Wife in the North

Wifey's Top 10

2011-06-13T16:16:00.006+01:00

So to mark the end of the Newcastle University blogging course run by myself and technical genius Oli Woods at The Approachable Geek, here is a top ten blog tips, some of which I've tweeted as the course went on, while others are brand, spanking new.

Top 10 Blog Tips

1. Only blog when you have something to say.

2. Feel the fear and blog anyway.

3. Blog sober (as opposed to blog yourself sober).

4. When you are ready to press publish, control the mouse - don't let the mouse control you.

5. Blog the moments of your life to get to the truth within it.

6. Blogging - like Life - is all about connecting.

7. Remember the people you're writing about - are people who read.

8. Blog often.

9. If necessary - moderate.

10. Remember that it's your blog - nobody else's.

So there you are. Blog wisely my children.

Blog It

2011-05-05T12:57:00.004+01:00

About to start tutoring a six-week course at Newcastle University on blogging. It's called Blog It (see what I did there? I'm what is commonly known as a wordsmith you know.) I'm doing the course with Oli Wood a computing whizz-kid which is fantastic because he can answer all the tough questions that make my eyes go round and round in opposite directions, and I can drift between the desks in an embroidered, burgundy-velvet cape saying things like "Your post might read better if you took it out of capital letters darlink."

Preparing the blogging course has made me re-engage which is good, and question whether I'm still a blogger which is bad. But I can't in all honesty call myself a blogger if I don't blog, and I do call myself a blogger so here I am blogging. Blog after me, I have been a bad girl in neglecting my blog.

I think I'll come up with some top tips on blogging. Academia is like that these days isn't it. Popular bite-sized culture. Tweet your essay. Poke your lecturer. "I'll facebook you" instead of "Fancy about a cup of Nescafe at mine? I'm completely out of milk by the way."

OK, so my first top tip for blogging: Only blog when you have something to say.

Is it that time already?

2011-03-31T17:13:00.003+01:00

The aliens came back for me - hence the six-month absence. Hell. Enough said.

The good news is I have another book deal with Viking Penguin who published Wife in the North. To put it mildly I'm quite happy about this. The working title is The Jam Jar Army and it is all about good deeds, and a little bit about jars, and it is non-fiction again because it turns out I have no idea how to write a novel (and I say this having spent the last two years writing one). So, that's my news - oh and I've put on two stone. How about you? What did I miss?

Nine out of 10 Cats

2010-09-28T11:43:00.003+01:00

Ed Miliband then. I'm not unhappy about it. When I saw David in action during the general election campaign, I was genuinely impressed with both his communication skills and the cut of his suit, but frankly he would have been predictable and who needs yet another smooth operator? At that time, David Miliband seemed like a good fit against Cameron and Clegg, but courtesy of the coalition I've changed my mind. Cameron Major and Cameron Minor and David Miliband - they'd have been like a scissor-cut string of paper-dollies. Ed is at least an interesting choice - dark-eyed and sixth-former-geeky I'll grant you, but patently super-intelligent and sincere. Apparently during the leadership elections, another 32,000 members joined. I didn't. Perhaps it's finally time?

I have two boys. I explained what was happening at the top of the Labour party over breakfast the other day - about younger brother Ed going for the leadership although he knew older-brother David was desperate for it, about Ed winning, and now noone knew what David would do and whether he would take a job under his brother. Over porridge, I conducted a scientific poll. Similar to those polls the cosmetic industry uses - 93% of women think this hugely expensive moisturiser strips the fat from their jowls and slaps it onto their breasts. (Sample size: 14 women genetically related to the marketting manager.)

My questions:
1. Do you think David Miliband should take a job in the Shadow Cabinet and work under his brother?
2. Will David Miliband take a job in the Shadow Cabinet and work under his brother?

Polling Group
Nine-year-old brother:
1. No he shouldn't. Definitely not.
2. No he won't. (Cue scornful laughter.)

Seven-year-brother:
1. Yes he should.
2. No he won't. (Shaking of head.)

Interestingly, my nine-year-old followed up."What job is he being offered?," he asked, "and is it a very good one?" I explained that David could have whatever job he wanted (apart from his brother's of course.)
He considered David's options some more: "And exactly how long will Ed get to stay leader?"
As for me (and I admit I'm an only child), I'm of the opinion, David should take the job his brother offers him. Take it and try it on for size. If the media make a meal of it and the party loses more than it gains by having him as Shadow Chancellor, then walk away. That way he knows he tried - he did his best. Something in him isn't ready to give up just yet or he would have done it by now, surely? I agree the whole psychodrama at the top of the Labour party goes on, but hey at least that's something people can understand. Our politicians are human. Occasionally, their families drive them to distraction but they love them enough to stand beside them when it counts because that is what family is for. That's what I'm hoping I get to explain to my boys when we know exactly what David Miliband has decided.

The Spectator

2010-09-24T11:03:00.006+01:00

Where did that week go? It must be a matrix thing. You open your eyes one Monday morning and by the time you get up and start the day, it's the weekend already. Last weekend my children did the junior Great North Run. Due to some rogue gene, all three appear to be horribly active sporty types. This means my four-year-old daughter and seven-year-old son both ran a mile, and my nine-year-old ran three along the river banks of the Tyne. (The next day my husband ran 13 so perhaps the gene isn't all that rogue.) Instead of running alongside them, I spent all day festooned with bags and spare clothes with water bottles in every available coat pocket, spectating and cheering - not just my child but all of them. You read all these pieces about children being blimps and lifting their chubby hands from their nintendo DS's only long enough to reach into the bumper bag of crisps and stuff their chipmunk faces some more, but there was none of that in Newcastle. All these kids - some of them hurting, and grim-faced, some of them grinning ear to ear, some of them wearing photos of grannies and siblings they were raising money for, but each and every one of them determined to finish what they started.

I like the idea of children achieving, of getting them into the habit of achievement, letting them feel that buzz in the hope they want to feel it again. It reconciles me at least in part to the cold, rainy touchlines, the waiting around at football, at rugby, at cricket, at dancing, to the constant driving from here to there, and wondering "Am I a spectator in my own life?" Because I guess in part I am. I get to stand in the driving rain, and I get to watch and marvel because in a way their race has only just begun.

Benedict and Me

2010-09-16T11:59:00.003+01:00

So, lovely morning. Dropped the kids off at school and there was a new display complete with the Psalm text "I praise you because of the wonderful way you created me." Which struck me as rather cool and uplifting. I can't say I am into praising the Lord - I've never understood why the Lord would want praise from us anyway. "Ya-da, ya-da, ya-da" he's probably thinking. But I do very much like the implication that each and every child is wonderful. Not just the children either but us too.

Perhaps I should start every blog with a text from Psalms?

Or not. Though what with the Pope arriving on his state visit, it seems appropriate to bring God into the conversation.

I am a bad Catholic.(That'll be One Our Father and three Hail Mary's). I haven't been to mass for months. And months. I still, however, consider myself a Catholic - when you have been brought up with tales of bloody martyrdom and discrimination, it is impossible to do otherwise. All my children are baptised and the eldest has made his communion - I have in effect made a contract with my church and placed my children within it.

And make no mistake, the church needs me and women like me - Catholic matrons holding babes in their arms, and small children dressed like brides and grooms by the hand.

I should be bringing my children to mass every Sunday rain or shine. And I'm not - why is that? Partly it's been practicalities, three small children are impossible to keep quiet and still. Oh, and one of them has rugby - that's a really good horribly secular reason right there - let's hope God's a rugby fan then shall we?.

Part of me wants to attend mass every Sunday like my mother before me, like my grandmother before her. I want to sit in a holy place, and bow my head and find peace and serenity. I want that community back.

But I don't go, and that's a lot to do with that contract I signed. Because Catholic though I am, I find myself not wanting to look too closely at the small print drawn up by old illiberal men - at the Church's conservatism on homosexuality, contraception, and women priests.
As an educated, intelligent woman, am I supposed to believehomosexuality a sin?
Am I seriously supposed to pretend I don't have contraception stashed in my bedroom drawer?
Am I supposed not to mind the patriarchal nature of the church?
As for the record on child abuse scandal, the word "shame" doesn't begin to cover it. So here I am - the future of the Church. A woman of faith (fragile though it might be) but left unmoved by Benedict's arrival. The visit is supposed to have as its theme that "heart speaks unto heart". Attention has focussed on what he will have to say about atheism and secularism. This particular bad catholic is hoping Benedict might say something she wants to listen to, something that might even take her back to mass on a Sunday morning.

Watch me

2010-09-14T11:19:00.004+01:00

I should buy a watch. I put my watch down somewhere - can't think where - and I turned around and it was September.
I should buy a watch because last week my baby girl started school, and I cried all the way home after she threw her arms around me and said "bye" and "love-you".
I should buy a watch because all of a sudden there are rosey and gold plums on my tree and blackberries at the roadside, and nobody told me that summer was over.

So - how's it hanging?
If you stop blogging, you lose your nerve. You are half-way along the wire in your sparkly tutu and the lights in the Big Top go out and you think "Maybe I'll just stay here and wait till they go on again." Except the lights don't go on again, and then you start thinking what exactly do you have that's worth saying anyway, that someone else couldn't say better - perhaps someone who didn't mix their metaphors? Though I have one advantage - I'm free. No paywall here. Oh no. I'd know if there was a paywall around my blog because I wouldn't be broke. Or maybe I would? I'm not entirely broke though, last night I went out and did a reading for the local Women's Institute, and they paid me with an iced lemon sponge with candied lemon slices, and a pot of home-made raspberry jam. And one of the ladies said "I read your book a couple of years ago - I enjoyed it." I really must buy that watch.

Mutley the Dog

2010-05-24T11:03:00.001+01:00

I'm wearing my rubber basque to write this piece because I think Mutley would have liked it that way. It chafes but that's OK, and the howling monkey on my shoulder is giving me a headache but that's OK too. I don't blame it for howling. Like the rest of the blogosphere it misses Mutley the Dog. It took me a while to process the information when Merry Weather left her email telling the world Rob had died, and that she was broken-hearted. I've got the message now though.

On his Alloted Span blog, Rob described himself as
"...a rather kind and open minded person".
He said: "...it is important to record ordinary everyday life as well as those of the rich and famous, I realise that I am not very well known - but one day I might be. I am an acute observer of human life - but I do realise I take everything a little too seriously..."
On the blog that brought him a cult following,Mutley the Dog's Day Out, he reflected on the town of "Bridport", its pies, the pints of Old Lesbian, and his new job as "Tourism Supremo attracting visitors to see the many sights, such as the gallows, the needle-park, the prison ship and the tyre fire as well as the mutants and radioactive super-beings" as well as his efforts to become an internet millionaire.

I considered this talented man my friend. But on what basis? This is cyberspace - not reality after all. But the relationships you make in cyberspace feel pretty real to me right now.

Mutley was my friend:
*because his comments about embarrassing packages of goods he'd sent me made me laugh.
*because his supportive comments - indeed any of his comments - made me feel better.
*because his writing made me envious.
*and his blogging made me wish I'd breasts like torpedoes.
Mutley was my friend:
*because we emailed each other at a point when he was down, then I was.
*because I tried to get him an agent and it didn't work out but should have.
*because I always hoped we'd meet.
*and because he helped me when trolls crawled out of cyberspace to monster me, and he barked at them and chased them away. He was that kind of guy.

And I'm sorry too that Merry Weather is broken-hearted because she's my cousin and I love her. No further explanation necessary.

Fair Deals and the Fairer Sex

2010-05-11T11:13:00.006+01:00

Haven't seen much point adding my tuppence-worth to the punditry explaining in excruciating detail that we have exactly no idea of what's going on, but for what it's worth, and speaking as a Labour voter, you have to be kidding guys if you think a Lib-Lab pact has moral authority. It doesn't. Suck it up. We lost. Let's elect another leader, regroup and win - for real - next time. (And if I was a Liberal Democrat, I would help a minority Conservative government gets its Queen's Speech through and leave it at that. Just say "No". "No" to seats in the Cabinet and "No" to a coalition. A coalition is not going to end well for the Liberal Democrats. They'd end up feeling dirty courtesy of the unavoidable spending cuts, and just hating themselves in the morning.)

Oh, and regarding the next leader of the Labour party, I heard Harriet Harman's interview on Newsnight when she said she had no plans to stand - in effect, reserving her position. I'm backing Harriet. I think David Miliband is a star performer and I wouldn't underestimate the charm of Andy Burnham, but I am outraged - I don't say that lightly - I mean outraged at the invisibility of women during the election. Around one in five MPs are women. Well, hurrah bloody hurrah. Are we supposed to draw comfort from that? I always presumed that time moves on and women are considered equal and it will all work out well in the longterm. How gender-stereotypically passive of me.

And it's not just the MPs, look at the media. The BBC's excellent Laura Kuennsberg and Sky's Kay Burley do their bit. There's a handful of well-known women lurking in the columns of the newspapers like Jackie Ashley, Mary Riddell and Polly Toynbee. But where is everybody else? And it's our own fault. The talented Gaby Hinsliff bailed out as a political editor because she wanted a life. At the point I could have gone for a political job, I put my family first and turned my back on the 60-hour-weeks. It is no better in the new media. Scan the recommended reads of pundits, there's only ever a tiny smattering of women's names. Why is that? Do we make the presumption we are not worth listening to, so we might as well not say anything? Are we too busy tatting to blog our reaction to the changing world around us? Surprise! Women are outnumbered anywhere it counts. Today's Guardian has six pictures of nice men - one of whom may be the next leader of the Labour party. Some of them are wearing suits. One has a briefcase. Two are in shirt sleeves.

Harriet Harman is obliged to stand. Cometh the hour, cometh the woman, Harriet. Now I'll have to join the Labour party.

I have. Have you?

2010-05-06T17:27:00.000+01:00

Vote Labour.
Vote often.
(It's the only chance we've got.)

I've seen the future and its name is David Miliband

2010-05-05T20:17:00.009+01:00

When I studied for O-levels (I'm dating myself - shoot me, I'm middle-aged) we had to answer essay questions which began "Compare and contrast..." So, that's what I did today. I drove down to Durham university to compare and contrast David Miliband and Nick Clegg. Miliband was on in the morning and Clegg was the star turn of the afternoon. A coup for Durham on the last full day of campaigning. (The Tories offered Lord Bates. Durham turned him down. Presumably because no one knows who he is.)

My Durham visit was like travelling into the future in my own personal, oak-panelled time-machine. Miliband, Labour's Foreign Secretary (and love-interest of Hilary Clinton), is generally tipped as one of the frontrunners in any Labour leadership contest. Lord Peter Mandelson reportedly believes he should be anointed in the job rather than have to go through the ignominy of standing for election. Just hearing that, makes you want to hate Miliband - yet that's impossible because watching him makes you think what might have been had he been leader this time - more importantly, what might well be, next time. Perhaps it's a generational thing? Gordon looks old, and Miliband is such a good fit against David Cameron and Clegg.

The students didn't give him an easy ride, but he listened attentively and handled such issues as Afghanistan and torture and human rights abuses with conviction. He was impressive and persuasive and a great communicator. Above all, he was substantive.

Then there was Nick Clegg. Cor blimey. As the excitable audience at the Durham Union waited for him in the upstairs room (much as I imagine the apostles waited for the Holy Spirit to come among them), outside a 10-deep Clegg-manic crowd gathered with helium-filled balloons and orange diamond placards. There was even a woman in a bunny costume with a sign saying only Labour would preserve the ban on hunting. (They must have been fresh out of fox suits.) When Clegg arrived, and again when he left, there was cheering and jeering. (The jeering came from the Tory supporters by the way - I wouldn't want you to think the Liberal Democrats had gone off him.)

Perhaps the stage-managed nature of the event itself would have been less noticeable if I hadn't seen Miliband do his thing to a student audience in the self-same room just hours before. Nothing was left to chance. Miliband had stood with benches of students in front and to either side of him. The fourth side of the square was finished off by the time Clegg appeared with more rows of fresh-faced students. Also the audience was stacked with lines of Liberal Democrat students. You could tell they were Liberal Democrats because they wore tee-shirts advising us we could make a difference and they had beards. Even the girls. (That's not entirely true, but you get the picture.) This self-selecting audience meant the questions were, by and large much easier, which was a shame, and when they weren't that easy, (for instance on MPs' expenses and tactical voting), Clegg came across as tetchy. Also Miliband had spoken to the students, but from the angle I was sitting at, it looked very like Clegg was speaking directly into the camera again when he gave his opening address. (I could be wrong on that, but even so, his message about what to do if you were feeling let down by the other parties was patently not aimed at these first-time voters.)

I'll admit it. I was disappointed because I thought Clegg was very likeable during the debates and I was impressed by his straight talking. But his eve-of-poll hustle for votes in Durham was an exercise in style.

Having said that, he is cute. Gathered in a little conclave of university journalists and the regional press, I momentarily forgot to concentrate so impressed was I by his clean-cut features. I went off him again, however, when he wouldn't answer my question on whether he could work with David Miliband in a Lib-Lab pact. He preferred my question on how he felt to be the story of the campaign. (It's nothing to do with how he feels, he's just pleased the Liberal Democrats have brought the campaign to life because whatever happens the most important thing of all is that people are starting to develop trust and an enthusiasm for politics again. I believed him - really I did.)

The Day After Tomorrow

2010-05-04T14:42:00.004+01:00

Is it me? But since the horror of Gordon Brown imploding in Rochdale and that last TV debate, I'm drumming my fingers on the kitchen table waiting for it all to be over. Suddenly, the day after tomorrow can't come soon enough because the politicians are beginning to annoy me. And there is no escape. I took the children shopping in Newcastle on Saturday and got caught up in a Liberal Democrat rally. That is to say we spent 10 minutes gathered around Grey's Monument waiting for Paddy Ashdown to finish his cup of tea and pret bar in Pret a Manger while he watched us wait, and 15 minutes yawning through his speech about the history of voting reform and how exciting everything is now Nick Clegg's virtues have been recognised. Courtesy of this election rally by the way, I can exclusively reveal that the Liberal Democrat candidate for Newcastle North, Ron Beadle, looks like a weeble in a suit. I contemplated going up to him and giving him a push to see if he rocked backwards and forwards but I didn't for fear Lord Ashdown felt obliged to kill me with his bare hands.

My "you're-beginning-to-annoy-me" list includes:
*The Camerons curled-up together waiting to be called to govern the country.(Sorry Sam, but yuk.)
*Cameron telling us that it's not as though he's complacent about the results, it's just he can't wait to get started. (Hubris, dear boy, hubris).
*Nick Clegg sitting down to tea with Colin Firth for a heartthrob-to-heartthob chit-chat. ("You're very beautiful." "No, you're very beautiful." "I honestly think you're more beautiful than me..." etc.)
*Politicians holding forth on tactical voting. (Do they think the voters are idiots that they have to be instructed where to put their cross?)
*Lord Mandelson. I don't know about anyone else but I've definitely heard enough from the spin-meister. (He's going to be around forever isn't he? Forever and ever?)

The only one who isn't annoying me is Brown who just makes me want to hide my head under a cushion, because he's a decent man (you may not know this but his father was a Scottish minister) and it's all gone so horribly wrong.

Hot buttons and hotter pies

2010-04-29T13:02:00.003+01:00

We've all been given permission to push the hot-button topic of immigration since Gillian Duffy apparently spoke for a nation yesterday. Mrs Duffy wanted to know where the Eastern European migrants were flocking from. Mrs Duffy, of course, knew the answer to that - Eastern Europe. The fact she mis-spoke though didn't diminish the fact she had a concern about the number of migrants.

Ah Gillian. It's a good job you are - or at least were - a Labour supporter. You can express your concern, wreck Labour's electoral chances, break a leader of a nation like a stick of kindling, and move on with your life (once the camera crews have disappeared). Pity Michael Weatheritt, the poor UKIP candidate in Berwick (rapidly becoming my favorite candidate of the election.) I doubt he can sleep at night over it all.

Weatheritt (who has already made the establishment of a crematorium one of his main campaign aims) has now set out his stall to voters in the magnificent local paper the Northumberland Gazette. His CV includes being:
*captain of the school cricket team at 15
and
*vice captain of the football team.
(He's 60 by the way.)
He is also a
*founder member of the Alnwick Pie Club
and
*famous for his steak and ale pie
(You've got to love him.)

But I digress - policy before pies and peas.
Weatheritt makes it clear he wants an end to mass uncontrolled immigration.
"If mass immigration continues, the weight of people in the country will cause the island to start sinking and if global warming is to be believed and the sea level rises, then the EU will eventually gets its wish and Britain will disappear forever beneath the waves."

I am tempted to ring him up and ask him to do his bit and quit with the pies. Frankly, the pies won't be helping at all.

I am also tempted to ring him up and ask him if he thinks the earth is flat, but I'm frightened in case he says Yes.

The Distaff Side

2010-04-28T16:21:00.004+01:00

The electioneering car-crash of "Gordon Brown meets Gillian Duffy" may just have put paid to all hope of Labour surviving another day courtesy of the resurgence of the Lib Dems.

The irony. Throughout this campaign, women have been virtually invisible. And I say this with no disrespect to our new First Ladies of politics, but frankly they've been there to look decorative, supportive, and ideally fecund. They are allowed the occasional innocuous tweet or video appearance, but let's not fool ourselves, they are not there because they have spent decades on the political frontline and have something to say.

There have been a few low-key outings for Labour's Yvette Cooper and the Tories shoe-tree Theresa May, but Harriet Harman, Labour's most senior woman was told to shut up by Lord Mandelson when she ventured an opinion on election strategy. How dare she? What was she thinking? The men were talking. According to The Daily Telegraph quoting a Labour party spokesman: "Harriet said she made a suggestion – only for Peter to tell her to shut up and that he didn't want to hear from her again. She has been virtually invisible ever since."

Three male party leaders. No serious role for any frontline female politician. Silent, fragrant political wives. Male pundit after male pundit pontificating on the papers. Massed ranks of silly female floating voters who couldn't make their mind up. And the entire election jumps track when a gobby Rochdale pensioner who doesn't know she is supposed to keep quiet and nod a lot, says what she thinks.

Vagina monologue? We didn't get a word in. Up to now.

Stop press: Women have Opinions. Does that make them bigots? Don't think so.

Election 2010 - "Women are to be seen and not heard". Somebody write it on a piece of scented lavender-coloured notepaper and pass it to Mrs Duffy and all the women like her who know what they think. (Make sure the cameras don't catch you doing it though.)

To slank or not to slank

2010-04-27T13:54:00.006+01:00

I am still considering how to handle the final TV debate on Thursday. Do I watch it alone in my slanket rejoicing in the good looks of Nick Clegg? Or do I invite round a pick'n'mix of voters like the first time and take my own straw poll post the "Thank you and Goodnights." Am tempted to the slanket approach.

Then again, if I have a watch party, I have the chance to make Eric Pickles happy and chances like that don't come along very often. After all, he did take a leaf out of Michelle Obama's campaign warbook and invite me. In fact, if I was really naughty I could email Central Office and tell them I was having a party and Eric might call me up personally to encourage me to tweet through it. It's very tempting. Particularly, as I now have formal accreditation for the campaign. The local Central Office press handler was explicit about the need for accreditation. I don't think he gets blogging. Both Labour and Liberal Democrats told me to handle accreditation locally, informing me that the Wife in the North blog would be welcome to their events anytime. The Conservative party - that's the party with the take-no-prisoners approach to red tape and bureaucracy - made me fill out an online form and send a digital photograph then wait an entire week for a pass. I'm not sure I'll ever get to wear it. There's only about three members of the Shadow Cabinet I'd be interested in seeing on the ground. Still if I have a "watch party", I could wear my accreditation over the slanket and Chanel No 5 under it. Eric might like that.

Moonscoop

2010-04-27T10:37:00.004+01:00

In the interests of investigative journalism, I built a rocket made of a Fairy Liquid bottle(empty), four baked bean cans(also empty) and a rolled up cardboard nose cone, in the front garden. With the aid of some accelerant I'd put by to drink during the next party leaders' TV debate, I set light to its drinking straw fuse, and took off for the moon. Which is how far Wifey is prepared to go for a good interview.

I had a bit of a problem finding the Man in the Moon when I got there. I even had to strip off and swim across the sea of tranquility which was as flat and wet as a Liberal Democrat conference, but I dried myself off and took another of my little purple pills and pretty soon afterwards, he turned up.

The Man in the Moon is roundish - a bit like Alex Salmond who has also gone stellar recently, but shinier somehow - which is probably the star quality he shares with Nick Clegg and Andrew Neil.

I put it to him that he may well be on the cusp of playing a major role in British politics and levering Clegg into Number 10. Clegg has assured all and sundry he is prepared to work with the Man from the Moon. But was the Moon Man prepared to work with Clegg?

The Man in the Moon apparently has a price, he told me.
The job of Shadow Chancellor? Half the other Cabinet jobs for his planetary mates, the pick of the government car pool, and an i-Pad, I proferred.
He shook his head and three small tsunamis swept through South-East Asia.
Gordon Brown's immense head then, complete with genuine rictus grin, on a buffed and silver platter?
That would be nice, he said, but No. He was way past human sacrifice.
What then? Down on earth, the parties were frantic to do a political mash-up with Nick Clegg. What would it take for the Man in the Moon to deal.

He wants porridge. Cold and plummy.
And a map of Norwich.
He wouldn't say why.
Nick Clegg... over to you.

Been there. Done that.

2010-04-21T16:52:00.018+01:00

Feeling strangely uninspired writing about the Liberal Democrats. That's wrong isn't it? We're all supposed to be mad about the boy. It's Pavlovian - years of hearing the words "Liberal Democrat" and plunging immediately into a fugue-like trance. But lift my knee and slap my plump pantomime thigh, that first TV debate was a "game-changer" we're all agreed - suddenly the Liberal Democrats are interesting, and the words "Clegg" and "charisma" are appearing in the same sentences without the word "bypass" following close behind.

