Wifey 1: Stoats 0

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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...?

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

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

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

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.

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"

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

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.

Tea for two

I have bought a teasmade. This has been a lifelong ambition and has made me very happy. I have no idea yet whether it works but it came in an impressive cardboard box and promises much. Not only can it make you tea on a morning, it can wake you with it, provide a bright bedside light, a clock, an alarm and a radio. Frankly there are men out there who work less hard than this teasmade. Possibly women too - though I doubt it.

Of course my husband disapproved. I tried to get one a couple of years ago and he said: "If you want tea so badly on a morning, I will get up and make you a cup." I think he believes it to be the epitome of lower middle-class, middle-aged, 1970's naffness. I however do not care. Last month when he was hardly ever here, I thought: "Bollocks to this, I am getting a teasmade." I ordered one in my local electrical shop and waited patiently for it to arrive. Today I snuck down to the village and picked it up. When I arrived back, my husband looked suspiciously at the box which is the size of something you would bury your lapdog in. In fact I may keep the box in the event I ever get a lapdog. He said: "Tell me that's not a Goblin teasmade." I said: "OK, I won't tell you." I need that cup of tea to wake me up. I struggle at the moment. I seem permanently exhausted and there is nothing less interesting than someone who drones on and on about how tired they are other than those people who insist on telling you about their holidays. I have already cleaned it and run it through its first cycle as instructed by the leaflet. The leaflet is full of dire warnings such as "Do not remove tea pot during the pressure filling cycle as scolding water may be ejected." Presumably if you do move it, a tinny voice says: "Didn't you read the leaflet you dolt? It said don't move me." Another reason I wanted it was the fact I only have one radio upstairs and have to carry it around with me between the bed and the bathroom and it is never where I want it to be. This way I can have a radio in both rooms. I am slightly worried about reception however which can be very bad here. The leaflet advises: "Turn the tuning dial to the frequency the radio station is broadcasting on. "Well, yes, that is always a good idea. Then it says: "It may be necessary to turn or move the teasmade for best radio reception." I suspect that is a potentially disastrous thing to do.

Blook

I have discovered that the thing about writing a book is that writing it is only the start. You then have to sell it. Selling it involves all sorts of conversations with people who take you far too seriously as you sit there "pitching" your book to them. No one has yet said "You are kidding? Someone is publishing your diary? And they're paying you for it?" Doubtless it will come.

I went down to London for a drinks party with booksellers. There were "real" writers at it. Writers I read. I half expected a siren to go off "Blogger Alert! Blogger Alert!" and metal shutters to ratchet down when I walked in. But the booksellers were so nice. Grown women with their own businesses allowed me to burble at them when I am sure they would rather have been talking to someone they had heard of. It is fatal to listen to yourself. At one point I found myself thinking: "My God this woman talks rubbish. I hope she can write better than she can speak." Which is probably true since I lisp in real life and I do not think I have ever lithped in print. Truth be told I think I am losing my nerve about the whole writing thing. I wrote a book and it disappeared into the ether and in a week or so, I will see something that looks like a book that is not a book but is called a proof. I have to read the proof and make sure there are no mistakes or ambiguities. Apparently it is too late at that stage to change it beyond those two things because it is all so expensive. What if I think it is grammatically correct and unambiguously bad?

Maybe I will feel better once I have seen it in print however good or bad it is. Because at the moment I feel as if the book is all a dream and any minute now I am going to wake up naked in a shower. Then again, I must have written a book because I have this really sick feeling in my stomach that tells me I am about to get sued, ostracised because I have offended so many friends or hideously embarassed when no-one in the entire country buys it apart from my husband's colleagues. One of my conversations at the drinks party involved someone telling me what a harsh marketplace Amazon was. You could not hide anything. If you sold, you sold; if you did not sell, you did not sell. I thought about crawling under the nearest table and hiding behind the linen tablecloth so that I could rock myself to and fro to settle myself again.

Cover story

My children are unimpressed by the book cover for Wife in the North. Proof copies of the cover arrived through the post and the seven-year-old said: "That looks nothing like granny." I said "It's supposed to look like "a granny", not necessarily our granny." He said: "And that doesn't look like my John Deere boiler suit either". The five-year-old took it out of his brother's hands. He pointed at the windswept, child-festooned mother "and she's far more beautiful than you are." I said: "Thanks." The thing is - it is true. When my publisher initially sent over the illustration in an e-mail, she said: "You may not like the boots." I opened up the J-pegged file and looked at it carefully. I thought: "They have knocked 15 years off my age and have ignored the double chin and the cellulite-raddled thighs and I am almost a blonde." I wrote back: "Don't worry about it - the wellies are fine."

Mother's day comes early

Back to school after half-term which surprisingly went very well. I say "surprisingly" because virtually every school holiday my husband is in London and, even though I have help, I can find it difficult. It is not that he is away all the time. I know it would be worse if he was on the oil rigs or in the army. He is only away a few months a year it is just that it is the months that count - the holidays and the days the kids are sick and the days I just hurt with missing him. Anyway, the holiday went well. The children and I stayed here and went hither and thither, but my favorite moment was late one night last week. I was lying with the seven-year-old at bedtime and he said during the recent open week at school when parents were invited in, a friend of his teased him about the fact he had not wanted me to go home. He said: "He called me a 'mama's boy'." I lay next to him in the not quite dark. I said: "Is that right? And what did you say?" He looked across at me. He said: "I told him", I could hear the patience in his voice, "everybody loves their mummy"." I said: "Quite right."

Rags and Riches

When my father went across to Ireland for a week, my mother came to me. It grieves me to see her sofa sit when once her hands were busy - knit one, pearl one, cast off and round again. That or tiny stitches, one crossed with the other, building castles out of silken thread. Past-times lost to her along with central vision. We bought a large flat TV screen for the arches and a leather abbot's chair to sit upon, screen close and sideways on; "A Grandma Fishing". Her catch - the edge of soapy dramas. There are "talking books" that shout into deaf ears but the tales, however loud she plays them, encourage her to sleep and sleep some more. A hobby then? (Aside from me.)

