a small business which she hopes will grow, now her children have; another makes educational films, and tells me she has had strings of interesting lovers over the years - and she always thought she would marry and have children - but children are beginning to leave now unless we had more in our forties, and she had no regrets. Why should she? Late forties is not a time for regrets when you are healthy and have an interesting and exciting life. And strings of lovers sounds huge fun. A girl I always thought of as very tall turns out to be the same height as me. I have known her since she was nine, and she was tall then, when I took a long time to grow. Two of my closest and dearest friends were there so I tried to ignore them a bit, but of course couldn't. It was all too brief. It was midnight before I knew where we were.

The school we went to, which was called Benenden, was a stuffy, rather boring place really, which while pretending to celebrate the individual, actually didn't like any lack of conformity and wrote me a rotten report for Cambridge. Luckily, the tutors who interviewed me simply didn't believe it. It all boiled down to my attitude to lacrosse I think (summed up by the word, 'Why?'). These days maybe I would be more popular, because I reached a kind of academic peak at 17 (downhill ever since) - but they seemed not to value that at all. The exact words were: 'She contributed nothing to the life of the school' - well, I will put it on record here that I rode for the school (not very well); I acted like anything, and ran the glorious acting cupboard beneath the stage, preventing little toe rags from stealing the 1920s cocktail dresses with which it burgeoned; and I got high grades (which these days would boost the all important league tables that didn't exist then). So, it must have been lacrosse then....

Anyway, I like the kind of steady women the school produced. No fireworks, no hysterics, no Botox, no designed handbags. A typical Benenden 'senior' as they are known, Dame Eliza Manningham Buller, runs MI5; the heights of the Civil Service are familiar territory - it was among the earliest institutions that recognised you could attract and retain intelligent and useful women if you acknowledged that they had babies. Englishwomen who raised families uncomplainingly in bush and mountains in earlier generations, that is the type I met again last night....

Looking out of our front door one day, we found our legally parked car had been clamped. It was market day, and Husband had to take the car  or he wouldn't have been able to trade. So he contact the bailiff to find out what was going on, who claimed to have put a letter through our door on the Monday of that week saying if we didn't pay up for a parking ticket, they would clamp us.
We never got the letter and both of us were in the house at the time when the bailiff claimed to have called. Husband paid up. We realise now that we shouldn't have. But we had no choice that particular morning.
Anyway, it turned out to have been for a ticket that was never put onto our car, that Husband had been disputing for months. The sum was really vast and frightening, and put us out financially. We were determined to get it back.
After getting various documents filled in and signed in front of a solicitor, we received a great stack of signed affidavits from Westminster Council, which basically said, boo sucks, even if the ticket never got onto your car, the fact that you were three minutes over on a parking metre means you are stuffed, mate. But that seems to me to be a new rule, and a frightening one. We feel beset by a kind of trickery when it comes to car-ownership, that if you make a tiny mistake they are entitled to fleece you. For us it is a financial problem, for others it could cause real hardship.
Westminster Council did not address the bailiff's con trick at all. We will write yet another letter pointing this out. But we are afraid we have lost our money - for three minutes' parking. Horrible feeling.

Wobblymoo has asked for a 'crabby patty' recipe. Well, here goes. I use lean mince, usually organic and either lamb or beef. I chop an onion finely, and sometimes add a squeeze of garlic as well, plus soy sauce, herbs, a pinch of salt etc. It really varies. I used dry basil which I bought to encourage Eldest to fulfil a recipe. I would not usually buy dry basil, but it is good - very different from fresh. Anyway, sometimes I chop parsley and thyme into the mix as well.

I buy ciabatta rolls from the supermarket - burger buns are too formless. Then I simply squeeze a patty roughly into size and shape and fry or grill. I sandwich said hot patty with grainy mustard, mayonnaise, sliced tomatoes, sliced sweet pickles, lettuce, raw onion and ketchup if they like it (No 1 Boy doesn't). Then I squeeze down hard, cut in half and serve. Eldest won't accept anything but mayonnaise and ketchup.

Sitting in my hut is like working outside, only with a roof. I can hear the birds singing, and the intermittent rustle of Husband's bookkeeper sorting out his endless paperwork. He has gone off to sell organic produce. I have now got a ideal work station. I learnt a lot going back into office life about how to be comfortable in a n office, that it is no good sitting on a chair that doesn't support you properly, and what height your computer screen should be. All very dull, but making the difference  between back spasm and creativity.

We are planning a family outing of the most gruesome kind today, I am going to take the t