Time to take a gander then at local Liberal Democrat Sir Alan Beith. Sir Alan and I go way back to when I was a big-eyed, wet-behind-the-ears local reporter and he was the title-free, chronically hard-working MP for Berwick and I could never get any of his press releases into the paper, which used to pain him. Hopefully, he has by now forgiven me but I didn't like to ask when I met him for a nice cup of tea and a chat at the weekend.

A Methodist lay preacher, Sir Alan lists his hobbies as historic buildings, boats, music and walking, while on Facebook the groups he has joined include
* "We got Rage Against the Machine to #1, we can get the Lib Dems into office!",
* "I'm voting for the Liberal Democrats in 2010" (you'd hope so, wouldn't you?), and
* "Forgotten Berwick"
Berwick itself is one of the biggest seats in England - at more than 1,000 square miles - and its 58,000-strong electorate has been represented by Sir Alan for 37 years. That does not stop him campaigning under the slogan "Change that works for Northumberland."

At a Tory meeting recently, I was taken aback by the animosity of some members towards the veteran MP and their conviction that the constituency has suffered from under-investment because of his party allegiance.
Beith rejects such criticism. "I've never lacked the access and I've been around a long time, " he said. "Most ministers know I've been in parliament longer than they have."
Among his achievements he points to saving the local RAF base from closure, improvements to the rail timetable, helping those affected by flooding, and the dualling of key sections of the A1 (the main North-South arterial route through the region, stretches of which remain single carriageway and used by tractors).

Indeed, his campaign literature informs me I am in the presence of the "local champion with a national reputation".
My favorite quote:
"Traditional Conservative voters are saying 'we don't know what David Cameron stands for - at least we know what we're getting with Alan Beith'."
And my second favorite goes to the "local people" who pose the rhetorical question:
"Wouldn't it be great if more MPs were like Sir Alan Beith."
The leaflet spells out the battle lines for Berwick "Labour can't win here...It's a two horse race," that is to say, the Lib Dems have 52.8%, Tories 28.9% and Labour 18.3%.

The Guardian describes the seat as "fairly safe" for the Lib Dems. Tory candidate Anne Marie Trevelyan has been fighting hard but needs a swing of just under 12% to take it. That's tough - particularly against a Lib Dem rather than a Labour incumbent. Then again, she's a particularly good candidate, the local party has its dander up and it's the sort of seat where people vote for Sir Alan because he helped them when they needed him, but at heart they tell you they are Tory.
However, even if Anne Marie had been picking up disillusioned Labour voters and the natural Tories were indeed persuaded to vote for her, the Liberal Democrat surge courtesy of Clegg-mania must put paid to her hopes (or at least put paid to them till Clegg tanks tonight's foreign affairs debate or completely fails to heal a leper the Daily Mail sends out after him tomorrow.)

Beith then has the numbers in his favour, but is taking nothing for granted. Understandable, when he took the seat in a by-election in 1973 by just 57 votes (Tory incumbent Lord Lambton having resigned after being photographed in bed with two prostitutes and smoking marijuana. You can bet he wasn't doing that in Berwick.) In the two elections of 1974, Sir Alan held on to his seat with majorities of 443 and 74. This means as the longest-serving MP on the Liberal Democrat benches, he has already lived through a hung parliament, minority government and in 1977, a Lib-Lab pact.

Naturally enough, Beith was delighted with the reaction to his leader's performance in the first debate. He was cautious in his predictions but believed the election looks as if it will produce no overall majority .
If there is a hung parliament, Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg could well be the kingmaker. But how would he decide who to work with I asked Beith - particularly if one party picked up more seats and another more votes.
"Nick has said the party with the greatest authority to form a government is the one that has commanded the greatest support. He's not gone into the seats and votes issue."
Beith was reassuring of the consequences of any hung parliament. "We will be taking a responsible line. So far from there being a danger in a hung parliament, if Vince Cable has more influence over the way the economy is managed I think most people would recognise that would be a better and not a worse situation."

In the Lib-Lab pact of `77, Liberal MPs agreed to support the Labour government on votes of confidence in return for agreement on fighting inflation, devolution, appointing a minister for small business and direct elections to the European Parliament. This entailed a consultative structure between Liberal spokesmen and ministers. If there was still disagreement, the matter then went to a joint committee which included Beith.
"It's workable, “Beith said of a pact, “but the disadvantage is it's mainly negative power - not wholly, we got things done - but essentially it's a negative power and you don't get the credit for the successes that you can in a coalition."
Any experience about what the party does this time around would be informed by the Liberal experience of the seventies, he said but refused to say whether he favoured a coalition (which in any event requires the broad agreement of the party membership) rather than supporting government on a more ad hoc basis.
“You have to make judgment in situation that arises. You see what the British people decide,” he said.

His own autobiography “A View from the North” however is more explicit, warning of the need to prepare and consult, and expounding on the virtues of working in a coalition.
It says `the pact convinced me that if you are going to work with another party in government, you should do it through a coalition in which you hold key ministerial positions: without this, your input is severely limited and the government machinery is only working for the party which has ministerial office.”

Of course that still leaves the question a coalition with who exactly?

Celebrity endorsement

2010-04-21T14:05:00.003+01:00

I have my first celebrity endorsement of the campaign. Sarah Brown has described herself as "so pleased" that I cooked up her recipes for dinner the other night. I informed her on Twitter (because that's how anyone who's anyone talks to each other these days.) "They get my vote," I told my new best friend. "SO PLEASED!" she tweeted back. Note the capital letters. That means she is shouting in excitement at hearing my verdict. Note too the exclamation mark which means this news is probably the best she's had since the Sex and the City girls said they were making another movie. Any minute now she'll be tweeting me an invite for coffee and oaty flapjack on the campaign bus.

Sarah won't expect an exclusive relationship though. I've asked Sam Cam's people for a recipe as well. I was told Sam is "unbelievably busy" but the media handler would see what she could do. I'm about to ask the Liberal Democrats for one from Miriam Gonzalaz Durantez (Nick Clegg's legal eagle wife). I'm betting the message comes back that Miriam thinks I should go buy myself a cookbook and read it.

UKIP identifies a burning political issue

2010-04-20T16:30:00.004+01:00

And in Wifey world - while everybody beyond looks to change and its instrument Nick Clegg - the Berwick UKIP candidate Michael Weatheritt has a different approach. Mr Weatheritt, a 60-year-old self-employed bricklayer has two campaign priorities for the region - more jobs paying above the national minimum wage(fair enough) and a local crematorium to serve north Northumberland. It has to be a vote winner.

Thus far, Mr Weatheritt has peaked at 7.5% of the vote (or 135 of them if you are being picky) in a local district council election. This time he's hoping for greater things.

The nearest crematorium he claims is a 30 mile drive away in Blyth and across the main East Coast railway line. If the barriers come down at the wrong time, the hearse can be separated from the mourners following the coffin in their own cars. Mr Weatheritt makes the point this can be upsetting.

If I was cleverer I could construct a metaphor about mortality and eternity but it's beyond me at this point in the campaign. I do wonder though whether the bigger parties are missing a trick - "Vote Tory for The Right Place To Go When You Die", "Rest Easy With Labour" or even "Nick Says Burn Baby Burn".

Food for Thought

2010-04-19T23:26:00.008+01:00

There are moments you wait for in an election - moments when your heart starts to pound with excitement and the emptiness inside that makes you question everything about your life just goes away. This is one of them.

The first recipe from a political wife. And Sarah Brown came up with it. Good job she didn't have to tweet it - her favourite means of communication - or it would have been something like "Unwrap loaf. Choose slice. Toast it. Grate cheese. Add cheese to toast. Grill till bubbling and eat while tweeting. Tastes yummy."

Instead, in the Observer Food Monthly magazine, Sarah extolled the virtues of her vegetable patch at Downing Street (at least I think that's what she did, my eyes kept glazing over as I tried to read it). Vegetable patches, the joys of having a newborn baby, exotic holidays, and anything to do with saving the planet have to be four of the most boring topics of conversation ever invented. Anyway, the reward for going cross-eyed with concentration reading about bamboo bee boxes, harvesting rainwater in big tanks and wormeries, were recipes from Sarah.

Political wives have put out recipes before. Michelle Obama for mac and cheese - so homespun, so simple while Cindy McCain (wife of John McCain one time presidential hopeful) kicked off "Recipegate" with her recipes for passionfruit mousse and oatmeal-butterscotch cookies. Sarah is cleverer than that - far cleverer. She comes up with a tribute recipe for spring lamb that she got from Maggie Darling ( "the chancellor's wife, my neighbour at No 11 and a famously fantastic cook") going so far as to call it "Maggie's New Season Roast Lamb on Leeks and Potatoes".

But political wives don't just publish any old recipe. There's always a subtext. So I felt obliged to cook the lamb along with Sarah's recipe for dessert - Ginger Oat Rhubarb Crumble - to discover it. I started at 7.45pm. My husband looked confused as I put away the ready-meal curries and left £17 of lamb on the kitchen table.
"We're having lamb then?" he said.(Needlessly in my opinion unless he thought I was going to dress the leg of lamb in baby clothes, call it Billy and start carrying it around in my arms for company.)
"Actually, we're having Sarah Brown's lamb," I told him at which point he left the room muttering something about "getting a life."

My first job was to convince myself not to do that thing they do on "Come Dine With Me" and hit the bottle as they drag the first saucepan out from the pan-stacker. I bet Sarah doesn't do that. I bet she says "I'll just have a small one, Gordon" when she starts cooking and I bet that's exactly what she gets.

My next thought (which came straight after "My - that was a very small glass, I think I might have another") was Clever Sarah has effortlessly demonstrated the closeness between the Browns and the Darlings. Tsk. Tsk. A tricky relationship between the PM and his Chancellor? You're thinking of that Blair guy. The Browns and the Darlings pop into each other's homes nearly every day for a cup of soft brown sugar or to sample a sprouting broccoli quiche.

I didn't cook the way I normally cook because I wanted it to be an authentic political experience. That's not entirely true. If I have to cook, I quite like doing it with the BBC i-Player on in the background and I had 20 minutes of Ashes to Ashes left to watch as I chopped and sauteed. Sarah, on the other hand, is probably not allowed to watch Ashes to Ashes. But I did weigh things, and usually I don't bother. Since I've only got my mothers' weighing scales for the blind (which she can't hear because she's also deaf), the scales kept lecturing me about how much I had in the bowl. But there's probably quite a bit of lecturing goes in the Brown house so that was OK although irritating. And I was precise about the figures because as both Gordon and Alistair Darling would tell you, if you have a leek deficit, you risk throwing out the whole balance of the dish and it can take a generation to recover. (There was actually little I could do about my own leek deficit other than put another onion in, but I'm expecting 35 economists to send a letter to The Telegraph tomorrow in protest.)

Although I tried hard, I couldn't do everything exactly the way Sarah wanted it done. I was supposed to ask the butcher to "butterfly" my lamb for me and use the bone to make stock. I was guessing Sarah hadn't had the privilege of reading the Conservative manifesto when she handed over her recipe, and as we are all going to have to start doing things for ourselves if David Cameron has anything to do with it, I butterflied it myself. That is to say I sliced it from the bone, spread it flat and told it life was short. Next, Sarah says you "make knife point incisions" in the fatty side of the lamb. That is to say you stab it repeatedly shouting "Bloody Eton Gobshite" before rubbing grated salt, lemon rind and thyme into the wounds - I mean, incisions. Nearly done, you put the lamb onto leeks, onion, potatoes and garlic drown it in wine and cook it.

And it was delicious - it tasted of lemon and thyme and the comfort of a good and clever woman.

Compared to the lamb, the crumble was slightly disappointing, but that's often the case when good things start to crumble. It was I think particularly disappointing for my husband who is allergic to rhubarb and couldn't eat a bite.
"Sarah told us to 'enjoy the rhubarb' while it's here," I informed him in explanation, and there was more muttering.

Nick Clegg may be flavour of the month in the polls at the moment, but the more Gordon Brown travels the country with Sarah, the happier and more burnished he looks. It is my belief he's thinking about what they'll have for tea.

It's my party

2010-04-16T11:57:00.005+01:00

Woke up this morning with a bit of a hangover. I blame the politics. Last night went well though. Ten of us ended up watching the election debate together in my lounge, and we were a mixed bag. Staunch Labour, rabid Tory and floating voters with experience of voting Liberal Democrat. Most arrived with wine. One arrived with a biography of Margaret Thatcher. There was dark mutterings from the rabid Tories about Labour and Gordon Brown's record, but the hour and a half went quickly enough and at least the book didn't get thrown.

My absolute favourite comment of the evening from one of my Conservative friends has got to be: "Universal suffrage has got a lot to answer for. This country has gone downhill since Joe Ordinary got the vote."

At the end, I polled the 10 of us:
* three thought Nick Clegg had performed the best
* two backed Gordon Brown
* no-one (including the most fervent Tories among us) thought David Cameron had outperformed his rivals.
One of the floating voters said she was now minded to vote Liberal Democrat.

Nick Clegg. He has a sensible wife and sensible women rarely marry fools. He said he was going to prepare for the debate with an afternoon walk in the Pennines. Last night, he was straightforward and appealing. David Cameron's not having it easy.

After everyone left, I went to bed and dreamed of beautiful women wrapped in bandage dresses made of the skins of aliens, which they wore to keep themselves safe as they attempted to cross a river of acid.
I blame the cheese.

Just time for a quickie

2010-04-15T18:39:00.004+01:00

Am having Election debate party. That is to say half a dozen people coming round to watch TV and make rude comments about our glorious leaders. Asked a lot more people. Excuses included:
* "I know enough already."
* "I've got five lambs to feed."
* "I've got the lambing men to feed." (Lambing is big right now in Northumberland.)
* "I'm away - very away."
* "I'm a fascist. I shoot at the TV these days when Gordon Brown's on it. You wouldn't like me any more if I came."
* And strangely enough "He's canvassing, or putting leaflets through doors or something" because the political process goes on up here even in presidential politics is arriving at a TV station near you any second. In fact, Friends of the Earth organised a meeting tonight for the Berwick constituency candidates which they are all going to apart from the Tory candidate Anne-Marie Trevelyan. I don't know what Anne-Marie is doing. (I invited her to my party but she hasn't replied. There's a chance she's lambing.)

I'm only having the party because I went round a couple of the local pubs hoping someone would have it on one of their big tellies. Excuses from managers included:
* "No, we'll have the sport on. People are more interested in sport",
and
* "It's happening at dinner time. People like to eat their dinner in peace."

Looking at the local paper, the magnificent Northumberland Gazette (everyone reads the Gazette up here - it's the law) life goes on regardless. Aside from the Friends of the Earth meeting, there's a nature talk on "Birding in Majorca" hosted by the Natural History Society, and another talk entitled "My Love of Flowers" to the Warkworth and District Flower Club and yet one more on the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway to the Aln Valley Railway Society (with Refreshments.) So is the world going to stop to watch the guys in action? Not everybody's. Mine is though.

I've bought in smoked salmon pate for the Tories, hummus for any Liberal Democrats and guacamole for the New Labour among us. There is alcohol (a necessity) and bags of popcorn (a luxury). I've even moved a sofa from one room to another exposing all the dust and grime that lurks underneath which you usually don't get to see. Maybe it was a sign. A bit like the volcanic eruption. I'm pretty sure the Romans would have cancelled any event slated for a day a volcano erupted and filled the sky with ash. Plus, driving back from the shop, I saw three different dead pheasants on the road. I just about stopped myself from climbing out the car, slicing them open and reading their entrails.

Womanifesto

2010-04-14T15:04:00.008+01:00

First things first. Newspaper journalists are writing about the breakfasts they have at the early morning press conferences. (Apparently the Tory manifesto provided chocolate croissants, brioche, bacon and sausage sandwiches.) Just for the record, I had porridge and a crumpet this morning while the children fought over who had the most red bits in their cereal bowls.

Moving on. According to the Daily Telegraph, Cameron reached out to women voters with his manifesto yesterday. Female shadow ministers made speeches before him to prove how highly he rates women, and he focused on making Britain one of the most "family friendly" countries in the world. What's not to like about "family" and "friendly"? A family friendly country sounds great. Perhaps he could start with cafes and build up? "Every cafe to have wax crayons and paper for young customers", for instance. "Cafes to ban sniffy customers who stare accusingly at mortified mums trying to mop up juice spills and hush up noisy children."

There's a problem with Cameron's offer of a DIY revolution and women are going to spot it. The manifesto talks of:
*the redistribution of power to individuals, families and local communities.
*higher levels of personal and civic responsibility
*a society where people come together to solve problems and improve life for themselves and their communities
Parents will be enabled to start new schools and communities empowered to take over parks and libraries under threat.

Am I the only woman out there whose heart sank when I read "Our ambition is for every adult in the country to be a member of an active neighbourhood group"? Was it just me who heard the threat implicit in the pledge "We will stimulate the creation and development of neighbourhood groups, which can take action to improve their local area." There's even a spending pledge to fund the training of "independent community organisers" to help get these groups off the ground. And of course a "Big Society Day" to celebrate their work. (I am so looking forward to that one.)

The manifesto goes on: "Building the Big Society means encouraging the concept of public-spirited service - the idea that everyone should play a part in making their communities stronger."

And as final evidence that these manifestos aren't written by wives and mothers, but crafted by policy wonks who don't get out enough along with politicos in the business for life who only ever talk to other politicos in it for life, the assurance that a Tory government will "use the latest insights from behavioural economics to encourage people to make volunteering and community participation something they do on a regular basis."
What?
I repeat. What?
You read a couple of hardback books of socio-economic psycho-babble and make a wish and the world changes and everyone in it. Yep. Like that's going to happen. If women are as important as they are supposed to be in this election, and this (along with SamCam looking bumpy and radiant) is all the Conservatives have in their armoury to appeal to them, then watch that electoral lead narrow, chaps.

I like the fact Cameron is an enthusiast and an optimist and believes he can change the world. I do. But the fact is talk to me about taking on anything else and I'm going to start screaming.

Women with families (friendly or otherwise) are operating at full stretch. If they are working as well, then they probably feel on a pretty regular basis that their lives are coming apart at the seams. They can hardly find time for the PTA, let alone become "a member of an active neighbourhood group." Oh good, something else to feel guilty about. Now you have to dodge the neighbourhood group chairman as well as the chairman of the PTA (and I speak as a former chairman of the PTA). Women will be hiding in the car boot from these people. They will tremble every time there is a knock at the back door. OK, there are indeed times we organise a petition to save a park or a playground, we fight some or other petty bureaucracy, and we bake three dozen currant buns for the cake sale at two o'clock in the morning because it's the only time we have. We'll do what we can when we have to. We already try our best. We already do our best. But please David, enough's enough. We can only do so much.

The Modern Father

2010-04-13T21:18:00.006+01:00

I watched a couple of venerable journos pontificate over the papers about Tory leader, David Cameron's interview on ITV during which - stop press - he became "emotional" discussing the death of his son, six-year-old Ivan. It's been slightly over a year since Ivan died. Not long. No time at all really. The pain within touching distance.Cameron told the interviewer "the loss is very tough and it takes a very long time to even start to get over it. It's a sort of journey between understanding what you're missing, what you've lost and being grateful for what you had. It just takes a very long time."
There were raised eyebrows among the country's world-weary. Oh so world-weary. Could it be that Cameron was seeking to electorally profit from the death of his son? "How distasteful", they muttered among themselves. After all, they'd seen it all before.

In February during another ITV interview, this time with Piers Morgan, Gordon Brown spoke of the death of daughter Jennifer, born prematurely weighing just 2lb 4oz, dying in 2002 at just 10 days.
“She would be 9 this year and you know, you think all the time of the first steps, and the first words and the first time you go to school and it’s just not been there… this is the happiest time of your life and then suddenly it becomes the most grief stricken time of your life. It was such a pendulum swing. I couldn’t listen to music, I really wasn’t much interested in anything for a while because you had to come to terms with something that, you know... you’d expect it would work out so completely differently.”
One commentator came to the verdict "He might have steered the country on to the rocks but last night we were invited to vote for him because, I'm sorry to say, he and his wife suffered the intense sorrow of losing their first child. That sounds harsh but this excruciating TV appearance left one no alternative conclusion."
Another opined: "Was it a cynical U-turn by a man who once decried personalised politics and Blairish exploitation of family? Yes shouted an army of cynical pundits and bloggers."

My child (stillborn at term) would be 10 if I hadn't lost him. Lost him like a sock or glove or pair of spectacles for reading. Just like that. But worse. And what these pundits don't understand is Brown and Cameron don't have a choice to talk or not to talk, to weep or not to weep, because the life and death of their children runs right through them. Tragedy defines them more than any manifesto ever could. Whatever power each man holds or chases, he would abandon it all, without hesitation, for just one more day with his lost child. He would sell his own soul for his lovely political wife never to have had her heart broken up into ugly pieces that no policy or strategic thinking - however clever and well-meaning - could ever mend. These party leaders may day-dream of glory, but at night they dream of sons and daughters they can no longer hold. They are not wrong to talk about it, they are right. Unspoken griefs twist and turn and do not grow smaller for darkness and a lack of air. They speak their children's names and they tell of their sorrows because to do otherwise would be to deny those children, it would be to say those children came and went, and that coming and that going did not matter in the scheme of things. Honesty in politicians - isn't that a good thing?

Dead Man Walking

2010-04-12T13:44:00.010+01:00

I remember being on holiday as a little girl in Scarborough. One of the tabloids had some prize whereby if you carried a copy of the paper and discovered their man out and about in a seaside resort and told him something like "To my delight, it's Chalkie White", you could win £5. He came to Scarborough when we were there and I spent a whole day looking for him. I didn't find him and I didn't get the fiver. I figure someone owes me a fiver today though, because I found Chris Grayling on the campaign trail.

Finding Grayling on the campaign trail is really hard because ever since he said Christian B&B owners should "have the right" to reject gay couples, the apparatchiks have kept him in a locked cupboard in Central Office and fed him pancakes they slide under the door. I only wanted a bit of colour for the blog. My "mummy blog" which is pink. I'd have been quite happy with a bit of a chat and carry-on-campaigning-Chris. But they weren't that happy to see me at Berwick Tories HQ. Not at all happy.

The first thing his minder did was start cross-examining me about who I was.
(Actually thinking about it, it was the second thing because the first thing was to ask me to leave the building on the grounds it was a private meeting and he presumably thought I might hear something Chris was saying to members which he wouldn't say in public. Something like "Gay-boys, don't you just hate them?")
After I'd left the building, the minder starts asking how I knew Grayling was in town and how many readers I have (not many I told him, which is true), and how disappointing it must be if nobody reads me (a slightly unnecessary remark but there you go.) I asked for two minutes with Chris before he started glad-handing, but No, I could put a few questions as we walked.

I liked Grayling as soon as I met him - he was charming, intelligent and pleasant. (He'd even read the blog.) He's slightly tall for my taste bearing in mind I'm 5ft 2" and he's about 8ft nothing. Bearing in mind he's tall and I'm short and we are walking, it wasn't easy. It got less easy when the North-East communications man promptly stuck his phone right in front of my face to record my recording. This is disconcerting but I'm willing to go with the flow. As I say, Grayling is a grown-up politician and I'm a blogger, so we're fine right?

After all hell broke loose after his comments, Grayling issued a statement saying he was sorry "if what I said gave the wrong impression" and assuring all and sundry that he had voted for gay rights. As we walked through the archway into the market town of Alnwick, (past a sign advertising a B&B,) I asked whether he was sorry for his words that B&B owners should have the right to reject gay couples.
He said: "I said everything I was planning to say about it last week. I said I didn't intend to cause any offence. I pointed out I actually voted for gay rights, I actually voted for this particular piece of legislation. I voted for a number of other pieces of legislation particularly the civil partnership ones, and these are difficult, sensitive issues as I said but the proof of the pudding is what you do and I voted with my conscience."
I said he had patently been talking off the top of his head (well, I didn't want to suggest he'd been talking out his arse) but was he sorry for the words? Would he like to take back what he said?
Grayling wouldn't. He said: "The important thing now is to focus on the rest of the campaign. What I don't want to do is get into a prolonged discussion. I think I have said what I'm planning to say."
But I made the point this was an opportunity to retract. (After all, an apology for creating the impression you have given, is not the same as an outright apology and admission what you said was beyond the pale.)
"I think I've said what I'm going to say, I said (it)on the BBC last week, explained my comments, made a number of statements. I think I want to now talk about the rest of the campaign."
I asked as an honourable man whether he had offered his resignation as Shadow Home Secretary.
"I think as I've said I want to talk about the rest of the campaign."
At this point, the Northern press guy who is so close to me on the narrow pavements of Alnwick that he is virtually in my handbag told me I could keep asking the same question, but I'd get the same answer so I might as well move on. (I love it when people give me blogging tips.)
I explained I had to ask the questions.
The press guy repeated I was going to get the same answer so I might as well move on to another question.
So I did as I was told.
I said: "The Daily Mail described you at the end of last week as Calamity Chris... The Sunday papers also said you weren't long for the world, you were going to lose your job. Can you actually go on?"
He told me: "We're in the middle of a general election campaign. Our goal is to win the general election and bring change to Britain. Nobody has got a job for the future anyway - we haven't won the election. We're not measuring curtains. We're not planning for the future. We're taking the Conservative message out onto the doorstep
to try and deliver the change people want."
We danced through the Dannatt issue, and with the North press guy insisting we keep moving and instructing me to ask "a local question on a local campaign please", I asked about reports that lawyers claimed there was a case to arrest the pope when he comes in September. (According to the frontpage of The Sunday Times, lawyers believe they can ask the Crown Prosecution Service to initiate criminal proceedings against the Pope, launch their own civil action against him or refer his case to the International Criminal Court over his role in the alleged cover-up of sex abuse against children in the catholic church.) Did he think the lawyers had a case against the pope, I said.
The North press guy intervened again to inform me I was here to talk about local issues.
No, I'm not I told him, and asked him not to tell me what I was there to do.
I turned to Grayling again. Was there a legal case?
"I've come to Alnwick to talk about local issues..." he said and sang the praises of candidate Anne-Marie Trevelyan and what a good MP she would make.(Which is true, she would work her socks off.)
I made the point he was the shadow home secretary and asked again "Do you think there is a legal case to arrest the pope if he comes in September."
Now the guy may be called "Calamity Chris" but I did not expect him to tell me "Fuck the Pope - they guy's got it coming" but I'd have liked some sort of answer to the question bearing in mind his front-bench responsibilities.
He repeated the fact he was in Alnwick to talk about Anne-Marie and the local campaign, and I didn't mind that so much. Politicians don't always answer questions, and at no time was Chris Grayling less than couteous and straight. He knew what I was doing and I knew what he was doing.