I dropped in at a course for "proggy and hooky" rug making in a nearby village hall. As I walked in, there was warmth and scarcely a murmur. I thought: "This is how a convent would have been five hundred years ago - industrious sisters intent on art and prayers." There is all sorts of words for the craft - proggy, proddy, clootie, cleekie, stobbie, tab, rag and clippy as well as hooky. Hooky involves long strips of material brought up by hooks in a series of loops to make a flat pile at the front sometimes with detailed pictures. Alternatively, working from the back of the sacking, the rug maker can use a tapered metal or wood spoke to prod through a strip of cloth then prod the other end in a little way beyond. When the proggy rug is finished and turned over, it is a riot of woollen fronds, traditionally with a dark border. A rug to plough your fingers through, pulling slightly much as you would a lover's hair. In Northumberland these rugs are often worked on frames. Unlike quilts they were not valued and passed down the generations. Instead they were born of necessity, associated with poverty and few have survived the years. One rug maker told me: "They started off on the bed, went on the floor infront of the fire, then into the scullery, dog basket and finally the compost heap." Families sat together; father cutting old clothes and rags into strips, children poking through the strips into the hessian with half a wooden peg and mother overseeing the colours. I thought: "Right, let's see if my mother could manage this."

I fetched down an old black wool skirt; designer - naturally, black - is there any other colour? I would like to say, despite the years - a fit, but that would be a lie. I laid it on the kitchen table, sliced it and bagged the pieces. A butcher to my chic and office past. I cut a test square of hessian and ironed a hem to make a second square inside the first. I sat my mother alongside, picked up the metal spike, made a hole and threaded through the ribbon black, made another, closed my eyes to feel the hole, the spike, pulled the ribbon out the other side. "Do-able," I thought. "I'm glad though that I can see." My mother felt her way around the edge, the ribbons on the table and the spike. She made a hole, worked through the cloth and then another, worked through some more. She said: "I hope pet you won't have me down a mine next week."

Mole in the hole

I am not sure I can live with the guilt of country life. Firstly, I have to vote Tory. Not only that - I have blood on my hands. I am talking dead mole. I know I could have got a sonic alarm but the moles would have made a mad dash for the field, waited for the ringing in their ears to stop and come straight back over the garden wall, pausing only for the advice "Avoid the laser beams or all hell breaks loose." I know I could have got a trap which shuts the mole in with a colour TV and his own toilet to keep him happy till the moleman came and dug it up and I could then have paid for a one way ticket to New Zealand so the mole could make a fresh start. Or I could let the moleman do his stuff and use a trap which breaks its neck. Instantaneously, he told me. The moleman held out the rigor mortised mole. It was smaller than the palm of his hand with soft grey fur, big pink paddle paws at the front and no eyes to speak of. He said: "Look at its ferocious teeth." The tiny jagged teeth were bared as he lifted its lip. He said he would take it home and use it to bait another trap he had set elsewhere with its scent. That way it would encourage the male mole living in the other garden to dash into the trap looking for a rival male. The children have a book about a young mole who rescues a baby bird, keeps it in a cage and then frees it. I am so not reading that book again.

Singing the Blues

Living in the country poses various dilemmas for a natural born city dweller like myself. Are you prepared to drink tea because you cannot buy a decent latte? Can you live without riotously arty, overpriced flowers tied in brown paper with a raffia bow? Are you prepared to "damn the environment" and drive for miles to get anywhere? One of the very worst dilemmas: Are you prepared to vote Tory? I mean - Oh my God - vote Tory? I am too young to die and I am certainly too young to vote Tory.

In London, I do not believe any of my friends voted Tory. I could be wrong but if they did, they did not admit it. Perhaps if I had lived in Notting Hill, it might have been different. Here however, I have found many of those in my circle are indeed Conservative and think it entirely normal. The first time someone talked about wanting to step up her commitment to the Conservative party, I thought she was making a joke. I laughed. I stopped laughing when I realised she was serious. I thought I could agree to differ - after all, the local MP is a Liberal Democrat so someone is not voting Tory.

What happens? One of my closest friends decides to stand as the local Conservative candidate for the new unitary authority in the elections on May 1st. He said: "I have been asked to stand." I said: "Good for you." He said: "Will you vote for me if I get selected?" I said: "Mmmmmm. Are you sure I can't offer you a cup of tea?" What do you do? He is intelligent, thoughtful and would be certain bound to do a remarkably good job as a councillor. But then again he is a Tory. Do you vote for the man or do you vote for the party? After a deal of agonising, I told him I would vote for him - indeed went so far as taking his photograph with local fishermen and parish councillors at the harbour which he intends to use in campaign literature. I love politics. I spent years reporting on it and am a lifelong Labour supporter. Moving, making a new life for everyone, knocking two houses together seem easy next to this and forget the Democrat Party's dilemma over Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Move to Northumberland and see what happens.

Mole and Ratty

It is the Year of the Rat. I knew that. I did not need the children coming home with Chinese lanterns, fortune cookies and an astrological chart to tell me that. Of course it is the Year of the Rat and the revolution started here. Not only are they eating up our foodstuffs and setting fire to our cars, I believe one of them may have infiltrated the underneath of my house and died there a martyr to the cause. I have a horrible smell in the kitchen. You catch it as you walk into the door from the farmyard or as you walk into the kitchen from the lounge and the smell is in an arc. If I am lucky it is a mouse which will take less time to decompose.If I am less lucky it is a dead rat. I believe he may have strapped explosives to himself, tied a bandana round his head and am daily expecting his video to appear on YouTube. The smell is disgusting, slightly cheesy, slightly off, slightly dead. We have done the things you do - pulled out the fridge, tipped over the sofa, emptied the dresser then refilled it. Still the smell. There is an outside chance it might be a dead mole. We have now called a mole-catcher in courtesy of the large number of hillocks splattering the common grass in front of the cottages. He arrived yesterday with a small, curved spade about 80 years old and a large satchel with two mole traps in it. Mole traps are steel contraptions made of half a tin can and a deal of wire rings. The mole catcher used to be in the army he told me. I suspected as much. He inspected the hillocks for fresh earth which is drier looking than old earth, looking for the most recent mole hills. He dug his heel into the ground between two of the hillocks. When the heel of his boot sank into the ground, he knew there was a tunnel below. Carefully he dug out a round of grass, "washed" his hands with soil to remove his scent, dug through the soil to the tunnel, set the trap, placed it in the tunnel and filled it over with soil. He said moles were quite clever and sometimes filled the trap with soil to set it off then dug themselves a way around it. Apparently they dig their tunnels in the hope worms will fall into them and then they can eat them next time they are passing that way. The mole-catcher came back today and as a true professional seemed disappointed that the moles had indeed triggered the traps but escaped to dig another day. I felt like telling him: "If you think moles are clever, you should meet the rats round here - they want talks with the Scottish Nationals."