I do however mind about political hacks like Bill Clare, (Grayling's minder) and Peter Bould (the Northern comms guy)acting in a way I found intimidating. And I speak as a former national TV and newspaper journalist so I'm not that fragile. As a press journalist, however, you have status, and as a TV journalist you have a camera recording everything. As a blogger, you're on your own, mate.
Clare interrupted us and told me they had "very courteously" asked on a number of occasions not to do any more questions. (This was not true. They hadn't asked me to stop.) While he hectored, I shook Grayling's hand and thanked him for his time. Other people had a reason to spend time with him, Clare went on. I kept the recorder going and showed him it. "If you think that's the way to conduct it, OK - you know better than that" he said like a disappointed father.
Bould then chipped in to tell me I'm supposed to have an accreditation pass to join them. Did I have it? (This was just to prove how they weren't brow-beating me.)
"You are supposed to have an accreditation pass to join us, have you got your pass with you."
I'm a voter, I told him.
"I know but you are supposed to have an accreditation pass to interview him which is what you wanted to do, and I'm wondering if you have your pass with you? Do you have your pass with you? " (Bear in mind, here I've already done the interview and we are way past this conversation.)
I told him I was doing what I did as a member of the public.
"No," he said. "You are interviewing him." This presumably means members of the public shouldn't ask questions.
(At this point, and just for good measure, I got thrown out of a shop the Tory posse had gone into on the grounds "the owner" didn't want me in there.)
"You are interviewing him," said Bould. "Members of the public don't come along with a dictaphone and record him. You're very much like a journalist to me."
I asked him to let me get on with it.
"I'm not being confrontational here," he assured me.
At which point, so unconfrontational was he being, I got out my camcorder and YouTube loomed.
I reminded Bould I had already done the interview, I was indeed there as a blogger and a member of the public. At which point with a camcorder pointed at the two of them, they started talking about the weather (which was lovely by the way).
Now I could have gone home at this point what with the fact none of them seemed to like me all that much. (Apart from Chris that is. I bet Chris thought I was OK really, and I'd return the compliment.) But if I'd have gone home, I'd have missed the electioneering proper. Trailing in the wake of Chris and Ann-Marie, I asked a good 30 Alnwick folk did they know who the tall man with the blue rosette was. One did (and he'd been introduced, but in all fairness he assured me he knew before. Honest.) When I asked another if he knew who Grayling was, he proferred: "A shadow muppet?"

So I've got another blog rule for my Standards of Blog Conduct
Rule 2: Use a camcorder at all times.

Rule One

2010-04-10T22:18:00.011+01:00

Bearing in mind the etiquette on blogging a UK general election is fluid, that is to say there isn't any,(or at least if there is, none of the big blog boys have sent me a neatly-bound, leatherette copy entitled "Standards of Blog Conduct"), I decided to set myself some rules.
Rule One: Out and about. Tell politicos I'm a blogger. This seems fair.
I set this rule today.
I immediately broke it.
It was the BNP. It doesn't count.

I'd gone up to Berwick to fix a tyre.(Pot holes. I blame Alan Beith. Or a Labour Government. Or the council. Or the weather. Or God.) Out and about with the children, we stumbled upon a BNP stall. You have to go to Berwick to realise how unlikely this is. It is England's most northerly town - it has got encircling Elizabethan walls, historic barracks, and its population is white, white, white. I was so astonished to see the BNP, I felt obliged to ask the candidate how come the party have a prescence when immigration is not an issue in Berwick.
Silly me. The nice man explained it's not just about immigration.
OK I said. But what is the proportion of ethnic minorities in Berwick.
The nice man said he didn't know. (I'm guessing so small as to be statistically insignificant.)
I looked down the Berwick street heaving with shoppers and made the point I could not see a black or Asian face.
A BNP lady informed me that some people might be looking at the national picture, not just the picture in Berwick. (As a matter of interest, she didn't seem to take to me at all for some reason.) The BNP candidate, however, was just glad to talk to someone. Nice chap. Publican. Three pubs. Employs a Muslim and two black people. There's white immigration too he told me.
Really? I said. What was he thinking about there?
Polish people. And the Portuguese.
Portuguese? I had this vision of a Berwick positively overrun with Portuguese immigrants. (I'm sure he said they came over for jobs in salmon farming, but my husband said that wouldn't make sense so I probably misheard him.)

I took some leaflets and newspapers. For some reason, (and the Good Lord Jesus only knows why because as the nice man said, the party isn't racist), his literature had lots of stories about Islam and immigration and the like in it.
Such as:
* "Tories pledge to flood Britain with African Homosexual 'Asylum Seekers'."
(Just wait and see, it's in the Tory manifesto.)
And:
* "Mohammed second most popular boys name in Britain."
(I thought about calling my own boys Mohammed. It was a toss-up. I ended up going for Mustafa and Osama.)
Then there was:
* "Immigrant baby boom costs over £1b."
(That'll be the Portuguese. They're Catholic. No birth control.)
And, of course:
* "Another Muslim Paedophile Gang Uncovered."
Patently, the BNP have more to offer than immigration. The nice man told me they did. For instance, Northumberland is a rural constituency, and the BNP acknowledges the importance of "farming bloodlines that stretch down through the centuries" and offers to "promote the yeoman family farm".
In any event, "The Northumberland Patriot" leaflet informed me in no uncertain terms:
"The British National Party is not a racist party. We do not hate anyone because of their race. Nor do we advocate abusing or attacking individual immigrants or minority groups."
That's reassuring. I haven't heard Cameron or Brown give that kind of lead.
It is merely that "Mass immigration harms all of us, whether black or white"
Stacked among the leaflets were maps proclaiming "Welcome to Berwick upon Tweed." Handy sort of map to have if you were an immigrant, though they could do with it translating into Portuguese.

The BNP can get a bit anxy with press, but I did think about saying I was blogging the election and there is no doubt the nice man would still have talked to me, and still have let me have the leaflets. Perhaps it would have reassured the BNP lady who cruelly and sotto voce said "You're a timewaster lady, you are" as the candidate and I talked. Mind you, she explained her defensiveness later. Someone once kicked the table of leaflets. Can you believe that? And she was "physically assaulted" another time. I asked if someone decked her. She havered. I asked if someone had hit her. She havered some more. The candidate explained, a man had thrown his sandwich at her. I didn't ask what was in it.

A Right Herbert

2010-04-09T16:49:00.015+01:00

There's two worlds isn't there? The real one which is all about work and whether you can give the kids fish fingers again, and the one on TV and in the press where politicians and pundits are hopping on and off endless planes and trains to supermarkets and business parks all to shake hands, twitter it, turn round and leave again.

The two worlds collided for me today. Nick Herbert, the Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs came up to campaign for the local Conservative-candidate-with-a-double-barrelled-name. Luckily, the double-barrel is Anne-Marie so she got away with keeping it, though for a moment, there was a chance she might have to change to 'Wor Annie. But 'Wor Annie (who is an immensely capable, confident, intelligent woman working her guts out trying to take the Berwick seat from Lib Dem veteran Alan Beith), was wasting her valuable time if she was hoping Herbert's magic dust would rub off on her. He hasn't got any, and having seen his Shadow Cabinet in action all I can say is David Cameron is quite right to make this election all about David Cameron.

Nick was up in Northumberland for a meeting. Anne-Marie turned up to the meeting with an earnest man-child who carried her handbag, and a clever-looking agent in a dark suit. Nick had his own text-busy aide and a bod who I'm guessing drove him up there. Other than that, there were 10 or so Tory farmer-types dressed in mustard cords, gilets, silk ties, three tweed jackets and a Barbour. They weren't asking for much.(Money from Europe obviously but that goes without saying.) They did want the odd firm opinion. On something. Looking in the wrong place guys.

A charming buffer accused a villainous, off-stage Beith of being responsible for the underfunding of hospitals and schools and the "potholed death trap" of the A1. (I think I can safely say, Beith would refute these charges.) All Nick could manage was: "I know Anne-Marie would be as good and as conscientious a Member of Parliament as Alan has been." Not "better than". "As good as". "Vote for her - she's as good as the last guy". According to the candidate's website she's taken one day off from electioneering since 2000. Since January, she's knocked on 20,000 doors (10,000 still to go). I bet that pat on the back from Nick Herbert made it all worth-while.

I didn't have great hopes for my own questions but in for a penny in for a pound. I can't cover the entire general election from underneath a red slanket on my sofa watching BBC News 24 and eating chocolate cake. (Or can I? Thinks hard.) Anyway, I am genuinely interested to see what access you get as a blogger. Will they treat us like journalists? Or stalkers? Or just particularly irritating voters? Potentially armed with recording equipment. To Nick's credit he gave me five minutes after the meeting, though I'm willing to bet he wished he hadn't.

He is out and proud. Good for him. In February, he said the Conservative party had seen a "definite change" in its attitudes to gay people. In a speech to a Washington think tank he said "it suits our opponents to argue that we haven't changed. But we self-evidently have changed." Yes. But has anyone told Chris Grayling?

I asked him what he thought of Grayling's comment that Christian Bed & Breakfast owners should be able to turn away gay couples.
He said: "Chris Grayling has made it clear he voted for the legislation in question and that he does not want to change the law - that's the statement he made."
I made the point I was asking him what he, Nick Herbert, thought.
Herbert said: "That's what Chris Grayling has said."
I repeated that I was asking what he thought.
Herbert said: "That's what Chris Grayling has said and that's what we've said about it."
He refused to say whether he had talked to the Shadow Home Secretary, or indeed bitchslapped him (- OK, I made the last bit up but frankly, I was disappointed in him).
He said: "That's all I'm going to say." At which point his aide dragged him away.

Before we talked through his feelings re Grayling though, we dipped our toe into fox-hunting. Herbert (like Cameron) describes himself as a "country boy". Between 1990 and 1996, he worked for the British Field Sports Society and became its Director of Political Affairs. He also played a leading role in setting up the Countryside Movement which became the Countryside Alliance.
I asked him whether he hunted.
He used to, yes.
I asked him whether there would be legislation to repeal the hunting ban in the first Queen's Speech.
He said: "What we've said and we've always said is we will give Parliament an opportunity of a free vote on repeal with a government bill in government time. I have said that I believe that will be an early opportunity."
(In October, Herbert ruled out a backbench Bill and said the party had decided to bring forward government legislation.)
I asked if he was pushing for it to be an early opportunity.
Herbert said: "That's all I've said, and I have also said we have no intention of wasting parliamentary time as the government did. They devoted over 700 hours of parliamentary time to producing an unworkable piece of legislation and we are not going to make the same mistake. We have a series of priorities both for the country in terms of restoring the economy and so on, and for rural areas. While I believe the law is unworkable and that the new parliament will want the opportunity to vote on its repeal, we do not intend to waste time on this matter."
I asked whether he personally would like to see it in the first Queen's Speeech.
Herbert said: "What I have said is I believe there should be an early opportunity for repeal."
You get the picture.

Afterwards one of the faithful few who'd listened politely,labelled Herbert's reluctance to back his own candidate "feeble." This member of the faithful said: "I wish some of them were rich, then they might actually say what they believe instead of thinking about their own jobs all the time."

What gets me is this guy's clever. He set up a thinktank of his own and has one of those high shiny foreheads so he has to be clever right? And he must have impressed someone because his name was mooted as a possible Home Secretary after Grayling's catastrophic venture into the do's and dont's of the tourist industry. He's not just thinking of his job. He doesn't want to offend. Say nothing - it's safer that way. I bet there are things Nick Herbert believes in. I wonder if he can remember what they are?

Mumsnet election ( 2)

2010-04-07T11:09:00.006+01:00

This "wash-up" they keep talking about getting through. Previously, I've been leery of MPs too willing to don the marigolds (I've always found it best to run away at the snap of damp rubber against plump flesh) but then again these days anyone willing to do my washing-up gets my vote. There's a lot of it right now because my dishwasher's blinky and leaves sand in the bottom of every cup. A bit like it nips out to the beach when I'm not looking and rolls around in the surf for a while. I bet if I check it's had all the sunblock too.

Mumsnet election? Alright then.

2010-04-06T12:12:00.005+01:00

OOOh, blood running cold and choppy with excitement at call of election. Think it's the election anyway, there's a chance I had too much caffeine and I'm about to arrest. Have been toying with idea of blogging it all, though I shouldn't cos I'm supposed to be working for a living. What the hell. They did say this was the Mumsnet election I'm sure. That would be why my seven-year-old remarked lying on the sofa watching the party leaders making their starter pitch, "Why isn't any of them a girl?". Of course, there were a few girls around. There was Harriet-Harman-woman with Cabinet colleagues arranged faithful and smiling like lunchtime gospel singers behind a presbyterian preacher; there was a blonde among the tie-less geeks stood by Dave Cameron; and the youngsters behind Nick Clegg that he kept checking on incase any of them were making a V-sign behind his head. And the wives of course. A clicketty-claketty Sarah Brown (has she lost weight? This is the sort of vital question we need to put to women who lay like a glittery-pink varnish over the ugly macho reality of British politics. And if we don't ask it, the Daily Mail certainly will.) And just how many days till the cry goes up "Put Sam First Dave" as his pregnant beauty begins to look shattered as she trails loyally after him. Maybe a formerly double-barrelled young man with a Blackberry in one pocket and his silk tie in the other, could be missioned to carry with him at all times a white plastic garden chair so Sam can sit down while she listens to Dave opining in the open air about the future. Note to Tories: garden chair for Sam. Definitely not shooting stick. Hell to drill them into concrete and may not play well.
So here we go then.

Hair Today and Gone Tomorrow

2010-02-10T12:08:00.006Z

Went down to London for the weekend for my friend's daughter's 18th birthday party. It was full of beauteous teens looking amazing, oozing confidence and talking about which university they were going to. Life spread out at their prettily-varnished feet. I used to be like that. Not now though.

Right now, my life is in a bit of a mess and I couldn't fit into the oyster-coloured silk frock I brought down for the party because it gathered in accusing wrinkles over my hips and stomach. The accusation they leveled ran along the lines of "You got fat mate". Even worse, I had a haircut the day before and much as I love my hairdresser, it doesn't do it for me.

The last haircut he gave me was the best I'd ever had, it shaved off 10 years and looked sexy. Everybody who saw it said it was great. I sat in the chair and reminded him what he did and asked for the same. He shook his head. "We'll do something different," he said. I shook my head. No - I wanted the same thing. It had been the best haircut ever. I'd looked young again. I wanted the same. He shook his head again. "We'll go shorter this time." I should have written it in blood on his mirror "I want what I had before". I didn't get it. You always know when you have a bad haircut because you can't look at your face in the mirror, you just look at the hair around your face, and while you're saying primly "Thankyou that's great", inside your head you're screaming "Buggering bollox." That was me. It's not the haircut per se, the cut is as sharp as ever. It's the fact, he's taken off so much, there is nowhere for my jowls to hide. Also, the cut's razored and after blow-drying I look like I'm wearing Liz Taylor's hair. Not Liz Taylor in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Liz Taylor in the wheelchair with the bad back trying to be brave and very very bouffant. I tried curling it a bit and instead of Liz, I began to shape-shift into my favorite dolly Rosemary who talked when you pulled a string and asked you to tea and is now a one-legged bath toy and hasn't said much in a while.

After the haircut, I went out to dinner with my best gay boyfriend and his partner.
"I've had a haircut," I said. He looked at me dubiously. "Perhaps if you did something with the fringe? " he offered.

I intend to shoot the children's guinea-pigs and make a hat. Needs must. I'll explain. "Look at me," I'll say.

Dreamgirl

2010-02-02T16:40:00.004Z

I've broken open the first draft of my novel which I finished just before Christmas and am currently attempting to improve it. A lot. A-lot-a-lot. How's the writing going? Hmmm. Let's say, I dreamed the other night that crocodiles ate my hands - both of them. I just had the arms and nothing at the end of flapping sleeves. Nice huh? I didn't even swallow down a little spoonful or two of that yummy green cold medicine before I went to sleep. I didn't even take a swift toke on the crack pipe. You don't need a dictionary of dreams to figure out my subconscious is not impressed with what I've done so far. I've thought about exactly what it might mean (and God knows, if I was still in counselling, this one would keep my psychotherapist going for weeks.) Among the options, I figure:
1. give up - you've not got the skill set
2. really, you should give up now before your hands drop off in shame at this tosh
3 (bearing in mind, you're supposed to be everybody in the dream and that includes the crocodiles)I'm damaging myself permanently by carrying on.
Ho hum. Maybe I'll get myself a nice job in PR.
"Why exactly are you interested in a job in our press office may I ask?"
"I thought it might help the nightmares go away. Can you hear the voices too? They're loud today aren't they?"
That should clinch it.

Whaling

2010-01-28T10:42:00.006Z

Fresh from the beach where I went to have another look at the whale. "Fresh" may not be exactly the right word. "Eeeeeurgh" may be more the word I'm looking for. Let's say it's not what a visiting caravaner would put on his "Must See" itinerary just under red squirrels.

There's something about a whale. What is it? That they're a mammal? That they float deep and quietsome in the dark? That they make really bad music? There's a connection which makes seeing one of them out of its element - not to mention very dead - distressing. To reach the whale, you walk past a quarantine notice complete with skull which never bodes well does it? Yesterday morning, you might have almost hoped that it was moving as the sea lifted its tail with the churn of the waves. Today, the tide has brought the whale off the rocks and inshore, flipping its sad and massive body which is mottled with blood. The sea-water pooled in the sands around is bright red, and the smell retch-inducing - not helped by the fact officials have sawn off its lower jaw and extracted its upper teeth. They've done this because souvenir hunters were caught by coastguards in the early hours. The reports say they were souvenir hunters - perhaps they were just really unlucky tooth fairies. "What job have you got?" "That cutie-pie with the curly blonde hair asleep over there on the pink Princess pillow. What's yours?" "I've got that 25 tonne rotting whale carcass on the Northumberland coast. Swapsies?"

Close encounters

2010-01-12T20:21:00.007Z

So, here I am again. Aliens abducted me. They had those strange lightbulb heads and the black almond eyes, and obviously there were probes. Thank God there were actually, because there's no Sky TV up there. Anyway, all things pall and we reached a deal - they'd bring me back home and in return, I'd send on a recipe for lemon curd. Well I'm back but truth to tell, I have never made lemon curd so there's a good chance they'll come back mad as hell. I'm planning to google it or at the very least lay in a few jars so I'll have them to hand if they start trying to suck me back into orbit.

2010 then, and I haven't even done a review of 2009.(I must do one, it's just I'm not that sure I want to look too close. There's a few messy bits.) As a rule, I enjoy auditing the year but my house was full of relatives and friends, and I didn't get the chance to do much more than think that next year I am booking my pal who runs a catering van to park outside my house and feed all-comers, that and "Is it too early to start drinking?" My parents arrived on the Tuesday before Christmas. Courtesy of the snow, the roads around us became impassable and my parents stayed. Then it turned to ice and the roads were too dangerous and my parents stayed. Then it rained and the roads flooded and my parents stayed. Eventually, I found them a way out through the ice and the floods but they decided to stay on the grounds it was a Tuesday and not a Saturday and my dad thinks the roads are quieter on a Saturday. Three and a half weeks after they arrived, they went home. Now, there's a dead sperm whale on the beach. You put a dead whale on the beach and it's begging to be a metaphor. Let's hope it's not a metaphor for the year ahead.

Jam and Jerusalem via Brighton

2009-09-28T16:39:00.009+01:00

I've been watching The X Factor from between my fingers. People's capacity for self-deception is breathtaking. OK so you're homely, three stone overweight and can't hold a tune. Oh, and truth to tell, you're not that interested in music. Which of these things do you chose to ignore when you're in the privacy of your bedroom gazing at yourself in the full-length, fitted wardrobe mirror thinking about whether you should go along to the auditions infront of a live audience of 4,000 people and a national TV audience of squillions? One, two or 'all of the above', on the grounds of "What-the-hell-I-deserve-to-be-famous"? I think it was The X Factor anyway. There was something about "living the dream" and "I don't want to go home when I've come this far" and "there's absolutely nothing else I want to do" and "I just hope they'll see how much I want this." There's a chance it was the Labour Party Conference.

Either way, I've a lot of sympathy with Simon Cowell and Cheryl Cole since my own experience of being a judge last week. I did a reading at the Women's Institute (Cheviot Group). This involved my husband taking the kids to swimming and then onto football since I was driving round in circles trying to find the right village hall. I did my performing monkey bit feeling slightly nervous - as Tony Blair can tell you the WI can be a tough crowd. I certainly didn't think it was the time to tell them how as a young journalist sent to cover a WI meeting, an enthusiastic lady had explained to me how much she'd learned about preservation and conservation. I thought she meant history. She meant jam. Anyway after they fed me tea and cream meringues, they called me up from one of the long trestle tables framing the auditorium to judge three competitions.
The first: a picture of Northumberland contest for which the ladies had ransacked their walls for the nicest view of the county. I chose sheep milling on the Cheviots.
The second: the decorated stone contest involving large pebbles upon which were delicately painted posies, a thatched cottage and a slightly spooky baby girl's head complete with knitted bonnet and dummy. I definitely chose the cottage. Or the posy. I quite regret not chosing the baby.
The last: the savoury flan. There were at least 70 ladies in the hall. How many flans had they mustered between them? Two. Talk about pressure. I looked at the flans. They looked back. I tasted them. I tasted them again. I chose one and left quickly. I've another WI meeting in January - I'm asking to be paid in cake.

"Es gibt hier keine Baeren."

2009-08-18T12:26:00.015+01:00

Am very excited. Wife in the North came out in Germany last Wednesday (courtesy of a brilliant translator called Cornelia Holfelder-von der Tann) under the title Stadt, Land - Schluss and is about to hit number 15 in their bestseller charts. (Bearing in mind it sank like a stone in the US and we speak the same language - what's German for "hooray!"?) Even better my publishers have tweaked the book trailer so I now know how to say "There are no bears" in German.

What's happening in Germany is a real pick-me-up because the thing about getting a book published is you want another published after that, and then another, and chances are that might not happen. Me and my nose are writing away on Book No. 2 without a contract, which means without money, which means shedloads of guilt for not earning anything, and the acute suspicion that I'm playing at being a writer and really I should snap out of it and do something useful with my life. Of course, if I finish it and someone buys it, me and my nose are vindicated. But the last real writer I spoke to told me that the first novel she wrote never made it out of the drawer and went down as a "learning experience". I hate "learning experiences". Generally speaking they are unspeakably horrid and misery-making and give other people the chance to say things like "I don't think so" and "I'm afraid you're just not good enough."

The other night I went for supper at a friend's and before she'd allow us to eat we all had to troop out to the dusking lawn to play croquet. Croquet brings me out in a cold sweat. I'm a working class girl from Leeds. I wasn't brought up playing croquet. I don't even know how to hold the racket and I've never liked jumping through hoops. I'm short but even for me, it's difficult. I associate it with being a teenager and having lunch with the family of my then boyfriend. I could be wrong (these are only memories after all and what are memories made of?) but I have always laboured under the opinion his mother disliked me. In my memory then, the sun blazed, and I opted out of the game of croquet in the garden to sit in the shade. Later that afternoon, rowing in a boat along the river, the sun still shining, a girl (staying with the family on some sort of exchange) told me that my sweetheart's mother had asked her what she thought of me; and a victory of sorts - she said she liked me very much. I have always wondered how a grown woman could ask one child what she thought of another. The realisation that not everybody likes you - a learning experience.

"Don't hesitate to get in touch"

2009-08-13T11:56:00.005+01:00

As a journalist, when press releases came in, you would skim the first couple of pars, roll them in a ball and shoot them into the nearest bin. Alternatively, someone called something like "Izzie" would ring when you were on deadline and say "Hi-this-is-Izzie-from-Bright-Light-And-Sunny-Days-I-just-wanted-to-check-you-got-our-fax-about-our-fantastic-all-inclusive-merino-goat-herding-vacations-in-Snowdonia-which-train-you-to-knit-as-you-ramble." About this point Izzie would break for breath and you'd say "Got the fax. Got your number. Have to go" or "Let me give you the number of a goat-loving colleague who might be able to help you" depending on your mood. I never resented such approaches. They were an occupational hazard but then I was being paid to deal with them.

In blogging - more particularly in the world of the mommy blogger, I'm not paid to deal with them but still they buzz round anxious to get something for nothing. A whole social media industry is being built on the back of bloggers apparently fuelled by the conviction that mommy bloggers are laptop patsies with floral aprons tied round our midriffs and too much time on our floury hands. They think we care about whatever it is they are trying to get the word out about. They expect us to care. I for one don't. I have an advertising column and am more than happy to take an advert (see Sony and Northumberland Tourism for instance), but the PRs don't want to take an advert they want it for free. They want me to embed a YouTube video about pushchairs or a banner about soap because they think I'm a mummy and this is what I want to do with my blog.

Occasionally a quid pro quo, or what is otherwise known as a "freebie", is offered. Now this is fair enough although I have so far taken only two things from PRs - Kipper books and a phone. Both of which I would probably have written about. I am a big fan of Kipper (unlike Spot the world's most boring dog) but I never got round to it.(Sorry, Kipper.) The O2 phone I felt bad about because it looked great but I used it a couple of times and then completely forgot the code to open up all the high tech functions so it hangs around my office reproaching me, a technological dodo. In all conscience, I didn't feel I could write up "Am mommy blogger moron and forgot code so cannot use phone though it looks very pretty " on the special high-tech geek blog they set up for it.

The latest such approach is from a nice man who works for Sainsbury's who starts off telling me that Sainsbsury's wants to "reach out to you". This he tells me is because I'm an "influential blogger" (I suspect he wants to make me feel good.) He wants me to attend a meeting at Sainsbury's Head Office "a completely closed meeting" to offer 8-10 bloggers a preview of something or other. (A "completely closed meeting"? I'm a blogger - why would I go to a closed meeting?) This invitation was later withdrawn "Unfortunately we didn't give everyone enough advance warning to be able to make it on the day."
However, the nice man assures me they really do want to work with "important bloggers like you" and "yes, we have been reading your blogs for a while now. We see:
*Depth of thought in your posts
*How much conversation is generated both in commenting and others externally from your blog".
Impressed as they are he tells me he will be giving me a £75 voucher to use when sainsburys.co.uk goes live with an extended range of products. All I have to do is let them know what I think of the site.
Five days later, my price has dropped. The nice man tells me the new site is now "LIVE" and that he has £50 for me to spend. £50? What I wonder did I do in the intervening period to make my price drop? I contemplate emailing him but it seems pushy doesn't it. "I'm wondering what happened to my other £25 - is it the stock market? Did I become £25 less "influential" when I wasn't looking?"

Still, at least it is a better offer than Haliborange with their "exclusive" trial of new Kids Multivitamin Fruit Softies. "Strawberry shaped with a delicious strawberry fruit flavour". I don't know how I held myself back from that one. Particularly when it came alongside the offer of a video for my site on how to paint icecubes. Or then again, there was the Carex offer of testing and reviewing a selection of products along with a lightbox to help my kids learn to wash their hands and a parent information pack with a "number of fun activities" for me and my daughter to try. Presumably the conversation would go something like this - "I know kids - don't just lie there and watch television, let's all go wash our hands again." Even better was the offer of a hoover. Not a whole hoover to keep, just one I could push around for a few days and then write about. (Tsk. If only I hadn't got that pesky RSI. A visiting hoover - what's not to blog?)

Message to social media PRs: Don't patronise. Don't flatter. Don't send me a press release about something that's been in the papers the week before - I read the papers. Don't invite me to a meeting to pick my brain and pay me with a cup of coffee. Don't waste my time.

Arms and the woman

2009-08-10T15:06:00.003+01:00

The thing is when you stop blogging for a while, you lose confidence you can blog at all. I came down with a bad flare-up of RSI or tendonitis or whatever you want to call it - something that makes you say "Ow" a lot and drop things. So I stopped, stopped blogging, stopped writing the next book, stopped all that hoovering I do to unwind (yeah right). And let's face it, it's fatal to stop. I decided I wasn't really worth listening to after all, and that's probably true, but I'm going to start again because otherwise I may go mad. The RSI is better than it was, I've got some voice recognition software now anyway, and, if all else fails I'll type with my nose. My nose can't spell of course, so prepare yourself for some really bad spelljng in the days ahead. And I'd really better not get a cold because that could play hell with my syntax. OK - brace yourself for summer.

Wifey 1: Stoats 0

2009-05-27T10:52:00.005+01:00

The guinea pig eater turned out to be a stoat - 16 inches long in a furry tan colour with a urine-yellow belly and a dark tip to the tail. It didn't look happy, but then I couldn't blame it - it was dead. I wouldn't be happy if I was dead. I like animals. I just don't like animals that eat my animals. I felt a little bit guilty gazing at its still and skinny body bearing in mind the stoat was only acting according to it's feral nature, but mostly I felt pleased it couldn't eat anything I have a naming ceremony for in future. The gamekeeper came back yesterday to check the traps in case the stoat had a stoat friend but I'm hoping that's it. He has promised to build me a super-secure run and turn the hutch into the guineapig equivalent of a maximum security holding facility in the Arizona desert. Nothing's getting out and nothing's getting in. Unless the next stoat's got wire-cutters, and a helicopter, and a friend on the inside of course.

Meanwhile, talking of weasels and pest control, I am beginning to feel sorry for Julie Kirkbride. Alright, she pushed the expenses a bit. A lot of bit. Well, her and virtually every other MP out there. And alright, she's patently got terrible what-does-she-see-in-him taste in men. She's done that classic female politician thing of ending up with a very embarrassing husband. But why out of all these blaggards and rogues is there a "Julie Must Go" head of steam building? There's national outrage over the expenses debacle as revealed by the Daily Telegraph - we should have a general election, and start again. But there's always that extra frisson of pleasure when a woman is punished for her misdemeanours isn't there, and she's pretty - even better. When I was reporting on politics, I once arranged lunch with her and there was a mix-up in the bookings. She turned up at the National Portrait Gallery restaurant and I waited at the National Gallery restaurant. Forty minutes and several phone calls later, we managed to meet up. She took it with good grace - many of her self-important colleagues wouldn't. Or, maybe she was hoping for two lunches, one in each restaurant - who knows? But I don't think so. She cocked up on the expenses - along with many others. I imagine she's going to end up having to announce that she's standing down at the next election. If she doesn't, she seems certain to lose the seat anyway. I wonder what would happen if she took a deep breath and gave a proper apology. Not an explanation. A real heartfelt apology - and not one of these Hazel Blears "I understand why everybody feels so angry" apologies for an apology either. One of the things that is making people most angry is the idea that our politicians "just don't get it". People can hear the difference between "I understand why you're upset" and "I'm really, really sorry - I've done something entirely wrong. I admit it. I don't know what I was thinking. Please. Forgive me." Some of our politicians think they are the same thing. They are not. Julie might say sorry, she might think about filling up with tears and even spending one or two on camera. She might mean it - it might work.

Weasels 4: Guinea pigs 0

2009-05-14T10:50:00.004+01:00

Something really bad happened - and I'm not talking about the collapse of faith in our British parliamentary system.

After Holly and Daisy disappeared, I did that thing that mothers do and attempted to buy my way out of hysteria. We got new guinea pigs. They weren't pretty balls of fur like Holly and Daisy. In fact, truth to tell, Fernando and Jake were ugly. They were the only guinea pigs left in the garden centre - for a reason. One was grey and white and one was tan and white. One had really red eyes and one had quite red eyes. The words "scraggy rat" jumped to mind when you saw them, but hey, they were guinea pigs and hey, my three-year-old daughter wasn't crying any more. We bought them on Tuesday and put them in Holly and Daisy's hutch. We started to love them. "Looks aren't everything," I told the children. Yesterday morning, I dropped the kids at school and when I got home went out to feed them. At first I thought they were asleep, lying on their sides. With their little red eyes open. No such luck.

This is the thing that Liz Hurley failed to mention in her recent steamy ravings about life in the country - it can be bloody. A weasel killed the new guinea pigs. Which can only mean that a weasel killed Holly and Daisy, somehow managing to drag their little bodies through the bars of the hutch. Fernando and Jake were bigger so their neck-nipped bodies were left, a testament to nature. I'm saying weasel - conceivably it could have been a stoat but we saw it a few minutes later as it tried to come back to get the bodies again - a streak of brownish fur with a long tail. I'd have shot it if I'd had a gun. We're like that in the country.

Guinea pigs keep low profile

2009-05-12T15:38:00.006+01:00

Our guinea pigs had two homes. They had their hutch on the concrete terrace and their run on the grass. Holly used to go between the two on her motorbike - often Daisy would ride pillion. Occasionally Daisy would use her chauffeur driven car. It was difficult to keep track of which home was their primary home what with the furniture vans arriving all the time and unloading chandeliers and top range chew toys. But I sort of expected them to keep their own accounts and not take things too far on the expenses front. Admittedly when Daisy mentioned a moat in the last submission and started pushing for a swimming pool, I wondered whether they had forgotten what real life was like for ordinary rodents. We talked but they kept blaming the "system" - explained they were a special case. I felt responsible for them. They were our pets. We'd put them into power, and they were always going to eat hay while the sun was shining. And now something's happened, I think the publicity got too much. I went out this morning and they'd done a runner. I checked out the hutch and their home in the country and apart from the poo pellets and the Sky camera crew, there's no sign. The motorbike's gone too. I'm presuming they've done the decent thing and disappeared into the undergrowth. Maybe they're heading for Southampton. I'm upset obviously. Gutted really. And God knows what I'm going to tell the children. I thought we were good together. Turns out they were in it for themselves after all.

This little piggy

2009-05-06T14:20:00.009+01:00

We bought two guinea pigs. They are tiny - babies really - with swirly fur. One of them has motley caramel and black and white sworls and we have called her Daisy. The other one is ginger and white. I would have called her Hazel but frankly I expect some loyalty from my guinea pigs so we settled on Holly. I am trying to bond with them but ever since my husband took a good look at their twitching whiskers and said: "They really are rodents aren't they?" I've struggled.

I told my friend we were getting them and she offered us a hutch. This is the friend with the world's most fabulous house complete with "box" room (full of boxes ready to send gifts to godchildren) and dead tigers on the floor. She said: "Really it's a hen house, but there's nesting boxes in there they could use." I agreed and she said she would bring it round on Saturday night. We waited and waited. No sign of a hen house so my husband rang her. It turns out that our "guinea pig hutch" was 10 feet by 4 feet and they couldn't get it into their horse trailer. These eight-week old guinea pigs are the length of my palm, I can only think that when I said: "We're getting guinea pigs", my friend heard the words "We're getting Afghan hounds."

We borrowed a cat box for their first night and resolved to revisit the garden centre the next day to buy a real guinea pig hutch. It was just as well because a variety of guinea pig fanciers up for bank holiday weekend had convinced us that "Daisy" was suffering from gender misidentification. "Daisy-or-maybe-it's-Donald" went back in her box and back to the garden centre. I'm no expert on guinea pig genitalia, but "Daisy-it-could-be-Donald" did not look like "Hazel-You-Tube-If-You-Want-To-Holly". The assistant who sold us the guinea pigs had already said breezily as she ladled them into their cardboard boxes: "We can't be sure but we think they're both girls". "We can't be sure but we don't think you'll get pregnant" - it's not a marketeer's dream for condoms is it?

There was a different girl in the pet section this time and she was ready for us. She took a look and shook her head. Daisy was definitely Daisy. Perhaps I seemed sceptical because she asked: "Do you want to see what a boy guinea pig looks like?" I don't know what I expected - perhaps I thought she might say "Do you see, they've got longer tails" or "You can always tell a boy guinea pig by the shape of its ears." Instead, she scooped one up, flipped him on to his back and splayed him as if she was cracking the spine of a paperback. There, in all its glory, was a guinea pig penis popping out to say hello. It was tiny but I have not been able to shift the image from my head since. I may have been permanently damaged. Perhaps this girl thought I had never seen a penis - I have no idea how she explained the three children with me. I said something like "Right. OK. Well that's definitely a penis then" just to reassure her I could recognise one. After that, we went home.

The last 100 days

2009-04-29T23:15:00.005+01:00

I've been considering my last 100 days as you do. They've not been among my best, but then they've not been among my worst - testing I'd say. And providing you don't insist on living in the present, there's always the future to look forward to.

There's the economy of course - I didn't earn any money between January and March and that can't be good. It makes shopping a real bore for one thing. Friends and former colleagues have been made redundant, and I'm thinking I should maybe do something to bring me in a steady income - deal drugs perhaps? Something regular that will see me through the recession. I could sell knitted jumpers, but then I don't knit - sweaty hands. I could make jam, but then I can't afford to buy all the jars of Tiptree's finest I'd need to put my own jam in. I could revive my flagging journalistic career, but I'd have to revive my flagging mental processes first and I think I may be heading into the menopause because my shortterm memory is utterly kaput. Initially, I wondered if it was Alzheimer's, but I can spell world backwards so it can't be that. I'm figuring it's hormones because I've had four "hot flashes". At least, I think they are hot flashes. It's either that or my husband has taken to pouring white spirit over my sleeping body and setting light to it like some flaming sambuca. The other thing I'm doing is jumbling words. As we are heading out the door to school, I'll say "Put your banana on right now" to a mystified child. This is happening so often, they've taken to translating for each other. "She means coat," one said to the other yesterday.

Earlier this week, I went into a health food shop in a nearby market town where they have supplements and homeopathic remedies. There was a nice man with a beard behind the counter (although there's a chance the homeopathic remedies have side-effects they don't tell you about). I waited about 35 minutes for the old lady in front of me to stop telling him about her aches and pains, and then asked for something for the headaches. I said "I think I'm pre-menopausal." "Are you getting night sweats?" he asked. I think that's what he said. My memory is so bad at the minute, he might have asked how I felt about Alistair Darling's handling of the economy. He went to get his colleague who was at least another woman and she decided to ask about my periods. Periods! We are still standing in the shop and the nice bearded man is still standing there with us. Anyway, you don't necessarily want to talk about whether your womb is withering when you're in a shop selling youghurty raisins and halva. I said something elliptical that could have meant anything and she told me I was too young for the menopause. I'm 44 - I'm not, but it was nice of her to try and make me feel better.

Anyway, so what with the fact I'm broke and heading into Menopause City in a truck, I've had it better. On the upside, we're getting a guineapig.

Kippers and the new world order

2009-03-29T21:40:00.010+01:00

So there's the G20 when as Gordon Brown put it "the world came together, to fight back against the global recession", and there's Northumberland where we're fighting it one job at a time.

This is the story of an ordinary man.
Once upon a time, there was a man (let's call him Andy,) who had two kids to look after on his own. Working as a single parent can be difficult, so he got hold of a catering van and a licence to park it in a village (let's call it Craster) and serve food. Craster is famous for kippers so he served hot buttered kippers in buns, and haggis and bacon in rolls, and home-made cranberry scones. He gave away fresh fruit to the health conscious, and dog food to dogs and those with strange snacking habits. He brought in tables and chairs for the weary to rest while they ate their haggis baps, and primroses in pots because there can never be too many flowers in the world. He worked for two years feeding the lads in the kipper yards, and the fishermen who work the harbour, and of course the walkers in woolly hats and laced-up boots. Andy made a living, not a fortune, but enough to feed the kids and feel himself a working man.

But heroes of stories never have it easy, their paths are never smooth and dragon-free. Time moved on and it came to pass that Andy rang the council (let's call it Alnwick District Council) and asked whether he'd have to tender again for his pitch. Six weeks passed as Andy rang and rang again. He got a councillor involved to find out what was going on and word came back (bearing in mind Alnwick district council was to be swallowed up in a new unitary authority on April 1st) that his licence would be extended for another year.

(Let's have a time line shall we. Let's not stint ourselves on time at least in a recession such as this.)
* On Monday March 16th, a council official confirmed his licence would be extended - there'd be no tendering. Huzzah. Huzzah. Thrice times huzzah. But wait. Oh No! Our hero is in peril yet.
* On Tuesday March 17th, another official explains the council does want him to tender. A sealed bid please to be in by Monday 23rd March.
* On Thursday 26th March at 4.30pm, an official left a message that Andy had been unsuccessful with his £1001.50 bid. An ice-cream van wins. Such a shame - Andy cannot trade past Tuesday 31st March. Game over for our working man.

And this could have been the end, would have been the end had bureaucracy triumphed, as bureaucracies are wont to do, when pitted against the Honest Joes and Andies of this world.

But what bureaucracies forget are the people they're supposed to serve. Local people outraged at the treatment of this Honest Joe sign his petition - 300 of them in a weekend, and the media gets involved to film Andy lamenting on his bagpipes (an unusual weapon of choice for a hero agreed,) and letters are written, and councillors think "Hmmm?" and an MP says "I don't think so." And there are meetings where Andy's friends (let's call them Sarah and Jeremy) explain in no uncertain terms how this hero needs a happy ending. And eventually, bureaucrats who'd said he had a "gripe", agree he has a point, a case perhaps. Andy gets his licence (the ice cream man does too). There's a new world order don't you know - thank God for the G20 is all I can say.

Lamb stew

2009-03-18T10:25:00.006Z

I know it's spring in Northumberland - not so much because of daffodils' blare, nor that the chill air is rinsed in gold before you breathe it in, then out, then in again. Nor even because a woodland close is carpetted blue in stars enough to wish for winter's end a thousand times and more.

How I know it's spring is that a friend made me lie on top of a sheep while she did squishy things at the business end, pulling out three long and slimey lambs. They lay there tumbled, bloody in the straw while their triumphant mother licked them clean and woolly, persuading them to breathe. Sprawled across the ewe, trousers wet with sheep pee and waters from the floor, I enquired: "Can I get up?", and glancing at my three-year-old just stopped myself from warning: "This - this here - is what happens if you ever kiss a boy."

Schlepp and slap

2009-02-18T13:21:00.005Z

I foolishly agreed to chair a poetry event. I agreed to do this because an old friend asked me to, and not because I know anything about poetry. The old friend is one of those persuasive enthusiasts who say things like "Really, you'll be great". Deep down, you know they are thinking not so much of your "greatness" but of your "convenience" and the fact that if you say No, they'll have to spend a week finding someone else to sucker. So I said Yes but in reality, I get far too nervous for these events ever to be a good idea.

Worse - when I arrived at the railway station, I realised I'd left the house without my overnight bag with all my make-up. I'm 44 - standing on stage without my make-up infront of 200 people was not a goer. Instead of going straight to the venue as planned then, I had to schlepp into the centre of London for emergency slap. I tried getting a professional to "do" me (possibly I would have been better staying in King's Cross for that) but it turned out it was too close to going-home time. Instead, a charming girl at Space NK in New Bond Street waved me towards their make-up displays and said that I was welcome to use what I wanted. I just resisted stripping to my bra and knickers and getting the curlers out. I settled instead for ambling among the products transforming myself (or at least covering up the eyebags and trying those eyeshadow colours you'd never buy in real life.) I considered myself morally obliged to buy a few bits and pieces though I'm supposed to be on a credit crunch budget and there is no expenditure column in my Excel spreadsheet for "General Incompetence". I'll file them under "Groceries."

My second problem was that I now looked OK but smelled bad. All the burrowing into and out of rush-hour tubes in magic knickers and a Barbour Jacket had left me a sweaty mess. I had to buy two different types of deodorant, one for me and a posh Channel jobbie to spray all over my cardigan because I had to sit really close to the poets on the stage and I didn't want them thinking bloggers were smelly. (The deodorants are going under "Emergency Personal Hygiene".)

The idea was I gave a ten-minute introduction and then welcomed each of the Big Name poets. Two people (I know because they introduced themselves to me afterwards)- three if you count my friend, four is you count his partner and five if you count his mother, knew who the hell I was. The audience was not interested in hearing my witticisms, and they were particularly uninterested in hearing my announcements on "feedback forms" and how to book tickets online for the next event about "Poetry and Mental Health."

They wanted the red meat of the event - they wanted the poets. They loved the poets, they laughed heartily at all their jokes, bought their books and waited attentively for them to be signed. Noone asked me to sign a book afterwards. At least I got to stand at the bar looking as if I just happened to be there, rather than sit behind a table being ignored. (And Thank God for the nice couple with the holiday cottage in Northumberland who talked to me.) It was one of those character-building experiences - I've written one book, one of the poets the brilliant Sophie Hannah has written seven novels, two children's books and her latest poetry was nominated for some massive prize. She's 37. Another of the poets Kit Wright has written 25 books. Jackie Kay may be the next Poet Laureate and has an MBE. Wendy Cope is a legend and Paul Farley's use of words could have me writhing on the floor, shrieking and possessed by jealous demons. My name is the Wife in the North and I blog. It doesn't even rhyme.

Spot the Difference

2009-01-30T09:55:00.004Z

I'm sorting through the newspapers looking for landscapes and robots for a school assignment, and find one of those commemorative pull-outs on Obama. Captive audience. Opportunity for quick current affairs lesson. I turn the pages and speak to the photographs. These are all the people who turned up to watch the inauguration/ these are his little girls/ this is the former President. I find two columns of thumb-nail pictures of former Presidents. I say to my boys "Can you see any difference between these men and Obama here?" and point to a large picture of Obama on the same page. The boys look down the columns and across to Obama. My six-year-old nods. He points at Obama: "He's got bigger ears."

Hail to the Chief

2009-01-21T10:58:00.003Z

I wanted to be black yesterday. If I couldn't be black, it would have been good to be American. Ideally, of course a black American. I was in London - I only just resisted saying "You're black - so Obama then? What a guy, eh?" to the girl in the newsagent at King's Cross. I settled instead for: "No thanks - I'd only eat it" when she offered to sell me a brick sized bar of chocolate cheap.

The past few months have been great - a political soap opera with Clinton and McCain, the good guy winning through, and he's clever and he wants to change the world. Who could resist? We've all wanted to share in America's prize. Fair do's, we get to wallow in the pain of Iraq and financial ruin. In any event, our best and brightest new hope is Ken Clarke - so noone should begrudge us.

But, we can only share so far - all those stars and stripes, the "God Bless America", that feeling of acute discomfort when he told the world America was "ready to lead once more." Really? That's a good thing then is it? It's a bit like when your best friend gets married, or your sister. You love the guy and you really hope it's going to work out for them, but ultimately it's not your wedding. Still, he's a gem and raising a glass here, wish you all the best guys.

The Prince and the President

2009-01-14T13:36:00.004Z

America is gearing up for its first black President. Generally considered an all-round good thing. I hope he never gets to meet Prince Charles. I particularly hope he doesn't get to meet him and develop a warm and close friendship with him. Barack Obama is deciding between ties for his big day, while our heir to the crown is explaining how perfectly OK-yah it is to call property developer Kuldip Dhillon "Sooty." "Sooty"? You could not make it up.

At the weekend, we learnt Prince Harry dubbed his former Army colleague Ahmed Raza Khan "my little Paki friend"). He's 24 - fair do's. When you're 24, you often behave like a blithering idiot. He is a soldier and hopefully there are many, many other soldiers who call him a right royal ginger knob, or some such. Most people give him a break because there is a general feeling it is tough to be the younger son, he is not allowed to do what he wants to do, and in any case, he is not necessarily the sharpest knife in the box. Prince Charles however? Come off it.

Said "Sooty" has described his nickname as a "term of affection". In a statement, he reassured us: "I have to say that you know you have arrived when you acquire a nickname. I enjoy being called Sooty by my friends, who I am sure universally use the name as a term of affection with no offence meant or felt. The Prince of Wales is a man of zero prejudice and both of his sons have always been most respectful."
Dhillon's been described as a multi-millionaire property developer and a leading figure of the Cirencester polo club. Does he have a term of affection for Prince Charles I wonder? Maybe something like "Your Royal Highness"? I figure, if you're mates with a load of toffs who fall on their heads a lot, you get what you deserve.

Does Charles live in the real world? OK, stupid question. In any event, bear in mind, Charles is the son of Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, whose gaffes are the stuff of legend. What's not to love about this family? "Paki" son of "Sooty" son of "slitty-eyed "Chinese. Now Obama has already referred to himself as a "mutt" - that's what you call giving Charles a nice wide open door to ride his polo horse through. Though stop a minute he doesn't play polo anymore. In any event, his own website makes it clear he didn't so much play polo as "raise money for charity by playing polo." Either way,he's retired. I can think of another thing that should have retired - words like "Sooty" and "Paki". Yah-di-yah-di-yah, the Prince's people have harrumphed loudly, poured themselves a pink gin, reached for the Bakelite phone and denied HRH is a racist. I'll believe you. He's not a racist - he just occasionally forgets that this is 2009 and he's not a character in an Evelyn Waugh novel. Yeah gods - Obama could end the war in Iraq just in time to start one with the UK. Let's keep it simple - let's keep Prince Polo away from The Man, shall we?

Happy days

2009-01-05T16:03:00.003Z

Hurrah! It's nearly all over. Thank God. Christmas has come and gone, you can almost stop saying "Happy New Year", and no more children's birthdays till November. Our problem is one boy has his birthday on New Year's Eve and the other's was yesterday. And now that's it. No more presents. No more treats. Call me a party pooper but I've been on my knees here with the "welcome to our lovely home" routine with friends and family, making endless cups of tea and meals, spending money I haven't really got, and being "happy, happy, happy".(OK, I know I said I was going to be positive. It's just the relief. I'll be positive tomorrow.)

The History Woman

2009-01-02T21:46:00.005Z

The thing about blogging is you are writing history. Not the big stuff history, all war and Presidents, but the little stuff history like what resolutions you made last year. I just went to look...
Wifey's resolutions 2008
1*to shout less and be more patient.
2*to revise the blog and make it more whizz bang (this one might take a while).
3*to revise my life and make it more whizz bang (alternatively to get more sleep).

Hmmm. Verdict
1.absolute failure, need you bloody ask
2.absolute failure though did manage the odd podcast and book trailer
3.absolute failure on both whizz bang and sleep counts.

Moving swiftly on.
Wifey's resolutions 2009
1*eat less chocolate. Have bought new diet book. Have not yet read it. Slight problem this one as feel morally obliged to eat my way through the nine selection boxes my children were bought which would certainly rot their teeth if only they were allowed any of the chocolate inside.
2*be more patient.
3*acquire a more positive turn of mind. Engage. Commit. Look on the bright side. Go get (something, not quite sure what.) Abandon negative, depressive side of personality that runs screaming from sport, parties, dinner parties with more than four people round the table, etc.
4*make the blog more of a community, rather than just a read. Not entirely sure what this involves, but basically "let's talk guys".
5*write a book. A made-up book. This may be a toughie, but has to be worth a shot.