More rats

My husband is away for 18 days this month - February is particularly bad that way. Needless to say because he is back and forth to London, the cars have started acting up. The engine warning light came on in one of them and the driver's seat broke in the other. Monday morning, I loaded all the children into the Volvo, shovelled in two book bags, two reversible school coats and a packed Lightning McQueen lunch box, handed my daughter a plastic horse, threw in a handbag and my own Barbour jacket and clambered into the front seat. I am short. My husband is tall. To get into the car when I have been driving it, he mutters something about "bloody munchkins" and ratchets the seat back. When he has been driving it, I climb in, sit down and have to pull on the metal handle under the seat which then careers forward. Not Monday though - the seat stayed where it was, way back on its haunches. I heaved on the handle some more. I attempted to bounce the seat up and down with determined vigour while heaving on the handle as the children watched with the usual rapt attention they display to anything on television or Mummy whenever she heads for the brink of sanity on skates. I started "pogo"ing on the seat in a frenzy, pulling the handle up so hard it hurt my back - nothing. I took a moment to consider whether I could grow my legs - difficult. I considered whether I could indeed reach the pedals if I perched on the edge of my seat and extended my legs to their maximum stretch and sustain it for the 10-mile round journey - did not think so. I unpacked and repacked three children and sundry deitris into the Saab, cursing and whimpering gently that my back hurt. I thought: "No wonder we are always the last into school." We drove very carefully along the lanes - the engine warning light is usually the signal the Saab intends to break down and needs to be taken to the garage. I ignored it. I figured if I did not notice the light, the car would keep working and amazingly it did. I am going to try that again.

Then last night driving home as the road dips down and cuts between a farmhouse on one side and barns on the other, clouds of dense black smoke drifted from between the old stone buildings of the farmyard, across the road and away into the fields. As we went by, I looked between the outbuildings to see a vehicle in flames, its passenger door gaping open. This is big news in Northumberland. We drove on by and I thought: "I don't want to watch the local TV news programme only to be told that some poor soul burnt to ash trying to get out the truck as happy go lucky neighbours headed for home, clucking: "That looked nasty"." As we turned round, there was a loud bang from where the small inferno was raging, the light from the fire drenching the old stone buildings surrounding it and colouring the night sky; we parked and I walked up to the farmhouse. I knocked on the back door. I began to feel slightly silly. I thought: "I am sure they know there is a car burning out in the farmyard." A woman answered the door. I introduced myself. I said: "I'm sure you know this but there is a car on fire in your yard." Her husband appeared. They said they did know and that another farmer who had been doing some contracting for them, had told them his pick-up truck had caught fire in the yard. They seemed very relaxed about it all. As I got back to the car, a fire-engine full of volunteer firemen drove up and started unwinding hoses and suddenly there was even more smoke everywhere and the fire was out.

I was told today the farmer who owned the truck, noticed a glow from behind the dashboard and three minutes later the Nissan Nevada pick-up was in flames. No one was hurt. I have a theory. I think it was the rats. They were probably sending a message: "More cheese or the tractor gets it."

Spa Spa Away Land

I went to a spa for a break. It cost about the same as a week’s holiday for the family but it was for two nights and all mine. It is true to say that I have not been to a proper spa in years. I do not really know why I abandoned the “I deserve it” spa philosophy that served me so well throughout my youth. Perhaps it was the fact I gave up admiring myself when naked and what with my profound middle age and the responsibilities of three children, I decided there was only so much to be done without a scalpel and I might as well save the money and put it towards my pension plan. Or spend it on Chablis. Anyway, courtesy of the fact I appeared to have wrecked both body and mind writing the book, I decided I would crawl away for a couple of nights and relax in the watery lap of luxury.

The hotel and spa complex I went to was so expensive it has its own helicopter landing pad. I thought there was a chance someone famous might be staying but there were no celebrities that I could see unless you count the woman who looked like Sharon Osbourne who carried round Sharon Osbourne’s autobiography with her at all times. I do not however think she was Sharon Osbourne because she would not need to read her own book. It took me a little while to adapt to schlepping around in waffled-cotton with smiling shuggies attending to my every need. At least a minute and a half. They give you the waffle-cotton robe when you arrive along with plastic flip-flops. I liked the robe – I hated the flip-flops probably because of my fish blood. I have not looked very closely but I believe my toes to be webbed if the acute discomfort involved in wearing flip-flops is anything to go by. The nice girl giving me the induction tour found me waffle slippers instead. I think she decided I might become a health and safety issue after I tried persuading my toes to live on one side of the flip-flop all bunched together and cling on to the edge while sliding one foot then the other forward without lifting them from the floor. Does not work. Slightly dangerous in fact. I just hope she did not hear about the fact about half an hour after she left me I walked into the men’s changing room. Right in. Luckily there was just one man blowdrying his hair in the mirror. I figured he was probably gay because I am not sure heterosexual men use blowdriers in spas. He also looked slightly annoyed at my intrusion rather than pleased.

All in all, I liked my spa break very much. Particularly the hydrotherapy pool which is a warm turquoise pool with a volcano of water in the middle. You cling on to a bar and stand in the volcano while water pummels you from every direction you can think of and some you hope other people don’t think of if they happen to see you standing there smiling. I imagine the feeling to be much the same as standing up and riding two horses, one foot resting on each saddle, butt naked while firemen hose you down as you ride past. I think I have had a dream like that. Every now and then a handful of water would reach up and hit you across the face but then again that does take your mind off your wobbly bits. My only real caveat is that spas are not for the shortsighted. If you wear glasses, swimming is difficult and you steam up in the jaccuzi – which can be a good thing depending who is in there with you. If you wear contact lenses though, you cannot fall asleep when you have your treatments - which can also be a good thing if you have a tendency to wake up with a snort which your beauty therapist pretends not to notice. On my way back to reality and the railway station, my cheery taxi driver informed me Michael Barrymore has stayed there. Personally, I would not be entirely happy sitting around a swimming pool with Michael Barrymore but maybe that is just me.