Read This Before Pressing "On" Switch

2009-01-01T22:25:00.005Z

Never all that keen on Christmas, for a start it usually involves instructions you are supposed to read. I never do read them which means that I spend the rest of my life knowing I am only using said item to 5% of its capacity, which is incredibly irritating. So far, I have failed to read the instructions for
*a little handheld organiser thingy which meant I couldn't ever get it set up properly. It sits half in and half out of its box on the top of my shelf a constant reproach.
*every mobile phone I ever had. These phones are apparently so clever they can make dinner for you then email a picture of it to your best friend who's on a diet just to make her feel bad. This means I am about the only person in the whole world who uses her phone to ring people rather than write messages, surf the net, take photos, record music and play video-games when stuck on trains.
*iTunes. I have just about managed to download a TV show, but it is locked in my notebook when I want it in my laptop. I have the same problem with the digital camera and getting photographs out of it and onto the computer.
*the new Wii the children got for Christmas. This could get embarassing - tonight I tried to turn it off because my sons were squabbling over it(when I say "squabbling", the big one was lying on top of the little one while the little one screamed and went purple) and I couldn't, which undermined my parental authority somewhat.
Why don't I read the instructions? Why, when I am faced with a small closely printed booklet, or even worse, a large glossy manual, do I toss it over my shoulder saying "I'm sure I'll pick it up as I go along." Of course I don't. In the same way, I don't pick up Swahili or the basic principles of electrical engineering - why would you? That's why they write the manuals - for idiots like me who need them. And I really do know that I should read them, but some boredom siren kicks in, drowns out common sense, and I think "No, life's too short even to skim these Frequently Asked Questions or this Troubleshooting section, I'll see how I get on." I hope Barak Obama is the sort of guy when he gets a new Teasmade at Christmas, takes it carefully out of the box, puts it to one side, reaches in and pulls out the manual, then reads it word for word. If he's like me, we're doomed.

Jonah

2008-12-12T12:35:00.003Z

I have felt for some time as if the land has opened up and swallowed me entire. Not smothering me, or drowning me in darkness in its soily belly, but taking me within, knowing I am there, holding me safe inside. I knew it again today as I walked on chips of ice fallen from the branches of the etched and wintered trees - the melting blossom pattering still to ground.

Cheese Gromit

2008-12-09T12:27:00.006Z

School Christmas play last night. Positively one of my favourite nights of the year. All tinsel wings and tea towels. My five-year-old son was an angel (glorious) while the seven-year-old was cast as a man who worked in a garden centre (of course). I was relieved to see the seven-year-old on stage at all. He hates performing, so started the day buried in the boot of my car refusing to get out. "I don't want to be in the play. I'm not going to be. I'm staying here." This scene in the school carpark involved various mothers walking by pretending not to notice. Luckily, the teaching staff are a lot more persuasive than I am.

The play began as a nativity complete with floppy-eared donkeys and short, resplendent kings, and then segued brilliantly into Wallace and Gromit (hence the garden centre. What can I say? You had to be there.) It featured scenes in the local cheesemakers, garden centre and second hand bookshop. At the finale, as the children sang out the nativity story, Wallace finished his cheese and biscuits and opened up a large cardboard book entitled "Life in the North by Y Eye". (I'd buy it.)

Don't mention the war

2008-12-08T15:32:00.004Z

Thirteen and a half hour journey to Germany. Ready to shoot myself on our arrival at friend's house. I could blame the snow which delayed us in the UK, and meant we had to divert to an airport 230km away from our final destination in Germany. But fundamentally, I am not sure travelling with children is worth it.

Driving conditions were desperate - icy sleet and rain, darkness and no speed limits. The boys kept turning on the lights in the back of the car which would make my husband start yelling "Lampen Auf! Lampen Auf!". ( I do not think he will ever consider himself a true European.) To ramp it up that little bit more, my three-year-old daughter refused to wear her seat belt, preferring instead to crawl through the gap and drive the car herself. We ended up pulling off the autobahn, hauling her out and doing that "If I have to get you out again I am leaving you here, OK?. I am not kidding." It was really nice to see my friends whom I love, but you do think sometimes - "What does it take?". We had a massive snowball fight, the kids went sledging, they went to a Christmas market and round and round on a gilt-painted carousel, the boys were bought tickets to a big football match, our friend's daughter has a WII which they played on, and oh yes, our visit happened to coincide with St Nicolaus day which meant they left out their shoes and in the morning "St Nicolaus" had mysteriously filled them with sweeties and toys. On the other hand, I had night after night of broken sleep courtesy of my daughter's refusal to consider the travel cot, one of those silent rows you have with your husband when you are staying with old friends and can't shout at each other, a missed US radio interview (courtesy of my communication problems and general incompetence) , and a bad cough, sandwiched between journies from hell. We got back last night and Granny rang. She obviously asked my eldest son how was the trip to Germany. "A bit good, a bit bad," he said. She should have asked me.

Alice through the Looking Glass

2008-12-02T22:41:00.003Z

Am in steamingly bad mood:
a. snapped glasses. This required trip to nearest city (one hour away). That would be inconvenient but OK; I did, however, have tonnes I should have been doing, bearing in mind we are all going to Germany tomorrow to visit a friend - providing, of course, I can find everybody's passports tonight.
b. decided to "make the best of it " and drove down to said city listening to my German CD, (can now count to 10 and say "I am from Wales".)
c. spent 40 minutes getting lost and trying and failing to park. Forced to invent own German curse words as yet to reach that section in course.
d. parked.
e. bought new glasses (at huge expense. Realised will now have to "hand-craft" Xmas gifts for anyone who is not a blood relation.)
f. drove one hour back (part of journey through darkness and freezing rain and snow.)
g. realised gauge judging miles left in petrol tank flitting between 115 and 31 (not-to-be-trusted) and filled car with petrol.
h. arrived home with new glasses.
Me to husband: "Do you like my new glasses? Do you think they make me look like a librarian?" Husband to me: "That, or Eric Morcambe."
Me to husband: "***** off. No, I mean it. Go away."

Aga saga

2008-11-25T20:00:00.003Z

Horror. The aga has stopped working. Understand in the country this is worse than your husband leaving you for his horse. The kitchen is cold. In fact, the entire downstairs of the house is cold. Only noticed when it took 20 minutes to boil the kettle. Will have to wear more jumpers and drink wine instead of tea. I can do that. Perhaps not for breakfast though. Or maybe I can - providing I put milk in it so the children do not notice.

Country Life

2008-11-20T17:51:00.005Z

So friends (real not Facebook) came round to supper last night and brought a small gift of a two-foot sprout stalk. The girl walked in and I could see she was clutching something. I thought for a moment, it was a bunch of those ridiculously over-priced flowers you buy in London that look like small red cabbages. I thought: "I know I will make a joke of the fact she has brought me a flower that looks like a cabbage." So I said: "Golly, you've brought a cabbage." At this point, her partner coming in through the door behind her, said: "That's not very nice. You did invite me." We came out of the dark entrance hall into the kitchen and I realised she had not so much brought me an expensive bouquet but a walking stick of sprouts with a particularly large sprouted knob. I said: "Ah. It's not a cabbage. You've brought me sprouts. How lovely. For a moment there you had me fooled...Did you grow them yourself?" She shook her head. "No. I tried to buy you flowers and they were yellow and horrible so I bought you these instead. They're from the grocer's." I said: "Right. Well, they're lovely, I'll just go find a vase." (I counted them later, there are 68 of them.)

Facebook envy

2008-11-19T16:11:00.003Z

Decided I might have a bit of a catch-up with modern technology and joined Facebook. For anyone living in the past, Facebook is a device which means you never have to talk to anyone again. You log on, have a look in your email account, email a few people to let them know you're on there and away you go.

There are a couple of problems though. The first is Facebook envy. I have cobbled together 22 friends. I was quite pleased - they are a mix of old friends, former colleagues, online contacts, writers and someone I once spoke to on the phone. It was a wrong number but still, they seemed nice. The thing is though, once you get a "friend", you have a window into their life and you can check out how many "friends" your friends have. They have many more. Many many more than you do. One of the people I know has 2,074 friends. Another has 1,041. You also begin to ask yourself whether their friends are more glamorous than your friends, which would of course mean they were more glamorous than you. You enter a state of permanent need. You cannot just appoint friends, you have to ask them to be your friend. And horror - not all of them say yes. You enter a purgatory for holy cyber souls. You forget. You ask them to be your friend again and the system tells you that you have already asked them to play with you, and they are still thinking about it.

I'm trying Second Life next.

Play on

2008-11-17T14:45:00.003Z

Took the boys to rugby training this weekend. We have only been once before a few weeks ago when my five-year-old had a go but my seven-year-old refused. That evening, my five-year-old came down with chicken pox so I was slightly leery about turning up again in case he had infected all of his playmates but I decided to brave it anyway. Managed to persuade both of them onto the pitch this time though my seven-year-old looked highly sceptical throughout. As soon as it was over, he came off and said: "I'm never doing that again. Ever." The thing is, up here, rugby seems to be one of the key ways the boys make those friends which last a lifetime. I do not blame my seven-year-old. He is probably wired like his mother. Admittedly, I never played rugby but the only time I went on a hockey field, I got ordered off it as a danger to myself and everybody else. At netball, I would actively avoid the ball. And, I can still remember what it is to try and hit a rounders ball while your team looks on resigned to the fact it is never going to happen.

My five-year-old is a different fish however. He managed to score four tries and whipped off a fair number of tags.( Below the age of seven, it is non-contact. Instead of ploughing each other into the ground, they make do with ripping off each other's plastic tags that hang from a belt around their waist.) At one point, I even saw my five-year-old hunker down with his hands on his knees, leaning over his body, for all the world as if he was about to do a haka. Sheer, muddy instinct. I talked to a father at the sidelines about why he thought rugby was such a good idea - apparently, it teaches boys sportsmanship. Duly at the end of the match, the teams cheered each other's efforts and shook hands. Average age - six. It is also, I suspect, about teaching boys to be men. Not just any sort of man. But the sort who will take a knock and carry on without complaint. Every now and then, one or other boy would take such a bump, they would spill a tear, a coach would have a quick look, perhaps wipe the tears away and play would continue. Made you proud to be British.

Remembrance Days

2008-11-13T16:13:00.008Z

Blogging is dead then. Thought about proving it. Twitter? Facebook? Silence even? Decided against. Wifey is back in the building.

Situation update.
Mood: miserable
Explanation: anniversary of first son's stillbirth tomorrow.
Possible solutions:
1. wind back time. (Difficult)
2. sleep through day. (Impossible. Other children do insist on being fed.)
3. grit teeth and stagger on. (Probable pick.)
November is so not my favorite month. Some years are better than others - this is not a "better" one. This November is wet and sorry for itself, embarassed by its fallen leaves, its damp and gusty corners. So it should be.

Thought I'd run the piece I wrote for Marie Claire. Misery and company and all that. Readers of a nervous disposition might want to look away...

I do not think there is anything worse in the world than the loss of a child. Sometimes I watch my seven-year-old play or smile, count the freckles on his nose, or admire the curve of a cheek. I think: “He’s seven. How did that happen?” Then I think: “He’s seven – that means his brother would have been eight.”

My family looks pretty good from the outside. Handsome husband, two rampaging boys of seven and five and a beautiful girl of two. An attractive package all told – complete, you would think. But we are not complete, entire and whole. I have a lost boy. He is tucked away in my heart, my poor battered, stitched together heart, and I cannot hold him as I do my other children, at least not in the way I hold my other children. I cannot feel his warm, small hand in mine. Instead, I hold him in my heart.

My husband and I were together 10 years before we got married and we were lucky because I fell pregnant within a couple of months of trying. I was 35 and had a good pregnancy - ate organically, quit drinking, took up pregnancy yoga, avoided blue cheese, prawns, liver and bad influences. I bloomed with happiness. The only problem: I could not sleep. Instead, I surfed sleep. One night though, I slept well and late. Almost at the moment of waking, I realised the baby was not moving. I had a hot bath, ate vanilla ice-cream - an instinctive part of me already knew but the rational woman decided: “I must be wrong – such a thing could not happen this day and age to me.”

When we arrived at the maternity unit of Guy’s hospital in London, the midwife took me straight through. The room was dark as she cold-gelled and then swept my pregnant belly for the heartbeat on the ultrasound machine. I waited for the grainy pulse, for the baby to move. In vain. She disappeared to fetch a colleague and my husband gripped my hand. An older woman with a kind face and efficient manner came in. Silent, she watched the screen as she moved the scanner across and over my stomach, pressing it to find a scrap of life. She leant in to me and said: “I’m very sorry to have to tell you…”. When she left us, I sat up awkwardly on the hospital bed and my husband wrapped his arms around me. I remember holding onto him in the darkness and screaming.

When you have a stillbirth, you have to give birth. I had presumed there would be a caesarian section, but the consultant insisted on a vaginal birth because of the risk of bleeding and complications with future pregnancies. They started the induction process, gave me morphine. I thought “There have to be some perks” and 60 hours later, I gave birth to a son. He felt warm and wet and wonderful as I pushed him out; and then I was glad they had refused to section me - labour seemed the least that I could do for him. We washed him with soft cotton wool balls and dressed him in a tiny white new-born’s romper we had brought in with us. We were encouraged to collect mementoes – if you are not taking a baby home with you, keepsakes can be hard to come by. We took inky footprints and endless photographs of a subject that never moved. Our parents arrived and a couple of our closest friends. More would have come, but I was selfish with him – had I been able, would have set a three-headed dog at the gates of our personal hell. He was mine for these few hours, and I was reluctant to share the little I had.

Eventually, those who loved us best went away and the hospital staff disappeared into other dramas, leaving us with our beautiful dead boy and grief. That night, as London slept, I stretched out my hand, resting it against his body, insinuating my little finger and thumb into his cold and tiny clasp. I told him about Christmas and birthdays, jungle animals and Northumberland where we holidayed each year. I told him I loved him. You feel guilt when your baby dies inside - as if you have failed him in the most extraordinary and catastrophic way. Words like “suffering” and “crucifixion”, a simple word like “pain” carve themselves into your already mangled body when you lose a child. I can tell you how death smells and how a heart sounds when it breaks – like a wolf. My heart hurt – not metaphorically but physically - and lunacy beckoned. I was not safe to leave alone; where I had once nourished another life, grief and despair filled me brimful.

I know I was not alone in my tears – I was a reluctant conscript to a bloody army of women who know what it is to cradle their own dead child. In the UK, there are around 3,500 babies stillborn each year. Each one, a tragedy that affects not just the parents, but family and friends and colleagues. Technically, a baby is stillborn if the baby dies after 24 weeks of pregnancy – before that, it is termed a miscarriage. The baby will not have breathed or shown any signs of life during delivery. In my case, my baby died two days before his due date – he weighed nearly seven pounds. Sometimes a cause emerges such as pre-eclampsia, congenital malformation or infection. In around 10% of cases, such as my own, it is entirely unexplained. Doctors told me at the time that in the case of a middle-class woman going to term who has had an unremarkable pregnancy, a stillbirth is virtually always unexplained.

We were at all times treated with immense professionalism and sensitivity by our carers in the hospital then and during subsequent pregnancies. Without my husband, I would not have pulled through. A lot of the published advice warns of the damage a stillbirth can wreck on your relationship. We became frantic it would not have that effect on ours. We did everything together – carrying our son’s tiny white wood coffin complete with brass handles, registering his stillbirth and taking back the new buggy. The horrors knock one against the next when your baby dies – a coffin at the foot of your marriage bed where there should have been a crib. We made a pact with each other to keep talking about how we felt. We had bereavement counselling through the hospital and private therapy - I am convinced that talking is the only way back to sanity. I cannot count the times I wept over friends. They listened with endless grace and patience to my black and desolate ravings. Even as the years pass, they remember the anniversary of his death and will send a card or call or simply say later that they thought of us. Eventually, I eased back into work helped enormously by sympathetic bosses at The Sunday Times where I was a journalist. They let me work at home part-time at first, and only when I was ready, did I go back into the office. It was hard at first. One of my first assignments was to interview the then Chief Inspector of Schools, Chris Woodhead. After the meeting, standing on the platform at Holborn underground station, I fell apart; I staggered onto a tube, bowed my head and wept for the entire journey back home. No one said anything to me, but a space cleared around me – the consolation of strangers. As I hung on to one of the handrails, I felt not fear or discomfort from fellow passengers but sympathy. What words could they have used to comfort me?

For me, the consequences are endless. Am I an angrier person?(tick). More depressive? (tick). Wiser (possibly). Funnier (probably). One obvious consequence was how tense my subsequent pregnancies were. I also believe it contributed to spells of post natal depression after my three other children were born. I cannot guess what sort of mother I would have been otherwise. My children would probably be sounder sleepers. Sometimes an inconsiderate child will sleep so quietly, they scarcely seem to move; I have to tiptoe in and check they are still drawing breath. Occasionally, I poke them. As for my relationship with my husband, his touch persuaded me not to die. We have shared many things together – two decades, a home, our three bright and beautiful children and we share the glorious love of our first born and the universe of pain that went with his death. Losing our son was like a bomb going off in our lives. It nearly killed us – didn’t quite, not quite - and we are stronger because of it. We made another pact – this one to strive for happiness together. Most recently, this shifted our lives away from London where we had spent 17 years together to Northumberland – somewhere he had always wanted to live. Had my son not died, I do not think I would ever have agreed to such a move.

Another effect I have noticed, is that it has sensitized me to other’s pain. If someone confides a sadness or a loss, I feel for them in a way I do not believe I would have done before. I try to use my own experience to help if I can - to listen over a coffee, to hear the anger and say that it is alright to rage against the stars. I was immensely angry at my son’s fate at the time, and irritated by the most trivial of comments or happenstances - by the friend who never sent a letter, by the shop assistant who insisted on a receipt when we returned the baby’s car-seat. In the long game, it is not the irritations or disappointments that stay with you, but the kindnesses and the glory of humanity – the tears in the eyes of the midwife who susbsequently became my friend, the listening silences of old friends who let me weep and weep again, the consolation there is in love. There are no rules when you lose a child, you survive however you can: drink wine; avoid those who are unhelpful; abuse the good will of those closest to you; a very black sense of humour helps. “Let’s think outside the box,” I would say to my husband and my therapist would cringe.

It does not go away – a mother never forgets her child and does not stop loving him however far from home he travels. If you are lucky, you reach an accommodation with tragedy. You swallow it up and take it inside yourself. If you are lucky, you have more children – other children. You do not so much “get over it” as get through it. People ask: “How many children do you have?” I say: “Three.” I think: “Four.”

Doing your bit

2008-10-06T22:31:00.004+01:00

Have done a couple of speaking engagements - a small book festival where I spoke after a very nice man called Nobby, and a luncheon for a local hospice trust. After the book came out, I volunteered to do a reading for the cancer charity if they wanted me to and when they came back to me, they wanted me to speak at a lunch. Speaking after lunch means sitting through the meal too nervous to eat and unable to even have a glass of wine incase you start slurring your words and get a reputation as a lush. The reading went OK, but the chairman made me laugh because when I had finished taking questions, he told the 77-strong audience that 2% of men would think I was great and 98% would run a mile. He also used the word "granite" to describe me. He said some nice stuff too, but for some reason the compliment train went straight through my brain without stopping. It took me a few minutes to realise he must have read my recent blog-rant, in which case he had probably sat through my own introductory words, reading and subsequent Q and A, waiting for me to say "fuck" infront of all the nice hospice friends and kindly donors. The organiser told me later that the lunch made £1,224.35. The only problem (apart from the revelation I am the polar opposite of catnip to men) was that I picked up a five-day migraine driving home. I blame a combination of acute nervous anxiety prior to the "event" and my mother's "outfit" - more particularly, the gold sequined scarf which she had draped stylishly across her shoulders. Unusually, it was a sunny day, and driving back across the autumnal moors - my mother sitting in the front passenger seat complete with scarf - gold spangles tattoed the sunvisor, the windscreen glass, and apparently the inside of my skull.

Also appearing on the newsstands this month is a desperately depressing article on stillbirth I wrote for Marie Claire.(Do not read this without a large brandy in hand - damn the neighbours thinking you are a lush. You are a lush. Embrace your fate.) The magazine kindly agreed to donate the £1,000 fee to a pregnancy research charity. That makes over £2,200 for charity this week. I rarely allow myself a feeling of achievement - I am far too superstitious and dark a creature. But courtesy of the fact speaking is an ordeal, and writing the article left me wrung out for a week afterwards, (and despite the pain-wracked distraction of someone attempting to file the sharp edges off my eyeballs), I allowed myself the suspicion that actually, this week anyway, I did alright.

Dancing girls

2008-09-23T10:02:00.004+01:00

I went down to Yorkshire for a silver wedding. My cousins were renewing their marriage vows, and afterwards, a party in a church hall with cold beef and a hot band. They played Irish folk while the diaspora danced. I love to dance. When I was a girl, I would play my one Irish folk record, vinyl and black, in my gran's bedroom. The room at the front, the only room large enough to hold a small and dancing girl. My mother would climb the stairs and say: "Don't play it so loud - the neighbours will hear." Hear rebel laments, she meant, which would never do. Hear too of unicorns that missed the ark, and of a beautiful girl with diamond eyes and a black velvet band holding back her hair. The fiddler struck up the tale of the boy bound for Van Diemen's Land because of her. I said to my own child: "Shall we dance?". She nodded. I scooped her up, all tartan and lilac tulle, and we walzed together. She watched the swirl around, my elderly aunt holding her sister in her own arms close by. She wanted down, and held up her hands for me to hold and move her still, turning her under, around and away, reeling her back. My dancing girl looked up at me - a beat - and smiled.

Faintheart never fucked a fat pig

2008-09-15T17:01:00.010+01:00

Occasionally, I stumble across stuff written about me in the blogosphere. Sometimes, it makes me giggle and sometimes, I think "Cor blimey - you should get out more." When news broke of the book deal and cyber heroes "had a go", I thought "Fair do's". Every now and then, the anonymous bully-bore lopes on to the blog, loathes it, sniffles, snipes, carps and witters, and you think: "Everybody's entitled to their opinion." That, and: "If you waste your time reading something you hate, more fool you, mate." Today, I ambled onto someone's blog, followed a link, allowed my curiosity to get the better of me - and, if you didn't know, already, let's say the blogosphere is no wonderland. Boy, people can be mean.

You know what - here's a message to the meanies. I don't care what you say. (Kills you, doesn't it?)

I am a journalist. I spent 20 years writing for national newspapers and working in TV. I got to write a book. It is officially a bestseller. I may well write another. I earned a lot of money. (Shedloads - makes it worse, doesn't it?) I did not get the book deal because I know shorthand and the number for the Buckingham palace switchboard - I got the book deal because my blog is better than your blog. Yes it is. A fuck of a lot better. A fuck of a fuck of a lot better. (Everybody is entitled to their opinion, remember.) Blogging gave me an outlet, readers who "get" what I am doing (sometimes, it might even make them laugh, sometimes, it might make them cry and sometimes, it might make them think: "This woman needs to get over herself." ) It also gave me friends who travelled oceans to meet me and friends who are never going to meet me. And you know what - my blog is my blog. That means I do not have to follow your poxy, witless, fucking rules, you sad schmucks. I do not care if everybody you know in your circle of blogging penpals thinks you write better than I do. I do not care if you think I am shaggable or not shaggable, if you think I am a witless girly pop-tart or a pompous middle-class loser. Know me - I am all of these. Suck it up mate. I got the book deal. Get over yourselves and move on. You sit down and write a book. Stop fannying on commenting on each other's blogs about quite how bad I am. Walk the walk. Blog the blog. Write your own fucking book.

Just thought I might clear that up before I start the next one.
(By the way, Northumberland Tourism has a nice competition you might want to enter. The air up here is marvellous.)

After the rain

2008-09-10T13:20:00.006+01:00

Have not felt like blogging much lately, frankly have not felt like doing much at all. I have been ticking the boxes, just enough to get by. I do go through these blue spells. I wish I was a dimpled, sunny-faced, cheery sort of gal - someone life-affirming who makes you feel better just to be with. Not the sort that thinks: "I could hang myself in the coal shed if only I could find the key." It is overdue but I have decided to get a grip. I need a plan. I do not function at all well without a plan. I shall invade Russia( - though that has been done before and never proves to be a good idea.) I shall lose weight (- though that would mean less cake.) I shall find the key to the coal cellar (- perhaps not.) I will sit down and see if I can do it all again - by which I mean write another book, and who knows?. Maybe I cannot write another book? Maybe "That's all folks!"? If so, I resolve not to complain. I have little excuse (other than my naturally maudlin disposition) for feeling lost. UK sales have gone well and the book is now out in the US. I got to write a few pieces for The Times and even more importantly for the Farmers Weekly. Who knew I would get to write a piece for the Farmers Weekly? The book also prompted an old friend to get in touch. I last saw him 20 years ago. It turns out he is trying to find a cure for stomach cancer and was over from Canada to speak at a conference. Over coffee in a London cake shop the conversation went: "So what have you been doing with yourself for the last 20 years?" "Trying to find a cure for cancer. And you?" Pause. "Umm, I set up a blog and winge a lot on it." And he was happy and married and had children, and there infront of me was the man when all I had known was the boy.

What else happened? Well, it rained. A farmer told me of 1,000 sheep and 250 cows drowned. Land too is waterlogged with crops sprouting again in the fields, and combine harvesters idle in their barns. For some, the rains have been a domestic and financial disaster. The other evening driving back from the city with the three kids in the car, we could not make it home. The country roads around here dip and rise and swerve. The sodden fields were bordered with lakes, spilling through the hawthorn hedges to fill neighbour roads. We drove round as dusk took the day, trying first one lane, then another; each time, the road plunged into bleak stretches of wrinkled water. At one point, I pulled on my boots and waxed jacket to push through the flood to judge how far the water came up, and whether we could make it across. Too high. Defeated, I turned back towards the car. I stood and in that moment, it seemed too far away, the headlights on, the wipers smashing the rain haze away, rising up and away again. Still a mile or so away from home, we knocked on a friend's door and her husband got us back in his 4X4. That night, I dreamed I drowned.

Panned

2008-08-28T10:24:00.006+01:00

The other day, I took my three children round to a friend' s house for a play and lunch. We settled into her enormous kitchen alongside her four children and two of their friends to mould clay pots and paint small statuettes with immense concentration. At a certain point, my two-year-old announced that she needed the loo. My friend's house is magnificent, her downstairs toilet tucked into a large cloakroom with a smooth stone floor where the family leave their boots and shoes.

My book. My best, first and probably only book, was lying next to the toilet, on top of two gardening books and opposite a glossy celebrity magazine boasting the diet tips of the famous (which presumably includes the startling information they do not eat very much). I was not entirely sure how I felt about my book ending up in the toilet. On one hand, it is well situated as most guests are likely to use the loo, may glance through the book and decide to buy their own copy rather than miss the second course of dinner. On the other hand, cor blimey. “My Book” - which took me the best part of a year to write and in which I have laid bare my soul - is in the toilet. My seven-year-old and five-year-old sons were nonplussed when they went in later to wash their hands of grey clay gloves. My seven-year-old said protectively: “Mummy your book is in the toilet. Why are they keeping it in the toilet?” I smiled brightly, pressing down the plunger on the rose pink liquid soap and said: “So that everyone can see it before they leave darling.”

Picture This

2008-08-21T11:22:00.003+01:00

When I was a television producer, the cameraman I worked alongside, swore blind that I attracted life’s eccentrics. He believed I used a silent whistle. We would draw in to park, the cameraman would wind down his window and call out: “Where should we park mate?”. A uniformed, bespectacled attendant would ease himself out of his sentry-box, waddle over to our car, grab for an airguitar and start singing “Only the Lonely”. The super trooper off, he would explain: “I love Roy Orbison, I do. That last bay over on the right.” My cameraman would turn to me and say: “This only ever happens when I’m with you.”

I thought of him the other day. I was sitting with my laptop at a café table in York, having taken refuge from the rain, and attempting to pull together a guest column for The Times when an elderly man called me over to him. He said: “You there! Would you like to buy a picture?” The man was tall and stooped, wearing a dark raincoat and holding a sheaf of paper in his hands. As I walked across to him, he said; “Would you like one of these?” He looked down at the papers clutched in his hand . I said: “Why I’d love one.” He handed me a cheap piece of A4 paper with some ceremony. He had used the side of an orange wax crayon and then a black one in arcs that spread out from the middle of the page. My five-year-old does similar work. He said; “I sell them for charity.” I said: “Do you? Well that’s great. Let me go get some money for you.” I went back to my table and dug out a £20 note. A ridiculously extravagant amount of money for a crayon scrawl. He obviously thought the same. He took the money and said “Here have this one” and handed me another - this one in blue and orange. “And take this.” The last one was a stamp of a dog or a horse in spotted mustard yellow paint.” I said: “Well thank-you. I will treasure them.” He gave me a small, dignified nod and shuffled out of the door, back into the damp Northern day. The maitre d’ came over. He said: “He’s the half-cousin of the late Queen Mother would you believe?.” I looked down at the pictures. In the bottom right hand corner the noble painter had scrawled his name “The Lord …” and an indecipherable address.

He told me this peer of the realm had spent years in a psychiatric hospital and now lives in sheltered accommodation with a warden. He said his pictures hung all over the city. Any money he got for them he immediately handed over to volunteers in one of the charity shops near the cathedral. The café gave him coffee and a place to sit. The plump and pleasant maitre d’ shook his head regretfully. He said: “Some people don’t want him around but he does no harm, and he is always so grateful for anything you do for him, always apologising.” A Countess would take him for lunch the following week.

I have always believed that on one page, there are characters living normal humdrum lives in sensible, grammatically correct sentences. Turn the page - the spelling grows confused, syntax shameful and lines runs off into oblivion, all meaning lost. On a vacation in South Africa, we lay in our hot bedroom in the grounds of a country club. All I could hear was a woman calling a man’s name, over and over. Then calling: “Come back to me. Come back.” Then the name again and again. It went on. I dragged on some clothes and my husband groaned in the darkness as I went out.

I could see a woman at the door of a neighbouring cottage. Overalled staff were edging the deep shadows of the garden, watching her, troubled by her trouble, reluctant to become part of it. It was almost midnight. I said: “What is it? What’s happened? Are you alright?” I walked up the path to her cottage. She was hanging over the bottom half of the stable door to better broadcast her woes. You could see in to the lit-up bedroom; a wheelchair, folded and tipped, against the wall. She had a top on and underwear; elderly white legs bare and shocking. She named the man again. “I want him back. I want him back.” I caught a vague breath of alcohol. “Let’s sort you out,” I said and she tottered away from the door, leaning on the wall to cross to the bed. I picked up her skirt and helped her into it. “Let’s make you decent,” I said. “We’ll find him for you. Where is it you think he has gone?”

At that moment, an elderly bearded man scurried into the room. Her husband. She gripped my arm. Now he was back, she was not at all sure she wanted him. The whites of her eyes were a watery greyish pink, the blue irises cloudy with confusion. “He’s a terrible man. Don’t go. He hits me. He hits me,” she told me urgently. Her husband was not happy with her but I thought: “He looks like he would fall over if he hit anyone.” Staff had fetched him from the bar. I said; “We will make you a cup of tea and then you will feel better. Would you like that? A cup of tea?” I am British. She was Irish. The situation demanded tea.

I said: “I have the children next door asleep, let me go tell my husband where I am and I will get some fresh milk for your tea.” When I came back, she was calmer; her husband had made her the tea. The couple were staying at the club while their house was being renovated; the housekeeper who helped him care for her had stayed behind to supervise the builders. He shook his head, his shoulders bowed. He said: “I thought this would make a nice change for her, a rest.” They had eaten dinner with their daughter; he had put her to bed and gone back to the bar to pay the bill. She was once a consultant in an African hospital but had caught Legionnaire’s Disease from the air conditioning, then scepticaemia. He said doctors were still trying to understand what was happening with her. He boasted sadly: “She was brilliant - a consultant.” I stroked her cheek gently. I said: “I will see you tomorrow? I will look in on you tomorrow.” She swallowed a mouthful of tea. “Yes, that would be nice,” she rested her cup in the saucer and I slipped slowly and entirely from her mind.

Sleepwalking

2008-08-18T17:40:00.004+01:00

Dear Wifey,
Holiday season so far slightly disastrous. A week in France. Hmm, well, on the upside there was one day when nobody vomitted or wept courtesy of strange viral headache. So that was good. Seven-year-old's vomitting into tupperware box (luckily we had a lid) so extreme we were forced to divert into Accident and Emergency en route home. Finally arrived back in Northumberland on Sunday night, only to come down with bug myself Monday. That marks the end of holidays abroad until the children are teenagers and refuse to go with us anyway.

Week back working including pre-recorded appearance on the Steve Wright In the Afternoon Show. Steve Wright was very nice. Think I may have seemed utterly scatty on account of being in the grip of a protracted spell of insomnia. Arrived at London hotel around 1am, got to bed at 2am, got to sleep at 5am, woken up by hotel fire alarm 7.30am. Consequently so zombied out, I had to drink entire pot of tea with hotel breakfast then staggered into a cafe for a double espresso and a cappuccino chaser, followed by a BBC black coffee. This was not a good move. I pogo'd into a place where I completely lost my short-term memory. That is to say I would answer a question and, seconds later, be entirely unable to remember both my answer and the question itself. Later, over lunch in a dark Soho basement with my agent, he said "Pass me that bottle of water", pointing at a bottle of water slumped on the bench between me and the man sitting next to me. I shook my head slightly and said to my agent: "That's his water." I thought: "Why would you want to drink a stranger's water?" My agent said: "It's our bottle of water." I said: "It's his water." He said slowly: "It arrived on the table at the start of the meal and you put it on the bench. Can't you remember doing that? I am so not buying you any more coffee." That was the point I started worrying about what I might have said during the interview (time code o2:39ish on Wednesday, 13th).

Third week then - a wet week in Yorkshire. Despite various media attempts to paint me as a Cockney sparrow, I was born and bred in inner-city Leeds. When I was growing up, we would take the Jack Russell for a walk in the countrypark at the top of the hill, and whirl him round and round as he hung by his teeth from a slavery yellow rubber ball. Why would we drive to the Dales or the Moors? It was never thought of - watching Emmerdale was as close as we got. Now I am all grown-up, I thought: "I know we will go to Yorkshire for a holiday." I do not find staying in a hotel or holiday cottage with three children entirely stress-free so we decided instead to swap houses with friends. It is quite strange living in someone else's family home. It is as if you have woken up in someone else's life. Someone who has travelled more than we have (lots of mementoes from far away places), someone who is more musical than we are (three guitars and an electric piano), someone who doesn't watch as much TV as we do (no Sky). I thought: "Next time we do this, I am laying a false trail. I am hiding the widescreen TV and leaving lots of really heavyweight books on the state of the economy lying around the house. I am buying in health food that needs to be sprouted, and leaving a sex diary out in black leatherette all marked up with red asterisks and acronyms." That is, if I ever go away again, of course. I think I would have been more relaxed had my insomnia still not been so bad. My husband has started to complain that at the point I wake up (which tends to be around 1.30 to 2am), I have started beating a tattoo on his head (till I go back to sleep about three hours later). I do not mean to beat a tattoo, I am merely thinking about everything I have to do and occasionally I gesticulate. I need to turn off the narrative, but I wake up and the voice starts. Not voices. I do not hear voices. Just one voice - my own, talking about what it is I should be doing or have been doing or have entirely forgotten to do. I am incredibly dull company and outrageously persistent as dull company often proves to be.
best wishes
Wifey

Next week, Agatha Christie

2008-07-24T20:08:00.005+01:00

I have suddenly become acutely self-conscious about walking into bookshops. If I do it with anyone else, you can guarantee my book is either not there or stashed on a dusty shelf on the third floor under the heading "We've put it here because we don't think you're going to want to buy it." I walked into a London store for a signing and my Penguin minder told the assistant behind the desk: "We're here for the author signing" and the assistant behind the desk said: "What's the name?" and the nice girl from Penguin said: "Judith" and he said: "Judith who?". That gave me a nice warm feeling. (Infinitely better was the shop we went into which said one of the books had been stolen.) If I am left to walk in on my own, I am forced to wander the shop till I see the book on a table or a shelf; then I have to look at it for a long time to make sure it will not disappear into thin air. When I find a copy, I have been known to move it around to a better place in the bookshop which is a bit sad and apparently what Jeffrey Archer does with his books. The other day I was in a bookshop in the nearest city and was standing next to two women. I was trying to take a photograph of my book because the bookshop had kindly put it in their chart (I know it's not a cool thing to do but hey what do I care? Next time I go in, there will probably be the history of the SAS or a TV cookbook in its place.) The problem was, the two women were right infront of it. I manouvred my mobile phone infront of them by dislocating then telescopically extending my left arm, and just as I pressed the "take-a-picture-complete-with-flash" function, I realised one of the women actually had a copy of Wife in the North in her hands and was saying to her friend something along the lines of "I don't know how she did this." Now, it could have been a prelude to a conversation along the lines of "...set up a blog while being sad and wrote a funny book and had kids and got this shop to sell it. Good on her." Or, it could have been a prelude to another conversation completely which would have sounded more like "...persuaded someone to pay her good money for her wittering, moaning-minny, geek diary." The flash went off at the exact same moment I realised what was happening leaving me no time to scurry away between the 3 for 2 summer reads. I did that breathy laugh thing that announces you to be an utter tosser as they turned around, and said: "That's my book. I wrote that book. Heh, heh." How sad did that look? One of them said: "Really this is your book?" It was definitely one of those moments where you think: "Oh my God. Can I get any more uncool here?" It turned out the girl who was about to tell her friend exactly what she thought of my book (little knowing writer-polizei stalked the shop waiting to pounce on shopfloor critics) also used to live in London and moved to Northumberland. Her friend made me sign the copy. I said: "If I sign it, you'll have to buy it." She said that was OK. I signed it with my name. I felt like signing it: "Walls have ears y'kna."
(On holiday for a week. Back in a while.)

Richard and Judy

2008-07-17T10:51:00.000+01:00

I think maybe I was destined to get the train and not the plane because in the taxi, I realised that the red skirt I was wearing is in fact a very old one in which the elastic has perished. I have been wearing it for publicity purposes because even if I am talking about death, tragedy, isolation and depression, if I wear a red skirt and say the book is funny, people seem to believe me. Sitting in the front seat of the taxi though as we swung round the hairpin bends en route for the train station, I looked down and the skirt was around my thighs. I had this sudden vision of me walking onto a live studio set with my skirt hobbling my knees and my magic knickers on display for the nation. Fortunately, nothing seemed to phase my cab driver. Arriving at the station, she dug around in her first aid box and came up with two of the biggest safety pins I had ever seen, thereby saving me from YouTube "wardrobe malfunction" posterity.

The train made it in time and there was even a car to meet me at the station and take me to the studio. It turns out you get your own dressing room when you are on TV. I would have been quite happy at this point just to stand outside the dressing room door reading my name over and over again, but an army of attractive, no-nonsense girls wearing headsets with microphones, and carrying clipboards keep coming to tell you things. While I was in make-up (sitting next to the undercover journalist Donal Macintyre - I just about resisted saying "You're that bloke from the telly arent you? You are, aren't you?" over and over), the assistant producer came in to get me to sign a piece of paper. This could have been a legal disclaimer, or it could have been a mortgage application form for a property in the Algarve Richard and Judy have their eye on. Who knows? By this time, I was too petrified with fear to focus on the words long enough to read them - I just signed it. She said: "Please don't swear. Really. Please don't swear." I had already been told by another girl with a clipboard and headset not to swear. My mind immediately filled up with every obscenity I had heard since the age of five. I said: "Oh God.I swear a lot." Her pretty face tightened. She looked away and said: "Well, please don't." The make-up lady finished and then the hair lady took over transforming my hair into something vaguely reminiscent of a Charlie's Angel (the first series). Then far too soon it was time to tiptoe into the studio and await my turn on the couch. What I wonder is so scary about appearing on TV? Is it the thought millions of people might meet you for the first time and decide you are an idiot? Would that matter in the scheme of things? I looked so striken with nerves, I think even the girls with clipboards were beginning to worry for me. I watched the tail-end of the appearance of the guest infront of me - a silver-haired, urbane and charming Italian historian. He gave Richard grappa and Judy chocolates; in the darkness, I felt like I was nine years old again, arriving at a friend's birthday party without a birthday present because I forgot to bring it to school that morning. As Richard and Judy moved from one sofa set to another, I concentrated on trying to regain the use of my tongue. I thought: "At least my skirt can't fall down." And then I was on.

Judy asks about the book and I look into her eyes which are a piercing sapphire blue, and two words come into my head "Wise woman." I attempt to answer her while thinking: "Oh my God, Judy Finnigan is the reincarnation of a wise woman from the 17th century. And I don't even believe in reincarnation." I cannot shake this thought out of my head for the rest of the interview. At one point Richard fires the question: "Would you describe yourself as a housewife?" If you say "No", it implies you chose not to align yourself with women who do not earn a wage but work themselves to the bone 24/7 as wives and mothers. If you say "Yes", it is disingenuous because I am earning money writing a book and as a journalist. I mutter something about being a working mother and working at home. He won't let it go. He is determined to see me as a housewife. He says: "Do you think you are a very modern edition of a housewife?" I am thinking: "You really are Richard Madeley aren't you?" Their previous guest had undertaken "an epic journey" sailing from Venice to Istanbul over a three month period in a 19th century schooner. According to publicity, his journey "is a fabulous fusion of history, culture and travel as he takes us around the Mediterranean Sea – in the wake of his ancestor, the explorer Alvise da Mosto – to discover the cities and islands where Western civilisation was born." Richard liked him. He is less impressed when I tell him I moved to the country and ran out of petrol five or is it six times? He said: "That's stupid." My behaviour has officially been declared "stupid" by Richard Madeley on national TV - if only he knew I was wearing safety pins to keep my skirt up. He wouldn't think I was stupid then. Judy defends me when he asks why I do not carry a jerry-can in the boot - she even tells him to "shut up". I explain I did learn to fill the car with petrol and he laughs and says "You are funny." I say that in London I used the Tube and the Tube never ran out of petrol. That's the joke. The Tube never ran out of petrol. He says: "No it won't - because it runs on electricity." I think: "I know that." Pretty soon it is over; I go home with a goody bag of Molton Brown toilettries and a thank you card with a lovely picture of Richard and Judy on the front. And you forget the terror - you just think: "They're very nice. I could do that all over again" and "I wonder if Richard Madeley knows he is married to a wise woman?"

Wifey in the twilight

2008-07-16T15:55:00.006+01:00

Am feeling rather nervous about writing anything again in case I am exposed as a big fat fraud who should never have been allowed to write a book. Anyway, here goes - the last fortnight has been a ride.

At any number of points, it would not have surprised me if my husband had shaken me awake and said: "You're snoring again and it's half past eight."

Weird moment number 7: travelling to the launch party on a double decker London bus. This particular bus normally ferries golfers up and down the Northumberland coast, and is called Kenny after the former London mayor who sold him. I clambered up the steep stairs and collapsed into the seat. The bus was full of friends and family; oh yes, and we weren't going to Trafalgar Square despite what it said on the front, we were heading to the local market town and my book launch.

Weird moment number 13: wore the plain black silk frock.(Not weird in itself.) I meant to wear high heeled vintage(that is to say my very oldest, worn-down-to-the-nap) black velvet and glitter rose shoes with it, but forgot to change. Consequently wore beaten up, buckled biker boots that smell if you get too close. We ate haggis balls and ham and pease pudding sandwiches, and I had to keep telling my 80-year-old mother to sit down because I was worried she might keel over with excitement. I said some thankyou's and signed my first books. The whole party was like a cheese and cracker dream where your kindergarten teacher appears with your first acne-smacked boyfriend, and the woman down the road who never liked you, and your driving instructor who had the drink problem. That is to say, the party was a mix of my family, my old London life and my new Northumberland life. Oh yes, along with a smattering of customers from the second-hand bookshop where the party was being held, who stayed on past closing time. These people smiled incredibly warmly at me across the room, then very sweetly bought four copies of the book and asked me to sign them. It took me fully 20 minutes to realise the chap in the waterproof coat had not taught me geography when I was a teenager and come to wish me well.

Weird moment number 26: lying like a lady and her crusader in our marital bed with my husband late last Monday night. Obviously, we were not having sex because we were listening to Radio 4's Book of the Week, and they stop reading if you do that. The episode we were listening to involves my husband and I standing at the window in the self-same bedroom. In it, he wraps his arms around me and says "Don't worry. This is not the thin end of the wedge. I'm not going to ask you to live here." I turned to him in the bed and said: "You heard that right?" The actress reading out my diary is also not me. That is to say there is a woman reading out my diary on national radio. And it's not me. And it's my diary. This Radio Wifey is also much nicer than me, infinitely sweeter and more patient. In fact, if I had ever spoken to my real children the way she spoke to her radio children, they would accuse me of being a green-blooded clone of their bad-tempered, infinitely grumpy and dark-spirited real mother.

Weird moment 39: now this one was straight out of the sitcom pilot loosely entitled "My world has a ragged tear in its space-time continuum and my life is now lived in real time and in an alternative universe which is both the same and not the same at all". Otherwise known as "My appearance on Richard and Judy". An invitation to appear on Richard and Judy when you have a book to promote is huge. So huge that you might be slightly reluctant to admit you have a bad case of laryngitis when "the call" comes from "their people". "Your people" then keep calling you to talk about the fact that it is critically important you stop talking and rest your voice. You think: "Well if you stop calling me, I'll do that." The Richard and Judy cameraman who travelled up the night before for some local filming, warned the very nice Richard and Judy producer about the bad throat. When she rang me, I asked her what Richard and Judy did when they had laryngitis. "Polly" said she believed Judy gargled with salt water. That night I gargled with salt water. It made me vomit. I thought: "Thanks Polly." I suspect I was the guest from hell. Not only was I flirting with the idea of doing my half of the interview with a combination of mime, jazz hands and charcoal sketches, I also missed my flight down courtesy of the fact my husband confiscated my passport a week and a half before. He took it from me saying "I'll put this with the others so you can't lose it." I realised in the taxi due to drive me to the airport that I did not have the passport after the nice cabdriver said: "Have you got everything - got the passport?" (Needless to say, I do not have a photocard driving licence.) I tore out of the cab, ran into the house and ransacked the study and the bedroom. Nothing. I called my husband's mobile several times to no avail. (It turned out he was asleep on the train down to London). After 25 minutes of CID standard searching, I decided it had to be a dash to the train station for the last possible train which would just get me into London in time providing there were no delays. I rang the production team on the mobile. I said: "Slight crisis." It was poor reception and I still had a really bad throat - all she caught was "shhhhhh..crisis." I said: "I couldn't find my passport so I can't get the plane." (I am not sure this has ever happened to the Richard and Judy production team before judging by the intense listening silence on the other end of the phone.) I said: "But the good news is I am on the way to the train station and we think there's a train."
(more follows)

Making do

2008-07-02T12:37:00.004+01:00

Have been shopping for "an outfit" for "the do" - that is to say, Saturday's launch party. The problem is I need to commit a day to it rather than doing it in snaps. I gave it an hour and a half in London which included walking into a couple of designer shops where instead of a cheery "Hello," you get that sweep down-and-up-again of mascara-heavy eyelids to see if you really belong. My tactic when assistants do this is to stand very still and wait for them to meet my eye, then smile as if to say "I may not look it but in reality I am the wife of a Russian oligarch and enormously, hideously, obscenely wealthy - do not be fooled by the Marks and Spencer's handbag." In the past week or so, I also checked out a boutique sale in a hotel in the local market town where you had to try things on between the sales rail and a frosted window and a man gazed at me in blank horror as he appeared round the end of the sales rack with his small child to find me undressing (20 minutes - bearded spectators do not encourage you to linger in your lingerie thinking "Shall I try that just once more?" ). I have also scooted round a department store in the nearest city (1 hour) and yesterday visited a store where silvery-haired ladies obviously go if they fancy "a run-out" (long enough to start seriously considering wearing feathers on my head). I am not entirely convinced I will end up wearing it but I have now bought a plain black silk frock and a buckled leather belt. My mother will complain because it does not shout "Look at me" very loudly. My mother likes me to be looked at, which is possibly why I spent a substantial part of my adolescence in knitted jumpers with pictures on the front - these included a tiger, cherry blossom, an entire willow pattern design once. It is amazing I ever went anywhere.

Doing lunch

2008-06-30T15:26:00.004+01:00

Am stressed to point of insanity by imminent publication of the book. This has shown itself in spots, the fact I counted them (there are 15), a chronic inability to make a decision about anything at all, insomnia and the conviction something really bad is about to happen. Why would I feel like that when in reality something really good is about to happen? I am trying not to let the insanity show, but I am not sure I am doing a very good job. Apparently, there is now "interest" from TV. I had lunch with "my agent" and "someone from TV". As you do. In Soho. As you do. I had thought about getting my hair blowdried for the lunch but since I am now a registered lunatic, I decided I could not do that in case the hairdresser found nits. I did get rid of the nits (which also meant I could not get my hair cut for the recent photo shoots). But when you are insane, if you think about the fact you had nits not long ago, your head starts to itch.

The girl from TV said she loved the book. I thought: "I wonder if she can see my spots." She said: "I think it should be post-watershed." I thought: "I'm sure I just felt something crawl across my head. " She said: "It has some really big issues." I thought: "Maybe I shouldn't have ordered the spaghetti. I'm so tired I'm not sure I have the energy to keep twirling the fork round and round." She said: "Do you have any ideas who might play you?" Suddenly, I woke up. My ideas were as follows: Dawn French, Helena Bonham-Carter and Emma Thompson. Of course, the latter two are film actresses not TV actresses so the girl from TV nodded politely and started lobbing names across the table - Sarah Parish (from Mistresses and Cutting It, haven't seen them, couldn't comment); Lesley Sharp from Afterlife (in which she plays a medium who points her finger a lot and shrieks "dead person" - a programme so scary I had to stop watching it); finally, Hermione Norris, the blonde girl from Cold Feet and Spooks. She was an alcoholic in Cold Feet - experience-wise, I don't think that's relevant.

We had to grope around quite a bit over who might play my husband because I liked the idea of the guy who played Soames in the Forsyte Saga. But if he was interested, we would have to beef up the part because he is a big star and my husband was away a lot. She went on: "I love your mother." I said: "I love my mother too." She said: "I love your mother's character - any actress would want that part." (I told my mother later - she wants Dame Judy Dench.) The thing with having lunch with "someone from TV" is that you basically get to play that game you play with friends over dinner when you are drunk, but you play it sober and nobody laughs.

Misery

2008-06-24T13:25:00.003+01:00

Spent much of yesterday with a journalist from the Daily Telegraph. I picked her up from the station at 12.31 and dropped her back around five hours later. OK, there was a bit of driving around, but that's a lot of talking. It is very disconcerting to think what you are saying is being taken down and held as evidence. You can see across from you on the kitchen table, a small black box sucking in all your thoughts and feelings ready to spit them back at you later. The real problem though came at the end (by which time even I was getting bored of hearing myself witter on). The journalist went up to the bathroom and did seem to be a long time up there. The nice PR girl from Penguin had also come up from London for the day. She realised before I did that the journalist was in fact locked in the bathroom. The door does not quite shut. Well, it does shut with a protesting shriek but there are no door handles either side. Once we had realised she was effectively locked in, I thought briefly about whether to keep her there, tell her that I was her number one fan and feed her spaghetti through the hole in the door where the shaft of the door handle should be - not forever, just until she wrote and filed the feature. Unfortunately, she had her mobile phone with her which she was using to rap on the door. I did not think she could break her way out with it, but I did think there was an outside chance she might call the police to report me. There was also the small matter of the PR girl or "crucial prosecution witness" as I began to think of her. I did not know where holding a journalist hostage came in her media handling file but I doubted it was in her list of "Wife in the North- Immediate Priorities". I do have a large suitcase I could have bundled the PR girl into, but it all seemed to be getting a bit complicated. Eventually, I let the journalist out.