Party time

Went to the party at a village hall on Saturday night. Did a lot of washing up. I mean a lot. Dinner for around 55 people is a lot of washing up but I felt obliged. There is a tradition in my family that if you go to someone's house for lunch or dinner you wash up afterwards. I think it is in small print somewhere in the Catholic housewives' handbook - "A good guest washes up after themselves". It comes somewhere between: "Do not commit adultery with the priest" and "Remember to take your temperature." After I finished scouring the last pan, I went out to the party proper and sat down with a whoomph on one of the red velveteen seats to catch my breath and admire the ceilidh dancing. I had been sitting down for about five minutes when a merrymaker came up to me and said: "Not joining in?" I felt like saying: "I am sitting down for the first time in an hour and a half. Exactly how joined in do you want me to be?" I did eventually dance. I hoisted my two-year-old daughter to balance on my boots, she reached up her arms, turned her smiling face to the skies and we walzed. Her tartan-netted party dress frothing between and around my legs, small hands in mine we twirled and turned. A mother and daughter in time. There must have been music.

Squeaky Clean

My life gets more glamorous as each day passes. First a rat takes up residence in the car and sets up a kebab shop or whatever it is that it is doing in there, I then spent this morning cleaning the men's urinals in the village hall. Friends are having a party tomorrow night and wanted everything spick and span so we set up a little cleaning party. I like blitzkreig cleaning - an every now and then full on assault, high tech chemical weaponry, does-not-happen-too-often-but-when-it-does-you-know-about it approach. I do not like the "little bit every day to keep on top of it" sort of cleaning. If I have to do that, I become very resentful and start muttering to myself like a crazy lady. Cleaning men's urinals is somehow far yukkier though than cleaning a ladies loo. In posh hotels in South Africa, they keep ice and lemon in them. I rather like that idea. I contemplated suggesting we do the same thing for the party tomorrow night but I am not sure we could keep the trough topped up with enough ice. Perhaps we could arrange a working party with the rats?

Rats

So I finished the book I was writing and sent it through to the publisher's midnight Sunday, felt briefly relieved on Monday then plunged into an all-time low yesterday for some reason to do with "letting go". I woke up this morning and thought: "I really have to get a grip - it is a good thing to have finished not a bad thing." I got up, made porridge for the baby and the four-year-old, poured cornflakes for the six-year-old, made myself a cup of tea and drank it while I pretended to eat my own porridge. I looked up - 8.15am way too late in the scheme of things. I thought: "Packed lunch." Unusually the lunch boxes were in the car so I clambered into wellies, found the keys and went out to the car. One packed lunch box was fine. The other packed lunch box had been chewed by a rat. There is no way it was a mouse. There was a hole the size of a tennis ball in the bottom and both sides had been shredded. Not just a rat then, a hungry rat. I said: "Oh my God." I said it again. I picked it up and held it out in front of me. I said: "Oh my God." I turned it round gingerly in case the rat was still in it. It was not still in it but I said: "Oh my God" again anyway. I turned back to the car, reached in for one school coat then the other - I shook them both out. I carefully extracted one blue nylon book bag then the other. I slammed the car door shut, collapsed against it and said "Oh my God" again. This is what happens when you live in the country. I then realised although we have another car in which I could drive the children to school, it was blocked in by the Ratmobile. I said: "Oh my God" and climbed into the Ratmobile. I thought: "If I see a rat, I am going to be out of this car so damn fast." I reversed it down the lane and out on to the road much as Steve McQueen would have done if was still alive and did not think much of rats as navigators. I am not entirely surprised the car has rats. Presumably one weedled its way in through a hole or worse still, nibbled its way in. Thinking about it there was a brief spell when the keys went missing again, maybe a forager rat filched them and got a spare set cut and they let themselves in. A month or so ago, the farmer knocked down the barn behind us and we have been parking in the farmyard. I imagine there are quite a few homeless rodents around. It is hardly surprising if one or two have taken refuge in a handy car. Needless to say my husband was in London. I do not know if I can bear to empty the car out before he gets back. When he does, I may just say: "Darling I have a present for you. It is in the car. See if you can find it."

Cherry Tree Lane

Occasionally, in the top class of my convent prep school, you were "chosen" - allowed to leave afternoon class, walk prideful down the corridor past the holy statues, through the empty assembly hall with its waxed parquet floor - a picture of a suffering saint gazing heavenward - then into the wiped clean, spick span kitchen. As a last huzzah, the dinner lady would leave a tray with a linen cloth set for tea. A china cup of course. You and your fellow good girl pupil boiled a kettle, poured scalding water into the teapot then with infinite care carried the tea to a nun. I say a nun. I cannot quite remember the who's and why's of the ritual. Only that it was, like all good rituals, entirely sacred. But if I cannot remember who swallowed the tea, I can remember the way the kettle always boiled too fast.

For a while on those afternoons, as we waited in the kitchen, my friend and I talked about Mary Poppins. Did more than talk - tried to summon her, closing our eyes and wishing hard. Confusing our musicals, we clicked our heels and turned around, quite three times. The perfect number. To my surprise she never came. Perhaps she thought the nuns would burn her as a witch. The only apparition good Catholic girls prayed for then was the most Virgin Mary - mother not the nannying kind.

Yesterday as we travelled in the car, I put on a crackly tape of Julie Andrews to quiten down the kids and growled: "Listen." I listened too, sang along and thought: "At what point though did I stop being the plait-headed girl so desperate for a spoonful of sugar? At what point did I become the self obsessed Banks parents, the father grim and work-obsessed, the mother ditzy and political?" I think I am both, truth be told and that cannot be good. I would rather, given any sort of choice, plait up my hair, close tight my eyes, pirouette and hope that wishes would come true.

Do or diet

I have never really tried to diet before - I was never sufficiently bothered to count or weigh what I ate and who wants to get weighed in company? You might as well have "Life's victim" tattoed on your forehead. Ever since the baby girl though I have been bigger than I want to be. I blame having children certainly not biscuits. I still have a natural body weight - the natural body weight of a fat lass. That's not entirely true but I am definitely "packing" at the moment and when you are short that is not a good look. The problem I have discovered is that even thinking about going on a diet made me want to eat my head. I thought: "I know I won't rush into anything I will buy a diet book." Even better, the diet book had a whole list of things you had to buy such as health supplements. Now I may not be any good at dieting or for that matter exercise but shopping is a cinch. I flicked through the book and tried out a few recipes which for some reason are full of double cream and mayonnaise. What this means is that I am eating what I would normally eat while snacking on full-fat diet food and increased cake rations because I am suddenly conscious that I am hungry. I think I might just "lose" the book and buy an elasticated skirt.