Pandora

2008-06-23T23:51:00.004+01:00

In between the whole book thing, I have been making cakes. That is to say, I helped to make a parsnip, lime and ginger cake. I do not do a lot of baking - well, I can manage buns and once tried a Victoria sponge. (Then there were the choux fingers, but I try not to talk about the choux fingers.) I realise that many other women up here bake a lot. It is not that I do not want to bake - I do. The Aga sits there burning up the environment; I only wish I was the sort of woman who could "throw something together". But I am not. I buy my cake. Friends of a friend had me round to show me what to do - hence the parsnip cake. Since I do not bake, I did not feel I could point out the fact that maybe parsnip was not what you usually put in a cake, especially since their alternative recipes were for chocolate and beetroot, and sweet potato, coconut and honey. I was glad I didn't put them right, because actually they taste rather yummy. They certainly leave a better aftertaste than the kind offer I had yesterday from Take a Break to run the piece that appeared in The Sunday Times. The message was passed on from my publishers through my agent, offering £500 for an 800-word extract from the book - the thing is, they would like a photograph of me holding my stillborn son. Apparently, the journalist who made the offer is happy to ask me for it herself.

Watch the Book

2008-06-16T15:01:00.008+01:00

Have pulled together a promo for the book with the help of a friend who used to be in advertising and is now a farmer's wife, and a fantastic design company who do a lot of work branding cheese, honey and local attractions. The company is based in converted farm buildings outside a market town which has its own taxidermist, complete with animal skulls in the window, as well as a podiatrist. (Both occupations with their own charms, I always think.) I do not know if they are what attracted the design agency to the area or whether they just like the fresh air. My friend and I drew up a script at the kitchen table, and the graphics guys did whizz-bang things with their electronic crayons and here it is. For anyone who wants to watch the book. Obviously reading the book would take a lot longer than watching the promo but a lot of people do not have time to read books anymore and like to cheat. So the promo will be good for anyone with a really bad case of time poverty. The nice people at New Writing North gave me money towards making it, and I am paying my friend for her time. I do not know if it will help with sales of the book or not, but what is the point of having a book deal if you do not have fun with it? I do not think they made me look too much like a cheese.

(Anyone wanting to run it on their site just needs to copy and paste the "Embed" code which should bring up the player; for an-e-mail, just copy and paste the html link to the YouTube page.)

The Pretender

2008-06-13T14:46:00.006+01:00

Had to have more photographs taken. This makes me feel as if I was a small girl again when my mother used to stand me in the corner of our living room for photographs. "This is me behind the sofa". "This is me in front of the sofa." "This is me on the sofa" sort of thing. This went on for years - you have to be an only child to fully appreciate how tense a camera can make me.

As an adult though, I have been allowed out from the corner of the living room. Now it is a case of: "This is me in front of Bamburgh Castle." "This is me on the beach" sort of thing. We went to Alnwick Garden. I wore a red and pink flowed silk dress, empire line, three-quarter sleeves and lipstick. I marvelled at the spurting fountains and leant closer to admire them - across from me, the photographer snapped away. When she had got what she wanted, I tripped up the stone steps to the ornamental garden at the top watched by a band of happy pensioners. I smiled in that way you do when you have been making a spectacle of yourself but had been hoping no one had noticed. The girl I was with informed me one of them had come up to her to say: "That's the Duchess of Northumberland isn't it?" She told him I was no such thing. Why did she do that? What harm would it have done? Those pensioners would have had a much better day out if they thought they had seen the Duchess of Northumberland in the flesh.

I actually met the real thing last month. I was invited along as part of a tour for eight people, which was a prize bought by a friend at an auction at a Conservative ball. The staff at the garden are very efficient. When I arrived, they started talking to each other on walkie talkies because they were expecting us. I felt like telling every gardener and guide we met, “Look, I’m not really a Tory you know.” I felt like telling the Duchess that too, because she immediately informed us that the creation of the garden was only possible under a Labour government and could never have been backed by a Conservative government because it would have looked bad.The genuine Conservatives I was with, smiled politely and tried to look non-committal. I had wondered if she would be “frightfully, frightfully” and expect us to curtsey regularly. I just about managed to stop myself calling her “Your Majesty” when she introduced herself. I also had to tamp down those feelings of acute resentment I harbour towards any woman married to a man whose personal fortune is estimated at £300m according to The Sunday Times Rich List. Where do you meet a man with a personal fortune of £300m I want to know. And why didn’t I meet one before my husband-to-be ambled along dragging behind him several mortgages and a walloping great overdraft? She told us that at one point, the Duke had not visited the garden for two years. I wondered whether he plugged his fingers into his ears and sang “La-la-la-la…I can’t hear you…la-la!” when she strikes up about her latest whiz-bang wheeze of an ice-skating rink or an adventure playground. He doesn’t - she said they don’t talk about it. He may be curdled with debt, but at least my husband encourages me to talk about my work – mind you, the conversations don’t end with "…so is it alright if I spend another £10million then?” Anyway, I am thinking of offering myself as a body-double. I will waft round dressed in something floral and pose for pictures with trippers, and she can concentrate on bringing in the extra £28m she needs for the next stage of the garden.

Tea and sympathy

2008-06-09T14:14:00.000+01:00

I went round to my little old lady friend for tea. I told her and the neighbour who was with her about the shock I felt at my former colleague's suicide. Well, they had their own death toll harvested over the years - the woman who walked up from the village to a particularly pretty, stone bridge across the railway line, cut down a grassy path to the track and threw herself infront of a train, and the young girl who did the same. Two men who shot themselves - one of them "cleaning the gun" and the other with money troubles. A lost soul who tied a plastic bag over his head, and another who walked into a pond. I felt like saying: "I'll have another shortbread, but enough with the dead already."

I might not mention the rural death toll to Northumberland Tourism who are backing my book. They are planning a downloadable map with excerpts which highlight tourist atractions such as Bamburgh Castle or Alnwick Garden. Disturbingly, the map will also include photographs of me. This cyber-map on a proposed "micro-site", required a day trailing round with a photographer and a nice woman from Northumberland Tourism looking for sunshine. Obviously, there was lots - Northumberland and sunshine are synonymous and we certainly did not abandon the shoot several hours early because of the sea fret that came in from the North Sea, nor did we delay the second day of the shoot for a week. Certainly not. (At least though, the photographer did not tell me to "relax your forehead" like the make-up girl did when I had my photograph taken for Marie Claire a few weeks ago when I had to tell her: "My forehead is relaxed.") All in all though, I do not think I was looking at my best what with the corrugated forehead, the extra weight I am carrying at the moment (I so wish I had thought of a gastric band) and "the nit situation". (When my daughter came home from nursery with nits and lovingly shared them with me, I had to abandon plans for the pre-shoot cut and blow-dry.)If tourism goes through the floor in the next year or two, I am moving to Kansas.

The man that got away

2008-06-04T20:31:00.004+01:00

Had this really funny post I was going to write - ho hum half term-horrors sort of thing. Two days travelling to West Wales with three children; three days there; two days back again - I might have threatened divorce somewhere around the Lake District. It would have been a really funny blog. I would have mentioned "that hotel" where they told us we could have interconnecting rooms but when we arrived they didn't have any. That was funny. Then the snippy receptionist informed us that we could still have two rooms across the corridor from each other, but that I was not allowed to put the seven, five and two-year-old in one room while my husband and I slept in the other. Which was obviously just what I was thinking of doing. That was funny. It was funny too when we ordered sausages for the children's lunch and they arrived pink and I sent them back to be cooked for longer and the waiter brought the three plates right back out again and told me the chef had told him to say: "That's how they come from the butcher." That was funny. It is funny too how much it rains in Wales. Oh yes and I discovered my daughter had nits, and had passed them on. To me. Getting back home would have been such a funny story what with more rain and the fact another hotel told us the children were not allowed to "run round the restaurant" if we brought them down after 7pm. Which is obviously what I encourage them to do when we are out. It would have been such a funny blog. Probably a classic. Then what happens? If someone didn't go and send me some story about someone I used to know - a colleague I used to sit next to on The Sunday Times - going out and killing himself. Clinical depression. I had heard he was depressed last year. I got his address and everything. I meant to write. You know the way you do.

Cut and print

2008-05-25T22:01:00.006+01:00

Travelled down to Suffolk to see my book being printed. Had to get a grip of myself before I went in to the printworks because I felt slightly teary and thought I might just lose it completely and find myself weeping over the conveyor belt if I was not careful. It still felt special even though the factory prints 160 million copies of books a year. That is a lot of books. Most are reprints but 8,000 of them are new titles. There are only two big printworks responsible for most of the bookprinting done in the UK and mine was one of them. They print several million Bibles a year (- it is always good to have God on your side) and had to bring in security guards for the latest Harry Potter. The other thing they did with Harry Potter was to ban mobile phones from the factory in case anyone snapped the pages. For some reason, they still take your phones off you. I felt like saying: "Actually I know what happens at the end of my book."

Sections of the book queue up, shoot onto a conveyor belt and are then gathered into a pile, the back is trimmed and the pages flip onto their side to roll over hot glue. The pages are then clamped together and the cover put on. Up to this point, the book - or rather books - have been travelling round the factory like a pair of siamese twins joined together at the skull with one copy the right way round and the other copy standing on its head. The end-to-end books are guillotined and the remaining sides trimmed. Eventually, when the glue is dry enough, the completed book drops into a stack of seven which are then wrapped alongside other stacks in white plastic. There are 30,000 books out there with my name on them - now all I need is someone to buy them. Sometimes famous authors go round the factory. Apparently Eoin Colfer, author of Artemis Fowl, cried; Quentin Blake drew a cartoon of Matilda sitting on rolls of paper; Michael Palin signed lots of autographs and Sandi Toksvig was lovely to everybody. None of the printers knew who the hell I was but I still insisted on shaking people's hands over and over, muttering "Thank you so much. Really - thank-you." At one point, one of the chaps on the belt broke the back of the book, pulled out a clump of pages to show me how they are glued together, then said: "Don't look" and lobbed the ruined copy into a large black dustbin. I thought: "Bastard."

But they say - as one door opens, a window closes. I got a guest column in The Times on Thursday which was cool but on the same day I was finished as a columnist by the local paper. Budget cuts means they are firing their columnists - or at least three of us. I don't mind too much - it was nice while it lasted.

Mother time

2008-05-15T20:17:00.003+01:00

Took my daughter for a walk on the beach yesterday. We paddled together in the water which spills across the sands and out to the sea. Barefoot, she jumped splash and splash again and took up small fistfuls of dry and golden sand to carry over and empty out into the rippling spill. I scooped up my own handfuls of sand and watching her play, held out my fists, released a little and then more till they were empty. Time passed.

Fish and sicks

2008-05-13T14:23:00.005+01:00

OK I am blaming the goldfish. My seven-year-old woke up about 6.30am and started puking. "Ah, the dawn chorus, " I thought. I was up anyway. I could not sleep last night waiting for someone to start retching (my five-year-old was sent home from school yesterday because he also felt ill.) It was not too bad, the puking only lasted till about 10.30am. I think it was the careful way I medicated with Lucozade. My husband is away - naturally. The children are sick - of course he is not here. He has some biological impulse to get on a train - I think he must be able to smell the germs on their hair. Still, I did not have to cope alone - help arrived mid morning and I eventually managed three whole hours of work. I even thought I might escape out to some fundraiser at the local nursery which has been arranged for weeks and which I was supposed to provide the quiches for. The only problem was my help got sick just before I managed to slide out the door and had to call her own father to drive her home. Now I too am feeling sick. I hope it is not what killed the goldfish - we buried one under the rose bush having kept his corpse for a while in the freezer hoping for a scientific breakthrough. About a week later, the second one died. We have not got round to burying him yet - he is in an Anthisan box, bottom shelf. The third one is still with us (in the aquarium that is, rather than the ice tray.) I am beginning to wonder whether it is something which has leapt across the species divide - you read about this sort of thing all the time. Like avian flu - with more scales and fewer feathers. If so, my prospects of survival cannot be good.

Do you have an appointment?

2008-05-12T17:42:00.001+01:00

Am feeling so stressed, I think I might cry. Maybe it is just the contrast with the weekend. Had rather a lovely weekend - fog flooded the shoreline then the hawthorn hedged fields till even the sound of the lambs disappeared but I like the fog. It was my tenth wedding anniversary on Friday and my husband arrived back from London at 11pm with louche pink peonies and tiny orange throated narcissi, the smell so sweet it ate up all the air. And champagne of course. He said: "Remember our wedding?" And I did remember - how could I forget? Then yesterday we went for a walk with the children into the round green hills, to the last English village before Scotland and no one said: "Do we have to?" and "Can we go back now?" Not even me.

But Monday came around as Mondays will, and I am suddenly pancake flat under a Post-it mountain of appointments, deadlines and expectations. And it is all my fault because I made the appointments and agreed to the deadlines and the expectations too, are all mine. Why though? Why do that to yourself? Why not say "Y'know, I don't think I can manage that, so guess what - I'm not doing it?" Is it because I am Thatcher's child? Or a working mother? Or is it a case of "Look at me and marvel as I drive myself entirely insane". If nothing untoward happens, I stagger on, but life itself is untoward - stuff does happen.

The only downside to the weekend was Saturday morning when the printer was not in when I went to pick up invitations to my book launch party. Did I laugh ruefully and say: "Golly, that's a bit inconvenient." I did not. I wrote a petulant note and pushed it through the letter box, wittering on that I had come three times and where exactly was he when he promised to be in. I then sulked for an hour about the fact I would miss the weekend slot which I had alloted to filling them out. My seven-year-old boy ran a crazy temperature last night and was too ill to go to school this morning. Did I think: "Ah well, a few snatched and precious hours with my beloved boy child"? I did not. Usually on a Monday morning, I go shopping with my daughter. I dropped off my other son at school then agonised about whether to do the right thing and go home and put the sick moppet to bed or whether I could drag him round the shops. I am Catholic - guilt fills up my soul. I calculated that if I took him shopping with me I might be stopped by a policeman or a truant officer and made to explain myself. That is to say - if he was well enough to take shopping he was well enough to go to school surely. Then again, I had no food in the fridge. What happens? I decide he is after all "not that ill" and drive to the local supermarket rather than trail round the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. I run into, not one mother from school, but two. I then have to explain why my child is filling up my trolley with groceries rather than his head with facts.

Dying for a coffee

2008-05-07T14:37:00.007+01:00

Drove across the heathered, gorse-addled moors to a market town gripped around by hills this golden morning. I arrived early for a meeting so parked the car and ambled up to a cafe perched on a steep slope for a coffee. Could not get the door open. "Half day closing" the woman appeared to be mouthing at me through the glass. I think that is what she was saying. She could have been saying: "I am being held hostage by a stalker who has just smothered the other waitress with a giant buttered teacake". I nodded and turned away. A mistake bearing in mind where I ended up. I mooched down the slope into a shop and bought my mother a scarf I thought she might like which had caught my eye in the window. I said to the assistant behind the counter who was wearing the most startling green eyeshadow I have seen outside the seventies: "I want to get a coffee - where should I go?" "Try the place next to the undertakers," she advised. Never trust a woman with green eyeshadow.

I edged into an unpreposessing little cafe with a small window, cheap wallpaper and those varnished chairs you only see in cafes like this one. I said to the girl behind the counter: "Could I have a bacon sandwich?" She said she would see and disappeared into the kitchen. I am pretty sure the woman in the kitchen's words were "I suppose so." I should have left at that point but you do not want to rush into over-hasty judgment. I ordered a cappuccino. I really must stop doing that. In my defence, there was a machine with its back to customers with a whole list of coffees and what they consisted off - frothed milk, a shot of espresso etc. I took the cup over to a table and sat down with it - it smelled of the boiled milk I used to have to drink as a child when I was sick. It was also sweet. It was without doubt the worst coffee I have drunk in Northumberland so far - frankly, that is saying something. Despite the fact I did indeed get my bacon sandwich complete with crisps and spread, I went back to the counter, waiting patiently for the pensioner customers in front of me to be served. They shuffled off with their scones and tea and I lowered my voice; God forbid you are overheard making a complaint. I said to the very pretty girl serving: "Do you think I could have a filter coffee instead, this coffee is terrible. I've got to know how you make it." She handed me a little silver packet which I examined. It had to have real coffee in it - not a lot but a bit, and I imagine a little plastic tap thingy. I said: "Well there is probably coffee in there. What about the milk?" I was genuinely intrigued. She said: "It's granules." Why do people do that? Why not just save yourself the cost of a machine and stick to tea? I handed her the money for the filter coffee and she took it.

May Day blues

2008-05-05T15:52:00.000+01:00

I seem to have spent the the entire bank holiday weekend worrying. My seven-year-old keeps beating up on my five-year-old on the grounds "He is annoying". In retaliation, my five-year-old has developed a cry so piercing it clears the trees of rooks. My husband took time to draw up a chair, sit down and complain that none of the children wanted to do anything with him and constantly refuse to do what he tells them to. I suggested he make this complaint to them and not to me. Finally, my mother (who is staying with us) is in the throes of an arthritis flare-up and keeps breaking down in tears. Oh, and I had to make an expedition to the A&E in the local hospital because I thought my seven-year-old had broken a bone in his foot having (accidentally) kicked his brother in the shin playing football. As it turns out, he is just badly bruised but it did nothing to alleviate my mood.

The seven-year-old beating up on the five-year-old drives me to despair. It is difficult because the five-year-old effectively stalks him which is in one way charming and in another a bit much in terms of personal space. I have decided to give the seven-year-old a bit more one-on-one and see what happens. What will probably happen is I will begin to irritate him instead of his brother but hey, I'm your mother - get used to it kiddo. The problem with my husband is one of expectations. He is a very good father and would spend his whole time taking them on cycle rides and down to the beach but I expect they have a big dollop of my genes which means they would rather do the boy equivalent of drink coffee and read a book (that is to say snack while watching endless manic cartoons). Regarding my mother, this is a difficult one because all I can do is hope the new anti-inflammatory medication kicks in and tell her to sit down. I walked in yesterday and she was virtually horizontal over the sink trying to wash a few cups up, weeping into the water. We had one of our usual exchanges whereby I said "I don't need you to wash up mum", and she said "I need to wash up", and I said "You need to sit down". I ended up bundling her into her blazer and putting her in the car for "a run down" to the shops to buy nothing in particular.

On the up side, we went out for dinner last night with the nice people who live in the house with the box room. The conversation involved Agas and poachers (who come into the countryside from Northumberland towns after deer, bring them down with dogs, hack off their hind legs and leave the carcass behind). For the second time in three days, it also involved a conversation with someone (a fellow guest) whose family have lived in Northumberland for 500 years. The same thing happened the other day when we went for coffee after the election count and one of the Conservative activists told me he could trace his family back 500 years to a particular house in the sands and a mill on a local river. I have been trying to recall if I ever had a conversation with anyone in London who told me: "My family have lived in London for 500 years you know". I cannot recall one.

Countdown

2008-05-02T23:10:00.003+01:00

Went along to my friend's count. Intense council officers shuffled, tapped and pegged the ballots; they all had their own style. One liked to lick her finger, turn up a corner and count the ballot papers as if she was counting her own money; another preferred the steadier approach of lifting each paper from one pile and transferring it to a second pile. Whichever style they adopted, my friend still lost. He picked up 790 votes compared to the Liberal Democrat incumbent's 949. Irritatingly close for him. The Labour candidate who would normally have picked up my vote got an astonishing 74. Seventy-four votes - and it could so easily have been 75 had I not been inveigled into voting Tory for the first and last time ever. This same Labour candidate - one Carol Griffiths - did not appear at the count. Or maybe she did and she was so humiliated by the fact Labour only got 74 votes, she could not bear to make herself known when the results were announced? Call me old-fashioned, but if people have done you the courtesy of voting for you, at least turn up at the count to hear the result. Was she unavoidably detained on her way into the sports centre by Gordon Brown calling for consolation? Even the independent candidate (who stood as an independent shortly after not being selected as the Conservative candidate) did better with 258 votes. Why there is a feeling Labour has been taking its support for granted, I just cannot think.

The black hand gang

2008-05-01T20:08:00.007+01:00

I did it. I am only surprised my hand did not blacken, shrivel and drop off in the polling booth - I voted Tory. There may be some election thingy going on in the US, the metro-centric nationals may be drenched in Boris versus Ken but here in the real world, there is an election for a new unitary authority for Northumberland and I had to vote Tory. Yeah Gods. Just to remind me my friend had scattered big posters throughout his "division" with his name and the word Conservatives in big white letters on a blue and green background. He might as well have had the words "Remember - you promised" on them. I did promise and I have advised him on his electioneering leaflets etc as I said I would, but God - friendship has a price. He has had quite an interesting strategy of not asking anyone for their vote on the doorstep - I wonder if this could catch on? He believes that householders do not want a stranger with a rosette begging for their vote when they are trying to watch Emmerdale. He was prepared to deliver countless leaflets and to traipse round, introducing himself but not to directly and explicitly ask for a vote. In fact, having spent some years reporting on politics, I have to say it was really quite strange advising someone who has played such a straight game all round and insisted on saying only what he believes. But then, he is entirely new to the political process.

It's a killer

2008-04-29T22:12:00.003+01:00

Seven-year-old desperately brave but sad this morning when I broke the news about his fish. He curled up on the kitchen sofa under the ocean creature duvet he had pulled down the stairs with him and said: "I knew he was going to die." I am now convinced both the others are goners and it is merely a matter of time. I took a friend's advice and rang the garden centre where we bought them. I explained we had done everything according to the book and asked what the problem could be because we did not want it happening again. The assistant explained that fish "get stressed" travelling from the garden centre to their new homes. "Fish get stressed" - try telling a two-year-old her pet is about to die. The seven-year-old might have been phlegmatic, the two-year-old was hysterical when I tried to soften her up for the fact hers is probably next. Apparently, at the garden centre they put something called "Stresscoat" in the bag of water they travel in which is supposed to keep them calm but he agreed "It doesn't always work" and there can be subsequent problems in the immune system. If they have lost a scale along the way then they can indeed end up dead. He offered me three free fish when we were ready - three free fish and family therapy is what he should have offered.

Something fishy

2008-04-28T22:49:00.004+01:00

Well on the up side I got better but on the down side the fish just died. I mean "just" died - I found the body about 40 minutes ago. Yuk. Yuk. Yuk. Little fishy eyes staring up at the surface; its silvery body huddled up against the pump and resting dolefully against the rainbow gravel. I am traumatised and I am in my forties - what is it going to do to my seven-year-old? It had to be his fish of course when he is the one so desperate for a pet. This is so why I did not want pets. And what is worse is the length of time it has taken. First, one fish got sick, then this second one got sicker, the third one is OK (so far but you have to wonder). The first fish is still sporting what is apparently a bacterial ulcer but the second fish looked like its fin was thinking about coming off. I thought pets were supposed to make you feel more relaxed and at one with the world. I knew its chances of survival looked slim. This afternoon, it had taken to swimming but not moving forward, either at the bottom of the tank, at the top or hiding in the green stuff. It looked so bad, I had decided to set the alarm early to make sure the seven-year-old did not make it downstairs and find the corpse before I did. As it is, I am still going to have to get up early because I had to put a plastic bag on my hand and pull it out the tank and he will come down to find the damn thing is missing. There is no getting around it - I am going to have to tell him it died . Unless I tell him it escaped.

I do not know whether he will want to bury it. At first, I pulled it out, wrapped it in another plastic bag going "eeeeeurgh" and put it in the kitchen bin. Then I thought: "What if he is really upset and wants to bury it?" So I had to "fish" it out of the bin, dig out a plastic box from a bicycle repair kit, cover it with silver foil, line it with a baby wipe and lay the fish in there (still going eeeeeurgh.) I also had to make sure it was lying with its good side up because I really do not want him getting a close look at the other side. I then wrapped it in a third plastic bag and put it in the freezer. (Perhaps I could hold out cryogenics as an option?) It certainly has not had what you would call an ecologically sound death so far. God. Now all I want is for the next one to die and the waiting to be over.

Ask not for whom the bell tolls

2008-04-21T21:53:00.003+01:00

The fish and I are really ill. That is to say I have a chronically sore throat, so painful I do not want to speak and cannot shout - even when provoked. As for the fish, they are in an even worse state. Obviously they cannot speak either so there is a possibility we have the same disease but then again they appear to have chunks of flesh falling off them and, according to the book I just read they may have a "threadlike parasite" hanging off their nether regions which I definitely did not have the last time I looked. This is really bad. Not only am I in agony but I think the fish might just die on me. Already. And we have been so careful. Washing hands, adding chemicals to water, waiting for the water to heat up to the appropriate temperature, regulating feeding, etc, etc. Even worse, I have begun to care about them - I quite liked the way they appeared to have their own little personalities, my daughter's fish infinitely quicker and pushier than those of the boys. And now they look like they might die on me. Life sucks. I thought the biggest problem was my seven-year-old had been so desperate for a pet, he wanted to net one and get it out to stroke it. This afternoon, we made a trip to the village pet shop for advice. The woman in the pet shop had the biggest, fattest goldfish I had ever seen. Fifteen years old, she told me. I said: "What's it called?" She said: "Fishy". I thought: "I bet that took a lot of thinking about." She sold me a little pot with a pipette and I had to pour more than 16 capfuls into the acquarium. This is why I did not want fish. I am going to come down one morning really soon and there is going to be a silvery bell tolling, an aquarium with a temple from the Lost City of Atlantis on the kitchen hearth and three corpses floating in it.