Crisis number 358

The five-year-old is just out the other end of another vomiting marathon courtesy of his stomach migraine. The car was repaired after its Christmas breakdown and was full of petrol. Before my husband left for London, he made a tour of inspection to check that none of the tires were flat. He said: "Right. I don't see what can go wrong this time."

That was yesterday at about 11am, shortly before he climbed on his train. At 8pm, I discovered that we did not have any water in half the house - that is to say the family bathroom upstairs and the shower room downstairs. Not a dribble. I cursed and eventually went to bed where I lay awake for most of the night listening to gale force winds storming around the house and banging their fists on the roof. Surprisingly the water problem had not mended itself this morning so after an earlier than usual school run (in case any trees were down) I rang the farmer who owns the barn behind us and the land around us. For historic reasons, the water (that was missing) is connected to the farm's supply. He said he would call the builder who is building him a new barn and make sure something had not been turned off. Unusually there were no workmen about probably because of the severe winds. I rang my husband. He said: "You are kidding." Then he said: "There's a stopcock."

In my experience there is always a stopcock and it is nowhere you know about. He told me it was in the farmyard so I levered open the door into the ferocious wind and staggered out. There was a small metal lid in the farmyard. I went back in and armed myself with a potato peeler and a spatula,levered open the door again and went back outside. I slid the potato peeler into a retangular hole on the lid and manouevred it off with the help of the spatula. There was no stopcock visible. Instead there was a lot of dirty looking water. I went back into the kitchen to get a bin bag. Because I needed a binbag, I had run out. If I had not needed a binbag I would have opened the door under the sink and a roll would have fallen out. Instead I found the largest carrier bag I could from Christmas and went back out. I knelt in the mud and plunged my arm down into the murky water. I thought: "I do hope there isn't some sort of deep sea rat down here." I thought: "This water is so cold my arm is going to drop off." I could feel something but nothing I could turn. I pulled my arm back up and counted the fingers on my hand. They were all still there.

I went back in and rang the local water board for complicated conversations about pipework and they agreed to send someone. Meanwhile the farmer's builder arrived with his builder's mate. I went out to them and the builder told me he had checked the stopcock and turned it a few times, that they had checked the farm and the farm still had water which implied the problem was our end. They went away. The man from the water board arrived in a van, took the plumbing equivalent of a stethoscope to the tap in the kitchen and the tap upstairs. Apparently neither of them have a cough bad enough for antibiotics. He went out to the stopcock and did something to it then came back in. He wanted to talk to the farmer. I said: "The farmer said it's fine. They haven't turned anything off." He really wanted to talk to the farmer or was going to wash his hands of the problem (had there been any water that is). I rang the farmer and let them talk. Their conversation did not get me any water. I rang my husband and let the man from the water board talk to him.That did not get me any water either. The man from the water board went away. Before he left, he said: "Get a plumber". Meanwhile the farmer arrived with his farm manager and the builder. I am not sure what they did with the stopcock - I figured they were grown men and it was their business. It did not get me any water. They went away. Finally the plumber arrived. He went up to the loft, checked the tank, did something to a different stopcock then said: "The pump's not working. Where's the fuse box." I found the fuse box (it is attached to the wall and cannot go anywhere which is always helpful). There was one small black switch which I flicked and there was water.

Bears with sore heads

Yesterday my boy turned seven. Thank God. Thank God it's all over. The cards, the presents, the relentless bloody joy of it all. I do not have to have a good time now till November when it is my daughter's birthday. I held out against a large children's birthday party this year on the grounds the builders needed our money more than we did. Instead, we drove for an hour to the nearest city and saw a movie about singing chipmunks. (I have never understood why mothers do not get a spa retreat day on their children's birthdays let alone have to go to movies with chipmunks in them.)Before the film, we went for a Chinese buffet. The boys wanted to eat sausage and chips which was not really the idea of taking them there; we compromised on sausage, chips and prawn crackers. Half the restaurant's clientele was clinically obese. (I say this with a certain sympathy as a woman who is a dress size larger than she was last year. I am blaming the water.) It made me wonder if we should all perhaps stop going to buffet restaurants where the management allows you to go back as many times as you want for refills. There is a sign at one end of the counters: "Please be considerable when taking the food. Anyone abusing it by wasting food, be asked to pay a supplement of £5 per portion." There was also a warning that: "Customers who take large portions of crabs are not being considerate to the other diners, this dish is limited, please share it with everyone." (Disappointingly, "crabs" was off yesterday or perhaps it had been eaten up by the inconsiderate.) Anyway, today is a home day, later I will take down the Christmas cards, put away the new toys on shelves and then all we have to do is take down the 12 foot Christmas tree without breaking anything or anyone.

Happy New Year

I always review my year. Usually though I do it either on New Year's Eve at dinner or on a beach walk the next day with my husband and my gay best boyfriend; we say what was good and what was bad about the year, mark it out of 10 and write our resolutions in the sand (you might as well start the way you mean to go on.) This year though my best boyfriend was spending New Year with his partner and we had London diva and her family up and it completely went out of my head. Why was that? Is it that I do not care about the past any more? (Unlikely, I am catholic and have been in therapy, I virtually live in the past.) Do I think there is no room for improvement? (Obviously a far more difficult one to answer.) Or was it just that I got so busy - my four-year-old turned five on New Year's Eve, my six-year-old turns seven on Friday and my parents are still with us. I figure I can relax on Saturday( the third Saturday in September that is).

So the year. An extraordinary one.
The bad things included:
*tears and fears my six-year-old son was not happy at school. The situation was resolved but it took time.
*ongoing anxiety about my five-year-old's stomach migraines.
*intermittent loneliness and the blues about where I was and what I was doing.
*missing London, London, London.
*the suspicion I am getting really old.

The good things included:
*blogging and making friends in cyberspace.
*the chance to write a book (- the money was quite nice too while I had it. Builders are an expensive habit).
*living in the renovated cottage with space to swing a cat. (Shame my cat did a runner pretty much as soon as we arrived in Northumberland).
*seeing the good things about life in Northumberland.
*recognising I had, despite myself perhaps, made friends here.

So the year then is a 10. (I always mark a year higher than my husband. Last year, we were living in Northumberland at his instigation because he wanted to live here, we had a beautiful baby daughter who had just turned one, he had bought himself a new car and he gave the year six and a half. Six and a half! He is lucky he made it past the bongs.)

As for resolutions
*to shout less and be more patient.
*to revise the blog and make it more whizz bang (this one might take a while).
*to revise my life and make it more whizz bang (alternatively to get more sleep).
Actually, I just remembered why I did not do the review and resolutions, I think I was too busy being anxious about making the decision about whether we stay in Northumberland or return to London. The decision is made - I just do not want to say it out loud yet.

Once more into the breeks

Walked into the pub where "the guns" that is to say the men doing the shooting were meeting. There were about a dozen guns along with a gamekeeper and deputy gamekeeper, "beaters" (who flush out the game) and "pickers up" with dogs (who find the birds which have been brought down). Walking into a pub full of men when you are wearing tweed breeks that make you look like you ate a rhino is daunting - the daylight equivalent of that dream where you realise you are naked in the office. The shoot starts with coffee and bacon and sausage sandwiches and there was much shaking of hands and making of introductions before the alcohol came out at around 9.30 am. It is my belief that country folk have larger livers than townsfolk due to the inordinate amount of alcohol they consume while still remaining sober. Ideally the more dangerous the past time, the more alcohol is consumed.
Riding a horse? "Pass the hip flask."
Zipping along on the quad bike - without a helmet? "The bar is in that cardboard box on the back of the bike over there."
Firing a loaded weapon? "Would you like whipped cream on your Tia Maria coffee?"
There was at least an administrative reason for this first round of alcohol - the local Percy special of cherry brandy and whisky. Thinking about it, there often is a reason for a drink in the country; reasons which include "I'm here" and "Well, if you're offering."

The pewter cups extracted by the captain of the shooting syndicate from a tan leather "field bar" were all engraved with numbers on their bottoms. The idea is the chap knocks back the drink and turns the cup over to read its number which tells him where he is standing in the line of guns. Anyone impatient to know his number raises the cup high in front of him as if to make an extravagant toast and peers underneath it. (If it were not the first drink of the day, I imagine a lot of them might get rather wet.)

After the number draw and the safety lecture from the gamekeeper which included strict advice to "keep plenty of blue sky under the target", we all piled outside into the 4x4s and headed off into the cold and misty morning. I was extraordinarily glad of the extraordinary number of layers I had on although I wished I had a balaclava as the only part of me exposed was my face which felt as if the skin was being carved off my skull by a pick axe. There were to be four "drives". A drive is where the chaps with the guns stand in their line across a field. The beaters have flags (made of metal poles and plastic feed sacks) as well as dogs and very loud voices. They walk along making a terrible racket and chase the birds out from the coppices or game plots where they feed. The captain explained that the "sport" is to shoot the bird high in the sky - about 30 yards up. I would have thought there was more sport if the bird had its own gun but I did not like to make the point in case he shot me.


It is considered not the done thing to shoot your neighbour's birds, his dog or indeed the neighbour himself although these things happen. A guest of one of the regular members of the syndicate shot the gamekeeper's black Labrador in the belief it was a fox in the grass. (You are not supposed to shoot something you cannot see.) The gamekeeper said: "The dog had a hundred pellets in his face. They had to shave his head to get them all out - he looked like a dartboard." I said: "What was he called?" He said: Bracken." I thought: "Well it wasn't going to be Lucky."

The captain and I headed out into a barley field to our allotted spot towards the end of the line. He nodded towards the strip of grass growing wild at the edge of the field. Farmers no longer plough right to the hedges, they leave a border of uncultivated land which has encouraged the English grey partridge as well as wild pheasant. As we stood on our spot, I tried to time my conversation so it was not a distraction but every time I started to talk a bird would fly overhead and he would shoot at it and miss. I kept saying: "Sorry, I'll shut up" and he kept saying: "That's fine". I thought: "I really don' t want to irritate this man." After the drive, there was a pause for a chat and bramble whisky, made from sugar, whisky and brambles you gather from the hedges. (I am never making jam again.)

The next drive we were in a better position and I tried to let my host concentrate on his shooting. We were next to a thicket and on a slight incline but the shooting was complicated by telegraph wires that striped the sky. Four years ago, someone shot through them and more than 103 phones were off in the village for a week. It allegedly cost "The Man Who Shot The Phone" £20,000 to repair the lines. I looked across to the gun next to us - a local dentist. My own dentist is an hour's drive away. I watched him fire into the sky and a pheasant cartwheel down to land close to his feet. It fluttered up from the ground, collapsed back, attempted to fly again and fell back in a flurry of beating wings. He stepped across, leaned down and broke its neck. I thought: "I am so not having you for my dentist."


Leaving to one side the slightly messy fact that birds are being shot and killed, the captain explained that the guns are keen to avoid unnecessary suffering. Soft-mouthed golden retrievers find the Chinese ring-necked pheasant, French red-legged partridge and woodcock which have been shot and if they are still alive, the picker up holds them by both wings, they stretch out their neck and are knocked on the back of the neck, just below the head, with a big stick. If I was a bird and someone shot me and I then plummeted to the ground from a great height, was found and carried along in a wet doggy mouth, I would definitely figure my number was up about the time I saw the guy lean over me with the big knobbly stick.

We broke again after the second drive this time for a Tia Maria coffee. I needed it. An overloaded picker up handed me a pheasant to take back to the cars. I tried to behave as if there was nothing unusual in walking along holding a dead pheasant by the neck. I was slightly less casual when the damn thing twitched. Eeeeeeuuuuuuow. I needed a drink to wash away my complicity. I was told that it was indeed dead but sometimes nerve impulses or tics made the birds twitch for some while after. I think I too would acquire a nervous tic if someone shot at me with a 12 bore.

During the third drive in scrub land by a wood my host let me hold his gun. I did not know how my husband would feel about me holding another man's gun but he was not there so I did it anyway. The captain stood close behind me to stop the recoil knocking me to the ground. My arms trembled slightly with the weight of the barrel. I contemplated saying. "You have a very big gun" but I thought my husband really would not like that. I fired his Beretta twice. I missed. To fire a gun, you stand with it tucked tightly into your shoulder. You slide off the safety catch, look along the barrel for the brass bead at the end of it, sweep the gun around, aiming ahead of the target and pull the trigger, still following the direction in which the bird is flying. It makes a boom noise. I did not hit a bird; I did get a Percy special as a consolation prize.