Going to the fair

2008-04-18T19:54:00.003+01:00

Went down to meet my editors at the London Book Fair this week. It was frenetic. I had to wear a badge saying "writer". I felt like a walking snack. The fair is not really for writers, apart from one or two big name ones who make key-note speeches, it is for the business end of books - the agents, the publishers, the money men. I think they all drink too much coffee because they all seemed to be buzzing - perhaps it is because they are in such close confines with their competitors. I was meeting my French and Italian editors at my agent's stand in a section called International Rights (which involves selling the rights to publish a book abroad. That is to say you are selling the same thing over and over again which is what you call a good trick if you can manage it). Consequently, this section is full of earnest Europeans hunched over tables anxious not to miss the "next big thing" but struggling to understand if they should indeed buy that book about Gothic cathedrals in Lincolnshire. I was thoroughly intimidated by the whole event. I do not think I know enough people - everywhere I looked agents were kissing scouts were kissing publishers. It seems to be quite a kissy business. And they were all on this incredibly tight schedule of back to back half hour meetings with each other. This made even the simplest thing like going to the toilet obviously quite stressful courtesy of the large, time-consuming queues. I heard one woman go into her meeting saying: "It's alright, I pretended to be disabled." You have to be quite ruthless to do that.

Author, author

2008-04-10T17:20:00.005+01:00

Writing a book is all sorts of things - amazing, bloody hard work and frightening for instance. One thing it isn't, surprisingly enough, is an ego trip. Yesterday a friend took some photographs because my American publisher wants one. I suspect they think I am hiding a congenital deformity because they keep telling me to send a snap and they do not seem to believe I do not have any. Once you are a mother, your husband loses all interest in taking photographs of you and just photographs the children while mumbling "He really does look like me doesn't he?"

Real up-to-date photographs were a bit of a shocker. Either I am suffering from acute body dysmorphia or I am looking really old. I have decided it is dysmorphia. Perhaps it was triggered by curling my hair - something I used to do years ago and look fabulous. Now it just looks as if I should know better. The problem with the photographs is they do not bear any relation to what I think I look like. My mother tells me I am lovely, my husband tells me I am lovely. Why then do these photographs tell me I am weird looking, slightly goofy and have one half of my face infinitely fatter than the other half? And when did my nose grow so long? Has it been growing for a while and I never noticed or did it have a spurt the night before the shoot? Even my two-year-old daughter is noticing. We were reading a story book and she said "He's got a big nose" pointing at the picture of a bear. "Yes darling he has," I agreed. "My nose is little," she told me, checking it with her finger. Her nose is exquisite. "Yes darling," agreed Mummy, "you have a very little, very cute nose." She looked at me: "You've got a big nose Mummy" she informed me. Thanks. At least it prepared me for the photographs.

Having a book published does not only undermine your faith in how you look though. It can also make you feel like a real under-achiever. I had to fill out an eight- page publicity questionnaire. Sections include: "Any special awards or honors, including academic awards and prizes for previously published works." (I think they mean this is where you mention the Nobel or the Pulitzer. I wondered about including runner-up in the North-East Young Journalist of the Year 1902. I still have the Parker Pen somewhere.) Then there is the section where you provide the "list of your previously published books" and "approximate sales figures in both hardcover and paperback."(When I was 13, I got a story about a cat published in a book by children - my mother still has a copy somewhere. Would that count?)Not to mention the section where you list the books which have been "serialized, adopted by book clubs or made into a film." I was also asked "for what college courses will your book have particular appeal", and to "list academic meetings or conventions where your book should be displayed", as well as whether I had any "upcoming lectures scheduled". Finally, I was reminded "corporate and institutional purchases can become a major factor in book sales. With that in mind, please list any organisations, academic institutions or companies you think would be interested in purchasing a large quantity of your book for a discount for giveaway or resale to their employees, members, students, or customers." (This form is for the same people who want the photograph.)

Something fishy

2008-04-07T14:54:00.005+01:00

Have just got back from expedition to garden centre. This is what my life has become - taking the children out to the garden centre. It was not as if I wanted to buy plants, it was more a case of somewhere to go in the bucketting rain. The weather on the way down was appalling; sleet, snow and rain so bad I thought there was a chance of an accident which might kill us all. Dieing en route to the garden centre would be a particularly rubbish way to go. We had looked round the kitchenware, glanced at the tomato plants, felt guilty about the state of the vegetable patch and had ambled into the pet section when I was ambushed. I did not even see it coming. My seven-year-old took my hand in his: "Can we have a fish? Can we? Can we? I'm not allergic to fish so it's only fair." My five-year-old saw the opening: "Yes can we have a fish? Or a hamster? I want a hamster. Can I have a hamster?" Just as I opened my mouth to say what I normally say which sounds like "We'll see" but means "Over my dead body," one of the assistants opened up the pen right next to us and scooped up two guinea pigs and placed them carefully into a cardboard box with holes at the top. They scampered round nervously. A proud and incredibly happy little girl stood to one side of him, her beaming, doting mother on the other. My boys watched the whole thing, I saw the older one glance at the girl, the younger one look soulfully at the empty guinea pig cage. I lost the pet argument right at that moment and I blame the guinea-pigs.

Courtesy of my seven-year-old's allergy to anything with hair, furry pets are out. We traipsed round the tanks watched by glittering tiny fish. Sanity suddenly prevailed and I said: "We can't possibly do this. Have you seen how much these tanks cost? The bowl is £400 and the goldfish is £1." Both boys looked like I had hit them over the head with a sandbag. I tried reason. I said: "Let's wait till Daddy's back at the weekend and come back then." Eventually I accepted the inevitable but I did not go down without a fight. Like the psycho-mother I am, I said: "If you do not feed it and look after it I will flush it down the toilet - right?" They virtually promised to pay its tuition fees through university. I have ended up £118 poorer than I was when I parked the car - I am now the proud possessor of an aquarium kit, two bags of black gravel, a fake tree stump and a small, ruined temple from the Lost City of Atlantis. Funny thing is they would not sell us the fish. Apparently we have to set it all up, leave it for 48 hours and then go back for the fish. I am hoping the children will have forgotten what it is all for by then.

Or are you just pleased to see me?

2008-04-04T11:23:00.003+01:00

Went to a market town to meet a friend for coffee. The market town has one of those department stores which sell everything a middle-class woman could want, all of which is reportedly selected by the owner's wife. It has a smattering of top-name cosmetic brands, handbags, shoes, fashion and a home department. It is slightly odd thinking everything has been bought by the same person but then again, she does have good taste so fair do's. I pottered up to the lingerie department. I always found bra buying in London very stressful - there you are stripped down to nothing very much, looking at yourself in the mirror thinking "What the hell happened?" and squishing fleshy gobbets into a lacy bra cup that do not really belong in there when there is an urgent rap on the door that would not shame a debt collector. Even worse, are those shops where the assistant pokes her head through the curtain, catches a page three moment and then insists on doing you up as if you have lost the use of your thumbs. Luckily this is the sort of department store which is far too discreet for such an invasion of privacy.

Bras selected, I was at the till when my eye was snagged by a packet of "silicone petals" with a picture on the front of a woman in a bathing suit. You could see her right nipple above the word "Before" but on the left hand side, there was no nipple above the word "After". I was intrigued. I thought about whether they could be selling nipples to women who do not have any but the continuity seemed all wrong. I said to the woman behind the counter. "What are they?" She told me they were nipple protectors for women with large nipples and were designed to hide them. Apparently, according to the packet, they are "particularly useful when swimming or in colder climates." Well Northumberland can be chilly so it made sense to me. Naturally, I bought a pair. I resisted saying to the woman: "Well that's lucky because as it happens I myself have very large and shy nipples."

The petals are peach coloured with a wavy border and sticky. You stick them over your nipples and they do indeed hide them. From a distance in the mirror, this looks incredibly weird as if your top half has suddenly become that of a slightly raddled mannequin. I slipped a white tee-shirt over my head to admire my "natural contours". Frankly if these are supposed to reassure the faint-hearted that the world is not looking at their nipples, I suspect they may well have the opposite effect. The "natural countour" they give you is a breast with a large and on me at least, quite prominent, nippleless aureole. I would have thought any man would invest a considerable amount of time on playing "Spot the nipple" if you went out like that.

Do you...?

2008-04-03T14:41:00.004+01:00

Back from Poland. How can you not like a country where the taxi-drivers kiss your hand? And the coffee is so good?

For reasons which escape me, we decided to take all three children to the Krakow wedding. My boys, seven and five, wore pin-striped suits. We went shopping for them in M&S. I expected to buy them a nice tee-shirt and new chinos; instead they became fixated on blue-pinstriped suits which "make us look like Daddy." They looked like very short accountants and I looked like the sort of mother who would make her boys wear suits.

The ceremony was in an enormous baroque barn of a church with a priest I thought might die before he got to the end of the service while the reception was in a restaurant with a cavalry theme. Every where you looked there were black and white photographs of soldiers with sabres staring into the mid-distance as they sat on their brave battle-hardened horses. I thought that was an interesting message to send out at the start of married life.

The wedding mixed English and Polish traditions that is to say every now and then the Polish table got to its feet and raised a glass of chilled vodka to the English table who all looked very worried by the fact they could not get a cup of tea and instead they might be expected to get horribly drunk, horribly quickly. In cultural revenge, the best man (my own dear husband) made a speech which had been translated into Polish and was read out paragraph by paragraph by the Polish bride's chief bridesmaid. The Poles were all very interested by this because they do not have any such tradition. (I imagine they could not possibly have a tradition of wedding speeches courtesy of the vodka.) Also since this was a wedding of two people who only met a year ago, they took it as an opportunity to acquire in-depth, intimate information on the bridegroom. My husband said to me later in the night: "Apparently, all the Poles thought it was great because they got to know so much about the groom." I said: "You spent most of the speech talking about how desperate he was to have sex at university and how bad his taste in music was." My husband shrugged.

We are now at the age where we have started getting invitations to weddings the second time around. The groom already has twin girls of 11 who acted as bridesmaids along with a pretty, sombre-faced, seven-year-old Polish child. I do believe that one of the best things about weddings are the little girls.

Small girls in long cream lace dresses, twisted coronets of silvered metal in their hair danced to Polish pop. Butterfly chiffon friends in Monsoon prettiness held hands and twirli-gigged round, taking their turn - as girls do - to jump into the golden centre, raise plump and perfect arms and giggle at their spotlit cheek. At a nod, they would abandon the dance and dash into the darkness of the courtyard for games of tig and tag and scarecrow. I played with them. Brave, they enquired: "What time is it Mr Wolf?" "Two o'clock," I growled. "Three o'clock". They silk slipper-stepped forward some more across the hard ground covered with worn down rose petals. "Dinner time" and screams bounced off ancient stones as I leapt on them to slavering eat them up as time and wolves will do to small and lovely girls.

LA dreaming

2008-03-26T18:53:00.003Z

We are about to go away for five days to Poland for a wedding where the couple met on the internet. Is there any other place people meet these days? The last time we all had a holiday away together was November 2006 so no pressure there. I managed a week on my own though just about a year ago. I went to LA.

Tuesday, 13 March, 2007
Arnie and Me
I came over to see English friends who have moved here but they are living in a one-bedroomed, bite-sized sort of house so I am staying in a guest room a few miles away which is close to Venice beach and belongs to someone they know. The room is on the ground floor. It is actually three rooms, a bedroom, a sitting room and a little shower room off it. I am slightly nervous about it all. I might feel better if I had any cell phone reception but to get a signal you have to leave the room and walk up to the hazy beach. It will be fine, I just need to get used to myself again. My mood improved when I plundered a closet off the lounge and found rubber masks of Tony Blair, George Bush and Arnie Schwarzenegger. I planted them around the room to keep me company. Perhaps I should take one to bed? But which one? I would not want to hate myself in the morning.

Saturday 17 March 2007
“What I’m looking for”
Have just got back from the desert and a place called Joshua Tree. Apparently North America is the only place where the Joshua Tree grows and most of them are in the Mojave desert. The branches of the fibrous tree reach up into the hot air and are tipped with clusters of spiky leaves. According to a National Park visitor guide, tradition has it they were named by mormon pioneers after the biblical figure of Joshua “seeing the limbs of the trees as outstretched in supplication.” Even better than the extraordinary trees was the diversion we made to a dusty spot in the desert where a rock god’s body burnt, the embers twisting up to the skies. Gram Parsons, a 26-year-old country rock singer/songwriter, died in room 8 of the Joshua Tree Inn in 1973 after downing tequila and morphine. He had some time before struck a deal with his road manager Phil Kaufman that in the event of his death, Kaufman would take him into the desert and burn his body. Time came and Kaufman duly snatched the body from LA International Airport, drove it out to the desert, and poured gasoline into the open coffin to honour the promise he had made to his friend. They even made a movie about it which I watched when we got home. Irresistible story. The National Park ranger refused to tell us where it was but we managed to find it despite my appalling navigational skills. It reminded me of the cemeteries of the famous in Paris; all that longing for the dead - famous yet unknown - love, loss, and lyrics painted on to rocks that have stood a million or more years, and on the sand a cross of stones with pennies at its heart to remember the talent spent, wasted by youth.

Sunday, 18 March 2007
Samurai dreams
Am now thoroughly in the swing of LA living. Have not only been to the desert but a concert in a down-town fabulous art deco concert hall which used to be a cinema, as well as shopping in lush Santa Monica and to a movie full of blood, gore and abdominals which I would never have seen over in the UK. And I went to Hollywood of course. I wondered is this what we want? To push ourselves into wet concrete, leaving our mark on the future for a fat girl in flip flops to put her feet over the space where we were, and ask: “Who was she then? Small feet eh?”

I like LA. It is one of those cities where everybody watches everybody else to see whether those they are watching are thinner and more beautiful than themselves. The answer in my case would of course be “Yes”. The coffee shops in particular are full of thirty-somethings huddled over their laptops, writing screenplays or planning their next pitch. Everybody wants to be somebody. It is the sort of place where you are hardly respectable unless you carry around a hopeless dream; it strikes me that whoever you are when you arrive, from then on in you decide who you are going to be. Today, my friends took me to a party at an artist’s house. It was full of writers and people on the margins of the mainstream movie business. While I ate a bagel with cream cheese, a pretty Oriental looking girl with long blonde hair told me she had just finished making a movie about “gangs and zombies” and that she wanted her next movie to “be original, like y’know Quentin Tarantino” – a post-apocalyptic movie about werewolves and samurai.” She assured me “No-one’s ever done that before.” I said: “I’m sure you’re right.” She went on: “We’re planning to approach Jim Carrey – he’s never done samurai before.” I thought: “Good on you. I hope that he says ‘yes’.” My friends are struggling though to get Green Cards which would allow them to stay here. They feel they belong. I thought about it tonight, lying next to Arnie. His face, stuffed with paper lying on the pillow and turned towards mine. I rolled over to face him. I said: “Where do any of us belong?” He just looked at me with his cut out eyes. A man of few words is Arnie.

Anyway, back in real time next week.

Next year, it's rabbit pie

2008-03-24T16:00:00.005Z

Had friends up from London, arriving Thursday night and leaving Saturday morning. They managed to catch some of the worst weather I have seen up here. The woman who has only just moved back to the UK after 18 years in Spain would be entitled never to come back to Northumberland, ever. We tried to go for a beach walk twice and thought better of it. Instead, safe in our cars, we watched the white fury of the seas, waves so tall that they seemed to stand on feet, and thick sandy froth churning in the rock pools. We managed a teashop, a country outfitters, a second hand bookshop, a museum and a castle; even so, I am not sure it made up for the weather. On our way into the castle, gusts of ice and sleet leaned against us and I said to the woman: "It's not like this usually you know." I gulped down a mouthful of wet bitter cold wind. "You've caught it on a really bad day." Their visit though was definitely the highlight of Easter.

I just did not find Easter worked for me this year. My mother and father were supposed to come and cancelled because my father did not feel up to it which was disappointing. Usually, we have an egg hunt on Easter Sunday morning with the other children who come up to the cottages along the row. Luckily, two girls were there but three other families did not make it which seemed sad somehow and instead of our traditional glorious, daffodil-coloured sunshine, it was bitterly cold and grey. Once that was over. the children spent the rest of the day either eating chocolate, asking for more chocolate or crying that I had said "No" to more chocolate. It was so bad, by bathtime I had gathered up all the chocolate that was left in the house and informed the children they had eaten quite enough and Easter was officially over. I was braced for revolution but they took it quite well. I think my five-year-old might have been more vocal but this morning he woke up and started throwing up relentlessly with one of his stomach migraines which happen about every six to eight weeks. During these vomiting marathons, he withdraws completely, refusing to answer the simplest question, capable only of staring at the TV or listening to tales of pirates and dinosaurs. He vomits, sips water, vomits again and sleeps. I moved him from bed to lounge to kitchen sofa. This afternoon, he started to rally. As I pulled his washed-out tee-shirt over his head, it seemed as if he remembered something. He said: "Thankyou for doing all you did for me." As I eased down the shirt over his chest, I thought: "Ah, darling one. Happy Easter."

Booked

2008-03-19T16:25:00.006Z

Am "proofing" the UK edition of the book. What this entails is staring at 300 pages till you go cross-eyed. If I stayed in my own office, I would eat my own hands out of sheer boredom. Instead and in an attempt to keep myself awake I have spent the last two days on a coffee bender round the cafes of the local market town. I am not proud of myself - I may have to start wearing a caffeine patch if this process takes much longer. Still I have found a cafe where they smile at you when you go in and which serves a great bacon sandwich. Yesterday I also spent an hour and a half in the new supermarket's cafe which has big windows and about the same amount of time in a hotel bistro which has deep and comfortable armchairs. Both yesterday and today I spent time in a big second hand bookshop.

This is a second hand bookshop like no second hand bookshop you have ever seen. It used to be a railway station which could be why so many men with beards haunt it. The only downside is that it is very cold so you have to wear your coat at all times. Either that or huddle in front of one of the blazing coal fires. A model railway track runs overhead and lines of Gerald Manley Hopkins and Tennyson poetry connect the columns of books. The original Victorian station is everywhere around - the pitched rooves, the ticket offices, the enormous clocks but books instead of trains carry people away. I looked at the door painted with the words "old waiting room", shelves of books reflected in its glass panels. I could see a fire burning in the darkness and the pages of a newspaper turning as if by themselves. Pushing open the door, I stepped into the room that waited for me. Pale green tiles and oak benches lined the walls. I moved along some chintz cushions, dumped my bag on the bench and pulled the table closer. As I hauled out the proofs to my "Should I stay or Should I go now" book and dug out my roller-ball, I glanced up at the huge hanging lamp. A wrought-iron lamp inscribed with fabled destinations - Shangri-la, Toytown, Camelot and the words "et in Arcadia ego".

Ewe don't say.

2008-03-17T21:15:00.004Z

Popped round to see a friend for coffee. This being the country, this being spring, she was not in the kitchen, she was in the lambing shed. The sheep which had not yet given birth were milling around in an open area penned in by bales of straw; sheep which had given birth were in their own small enclosures with their lambs. I said to my friend: "How can you tell when they're ready to give birth?" She said: "Well look at that one." I said: "Which one?" She said: "That one." I looked at the sheep she was pointing at. She said: "You see. She looks "starey"." I said: "She looks like a sheep." It is not like there are any give away clues - no one was straddling a beanbag, sucking on ice chips or screaming for an epidural. They all seem to take it all quite calmly. In fact it was almost biblical. Sunshine fell through the open side of the barn where there was tranquility, warmth, new life and just a little bit of blood being spilled. Every now and then my friend who has a bad back would drop to her knees and I would think: "Is she going to say a prayer of thanksgiving?" Instead she would do something to the backside of an animal that made me think: "I am so not having another baby." At one point she tried to "put a lamb on" that is to say persuade a ewe to adopt an orphan, she eased aside the ewe's own lamb, wrangled the mother to the ground then knelt on her. She took hold of the orphan lamb, handed him up to me and said as if it was nothing very much: "Put him in the water trough up to his head would you?" I carried the long legged lamb across the straw carpetting the barn and over to the trough and ducked him under. I said: "Sorry mate." I just about resisted saying: "Do you renounce Satan and all his works?" I carried the dazed, wet bundle back and she smeared him with goo from the ewe and his "brother" lamb. I suppose that is what you call being born again.

"Try something new today"

2008-03-13T11:51:00.005Z

Sainsbury's has opened up in the nearest market town. This is akin to the Second Coming. It is such a big deal that Sir Ken Morrison announced his retirement on the same day despite an increase in his company's profits. Last year a small Marks and Spencer's opened up in another market town slightly further away from us and talk among mothers was all of cappuccino and caramel shortbread in the cafe. But this Sainsbury's is serious shopping. It opened at 9am this morning and my husband drove us to it after dropping the children at school. I wondered why head office had not approached me to open it - perhaps they had heard about "the barn". Outside men in grey suits welcomed shoppers while uniformed women dished out store guides and little engraved trolley tokens then confided: "Actually the trolleys are free today." I am not sure the supermarket experience is complete without trying unsuccessfully to feed a pound to a trolley and cursing while you wrestle it from the bosom of its trolley family. The store guide had a little letter from Debra the store manager in which she told us to "Enjoy your shopping and if you can't find something, please ask me or one of the team." I love that idea. Getting to the check-out and saying to the cashier: "I'm so sorry. I forgot the black pepper. You couldn't just ring up to the office and get Debra to pop down with a box?" Anyway the aisles were full of big-eyed shoppers pointing at "buy one get one free's" and I have never seen so many smiling shop assistants in a supermarket ever. Apparently "regional" was in - not sure what this means but it is obviously a big deal in supermarket land. Every time you looked at an assistant, they would beam from ear to ear and look utterly delighted to see you there. I think my husband was even happier than they were. He walked up to the convenience foods and pointed to the Tiger Prawn Paella. He said: "Look tiger prawn paella. Let's get two."

After the horse has bolted

2008-03-12T15:39:00.008Z

OK so I brought the teasmade upstairs, cleared the books from the bedside table, plugged it in, set the time, set the alarm, filled the tank with water, fished the teabags out of my dressing gown pocket, put them in the teapot, went downstairs, poured milk into a china jug and settled it in a bowl of ice, carried up the bowl and two china mugs and pressed the button so that a little red light went on underneath the logo of a steaming cup of tea. I was aiming for tea at seven o'clock. I got tea at seven o'clock. I also got woken up every hour between midnight and seven o'clock by the thought: "I wonder if the tea is ready yet?" which was not at all the idea.

The day got worse because foolishly I had agreed to open a barn. My friend rang yesterday and said they didn't have anyone else to do it and would I consider it. They had to be desperate. I said slowly: "Okaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay" thinking "I suppose it will be alright. A barn. There'll be a farmer and his dog there."

After she rang off, I checked it out on the Internet and it was not so much a barn as a diversification/environmental/education project with a cafe and a giftshop. My ex-friend e-mailed me a guest list and there were councillors on it and people from Non-Departmental Public Bodies and I thought: "Now I'm in trouble." In my real life I am a journalist - this means I sit at the back of the room listening to speeches thinking: "God, you're boring!" This is not the best life experience to have when you realise you have to write and deliver your own speech. At least I abandoned the passing idea of "doing a David Cameron" - that is to say speaking without notes. If I had tried to do that, I think I might have had a stroke before finishing.

Some days I think you would be better just not getting up at all. I turned up at "The Barn", converted and perched on land overlooking the coast, the wind fretted sea and out onto Holy Island. The first thing I did was blow in to the education room where the presentation was being given. I arrived late - all things are relative. I arrived an hour and a half earlier than I was due to cut the ribbon but half an hour later than the event actually started. Although I had been given permission to miss the speeches and just do the ribbon thing, I wanted to hear what it was all about. What that meant was the wind virtually hurled me through the door which was right at the front of the room where the attentive audience was watching a video presentation. Everybody caught the entrance - complete with a cup of black coffee which I had snagged before I went in thinking I would just slip in at the back. (I had to have the coffee because of the sleepless night courtesy of the teasmade.) I then had to stand there at the front, leaning against the wall till the video was over because in my embarassment, I could not immediately see anywhere to sit.

The "barn"venture had taken the farmer five years to pull together which judging by his speech has not been easy. Clues like "The project has certainly not been without its problems" and "When agreements are made they have to be honoured not altered halfway through or have payments reduced." It was all quite complicated and includes flooding marshland while still allowing sheep to graze. Presumably they will warn the sheep before the tides sweep in - either that or give them swimming lessons and lilos. An enthusiastic environmentalist also talked of the importance of the project to the Light Bellied Brent Geese which are allowed to graze on stubble around and about. (Apparently the geese were supposed to take the hint and graze on grass but they have refused. It is either the stubble or Jamie Oliver recipes - nothing else.)

After we moved into the cafe for a pre-arranged "comfort break", all too soon it was my turn. I did not even have a podium to hide behind. I realised as I was being introduced that this had been a very, very bad idea and that the audience was undoubtedly asking exactly who the hell I was. My voice shook, my hands which clutched my pieces of paper shook. I told them that it was in fact the second time I had cut a ribbon for an opening ceremony - the first being yesterday when I discovered driving back from the village with the teasmade in the boot, my husband had decided to string ribbon across the gateway to the cottage on the premise that since I had not been born a minor royal I might need some practice. I think they laughed but I am not sure as there was a humming in my ears by that point. With some relief I read a section from the blog and then said some words like "diversification" and "preservation" and "nature". Then we went outside and I cut the ribbon which was red and strung between two manicured box trees. I have never done it before (I do not count yesterday when technically what I did was drive through the ribbon in the Saab) and I am never doing it again.

Apart from my pretty disastrous appearance as Sophie Windsor (believe me they earn every penny) I enjoyed being part of someone's dream. I think anyone who makes something that big happen is to be congratulated. But probably my personal highlight came as I was walking through the blustering wind back to the car when a man in a tweed jacket leaning against a bench said:"Do you want to write some song lyrics?" That is what you call a good line. As it happens I have just seen Drew Barrymore and Hugh Grant in Music and Lyrics. "Hugh" said: "I could set them to music and play them in a session in a local pub where we all meet up." Apparently lyrics have to be strong and have something that repeats. I could do that do that do that.