I spent the fourth drive with a picker up and her three golden retrievers. We were some way behind the guns in a field behind a wood. As we walked towards the wood following one of the dogs who had bounded in after a free fall pheasant, there was a pitter pattering sound. I thought: "Is that rain?" It was not rain. It was the sound of shot falling through leaves. I said to the picker up I was with: "Why is there shot falling through the woods when we are behind the guns?" She said: "They turn round to shoot at the birds sometimes." If there had not been so much mulch on the ground, I would have walked back on my knees. Fortunately I could revive myself with the damson gin.

Shooting of course costs money. A decent gun costs around £1,000. A very good gun can cost £7,000. The men I went out with included farmers, a solicitor, the dentist, a chef and a couple of financial advisers from the local market town as well as the captain who runs his own game farm selling 80,000 game birds to estates. They band together to buy six to seven days shooting of around 150 birds through the autumn and into the winter. Another bigger syndicate of bankers fly in from Monaco, Guernsey and London, one of them in a private jet. These men shoot for around 14 days.

The cock pheasant is a riot of colour, a blue and green head, red circle drawn around his eyes, white neck, bronze and copper brown body with a duck egg blue close to the wings. Partridge are a more discrete grey and buff while woodcock are a small bird with a long beak. The dead birds are brought back noosed and attached to a strap called a bird carrier, or in a bag if they are a bit mushy, or held by the neck between the fingers of your hand with the head tucked into your palm. Back at the cars, a hen and a cock pheasant are lashed together on green string then dangled from the cross hatched iron bars of a trailer. Their heads knock together in consolation.


The guns brought down 196 birds. The gamekeeper extracted four small pin feathers from the wings of a pair of woodcock - traditionally you get them when you shoot your first woodcock and stick them in your hat - hence the expression "feather in your cap". He gave them to me and I shall treasure them - it is some time since I have had a feather in my cap. I can see the attraction of shooting. It is sociable and outdoors, there is free booze and bang bang toys. Of course, I am not a bird. As a bird, I would be less keen. They do occasionally get their revenge. The gamekeeper was once knocked out by a cock pheasant falling from the sky. The gamekeeper who did not have a dog called Lucky that is.

Poop Poop

Am singularly lacking in festive cheer. Thought: "I know. I'll go shooting." I have never been shooting before unless you count a couple of times at school and at fairs at those irritating ducks that paddle by regardless of the popping corks around them.

A friend set me up with a local shoot. I knew I needed some gear; I have a rough idea of what people who go shooting wear because I see them on a morning as I drive by on the school run - a lot of tweed, strange knickerbockers and cartridge belts. I tried to borrow what I needed but all I could muster was a waterproof coat the size of a tent and a pair of hunting socks. This particular combination might have made me quite popular on the shoot but I thought I might catch a chill. I went into a nearby country shop. The very charming man who owns it is a keen fan of shooting. He obviously approved of my decision to give it a go - I do not think he was influenced by the fact he was about to earn a walloping amount of money.

The "outfitter" held up a pair of the aforementioned knickerbockers or breeks as they are technically termed. They are supposed to finish just under the knee. This pair finished at my ankles. I think I must be shorter than the average "gun". He found me a smaller pair. When I say smaller - I mean leg length. Silk lined, tweed knickerbockers feel fabulous on, warm and roomy but they do nothing to minimise your backside. He handed me a checked shirt. I hated it immediately but it was in brushed cotton and I decided I could live with it if it kept me warm. I baulked at both the green and the orange lambswool jumpers on the grounds you had to draw a line somewhere but I decided I needed the fitted Barbour jacket because my only outdoor alternative is my fabuous floor length coat or a very scruffy tan suede jacket which is falling apart at the seams. The Barbour belts at the waist. I did not think this would be a brilliant idea bearing in mind the knickerbockers underneath but amazingly it worked very well. It was slightly World War Two ( - the Nazis not the good guys). I thought I was done until he handed me a tweed Gainsborough cap (same tweed as the knickerbockers). I looked a picture. I said to the outfitter: "I don't want to look like I'm cross-dressing you know." He laughed. He said: "Not at all." I am not sure if he realised what I meant by "cross-dressing". I think it is possible he thought I meant it made me look slightly mean rather than entirely fragrant. I bought the lot and the next morning climbed into my gear not forgetting the borrowed green hunting socks which are long and which you tie under the knee and over the cuff of the knickerbocker with a tasselled yellow gaiter. You then bend the sock back over the gaiter but allow the tassel to fall outside your wellington boots. I thought there was a chance I looked like a Principal Boy (absurd, cute, sexually ambiguous) and there was a chance I looked like Mr Toad (tweedy, green and fat). I came down to the kitchen. My six-year-old said: "Mummy - you look stupid." My four-year-old could not speak for laughing; the baby girl said "Where's Mummy?" and began to wail. My husband looked me up and down. He said: "Exactly how much did that lot cost?"

Home is where the heart is

When we got the car to a garage and the tree home, it turned out it was 12 feet high. It did not look that big in the forest. As my husband manhandled it into a stand and screwed it into place, he said: "I'm so glad you chose this tree and not me." Luckily we could squeeze it into the lounge in the arches where we have a vaulted ceiling. It is so large it reminds me a little of the one they have in Trafalgar Square. I keep expecting to walk in and find the Salvation Army gathered round it singing "Oh Come All Ye Faithful."

It is just as well it is so big, it may take my mother and father's minds off how cold it is in there. Their own house is so warm you could grow orchids in it. They have roaring artificial fires and central heating which they like to use at the same time. They are careful to close doors after themselves and have double glazed windows which are sealed so tight that I believe in the event of a nuclear war, they would be entirely safe from radiation sickness and hold out just as long as their tinned products. I wanted them to be equally as warm here but the underfloor heating is a disaster. The plumber has been back, the electrician has been back, the builder has been back but it is still not right. There is nothing more we can do before Christmas. Meanwhile we have shipped in four heaters to take the worst of the chill off the air.

The "arches" consists of a cold and tree-filled lounge, an even colder bedroom and a showerroom off the bedroom. The idea is everything is at ground level for my mother and father and they can stay with us for longer periods but still have their own space when they need it. I am irritated that it is not perfect for them. They arrived yesterday and last night my husband lit a fire in there. They sat together on the new sofa; the lights glowing on the Biggest Christmas Tree in the World; my mother sipping her tea. I said: "I'm sorry the heating doesn't work properly." She said: "Actually, it's just right."

"How lovely are your branches"

In London, we used to go to a flower market , buy bagels, drink coffee and pay a nice coster man for a 6 foot tree "guaranteed not to drop its needles eva." Last year, we drove out to a farm and looked round a barn where dozens of trees dangled from the rafters and all I could think of were hanged men swaying gently in the breeze. Quite took the edge of the festive jollity. This year, my husband went in the Saab with the four-year-old and I went in the Volvo with the six-year-old, baby girl and a neighbour; we drove alongside hoar frosted fields to a forest where we stumbled around avoiding wolves and looking for the perfect tree. I was slightly worried we might all freeze to death or get eaten while my husband decided which one he was willing to take home with him. (Chosing a tree is one of those things he takes an inordinate amount of time over. Rapt, he will burble endlessly about size and symmetry and the straightness of the trunk - I think it must be a male thing.) With a whole forest to chose between, I thought that if the weather and animals did not kill us first, we risked being there till Easter. Time for decisiveness.

"That one looks lovely," I said pointing to a tree. (It was a tree - how different can one be from the next?) My husband eyed it with some scepticism but it was straight and true and did not run away. We took turns to saw it down with a handy jagged toothed hacksaw and, in between, sang carols. I could not hear other families singing carols but I want my children to have memories of Christmas to last them a lifetime. Memories like "Do you remember how you always used to embarass us by singing carols when we chopped down the Christmas tree? By the way, why couldn't we just buy a tree like normal people?" We dragged it back to the car, paid £15 to a chilly looking man in a metal container who bagged it up for us in a large net before strapping it to the car with twine. It was dark by the time we had done.


My husband pulled off first and I followed closely behind. We went on back roads for a while to avoid drawing attention to the tree. We pulled out on to the A1. (This road is the main route along the East Coast of England between London and Scotland. Long sections in Northumberland are single carriageway. Juggernauts use it. Tractors and caravans use it. Everyone who lives up here and wants to go anywhere uses it. No one from the Department for Transport has ever used it or it would all be dual carriageway. To turn off it, you have to cross high speed traffic coming in the opposite direction. Depending on the junction, you put the brakes on thinking something like: "Dear God let the car behind notice I have stopped in the middle of the road and don't let the car behind him try to overtake right now."



We were about two thirds of the way home when my husband started signalling right, slowed down then came to a halt in a narrow shadow island in the middle of the road. I drew up behind him. He put his hazard lights on and sat there. Lorries and cars hurtled by. I thought: "He must be turning right because the tree is about to fall off and has put his hazards on to warn everyone." But he did not turn right. We waited to see what would happen next. Nothing happened. He did not move off. My friend cautiously opened her door and got out of our car. She went up to his. More lorries hurtled by. I thought: "I have two children in this car. If a lorry piles into the back of me, we will all die." She sidled back. She said: "He's broken down." She went back to my husband and together they extracted my four-year-old from the passenger side of the Saab and ran across the road with him. I thought: "OK, that is one of them safe." I pulled my car across and drove a little way down the farm track. My husband said: "The engine is dead. I will have to push the car across the carriageway." I thought: "The children are alright and now he's going to get himself killed and we're going to be right here to see it. The car has a Christmas tree on top; the story is going to be "Tragic Dad in Christmas Tree Pile-Up Horror." At that moment, a 4X4 drew up and a farmer got out to see if he could help. He drove back onto the A1 and swung his car round so its full beam headlights lit up our stranded Saab. He got out and crossed into the middle of the road; he pushed our car off the A1 while my husband steered. I thought: "Next year, I'm going fibre optic."

Some kinda dame

Apparently the Savoy sale is upon us. Staying there last week felt slightly strange. Perhaps it was the fact I should by rights, have been at the Travelodge or perhaps it was the sales tags that hung from the furniture in the room. We stayed in Room 662. It felt entirely authentic as if you had ratchetted back in time. I looked out of the window, half expecting London to be in black and white. I thought: "Any minute now a man in a fedora is going to come in with a gun in his hand and a crooked smile. He is going to make me hate him. Then he is going to make me love him. Finally, he is going to walk away into the shadows and never look back even though his heart is breaking." I threw myself on the bed (Lot 2117, a pollard oak and ebonised bedroom suite in the Art Deco style, comprising of a double bed with headboard, a bedside cabinet and a dressing table 196cm wide:£800- £1,200) to wait for him. I got up again and went across to Lot 2119 - a pollard oak circular occasional table in the Art Deco style, 60cm diameter and 65cm high (£100 - £150). I slid a cigarette from a silver case, pursed lips any man would be happy to call home, and sat down in Lot 2120 ( a grey upholstered tub chair: £100 - £150). I crossed my long slim legs, the silk making the kind of noise silk makes, thought "Daiquiri" and got up again. I sashayed across to Lot 2118 (a pollard oak and ebonised cabinet in the Art Deco style, 80cm wide x 60cm deep x 171cm high: £300 - £500). I opened the lacquered door and a fat man's body toppled out. I screamed. My husband came in from the bathroom, tousled and slightly damp. He was not wearing a fedora. He did not notice the bullet-ridden body on the floor or the writhing cigarette smoke between us. He said: "Happy darling? "

Postcard from London

Dear Wifey,
For work connected reasons, I have been down in London three times in as many weeks. I had originally planned to fly from Frankfurt to Edinburgh but decided instead to fly into London's City Airport and go to a Xmas party.

My husband met me at the airport. We were to do a very daring thing - have a night away from the children. This was the first night we have spent together and away from the children for three and a half years. (When we went away then, it was for a weekend in a Brighton hotel and we missed them so much we came back early. Even so, we had spent the entire time mooching round toy shops saying "Oooh, let's buy that. They'd love it.") On Wednesday night, my husband said: "We don't need a cab. We'll walk." I did not think that boded well. He took my laptop and I pulled my little case on wheels along the narrow pavements, past the parked cars captive behind metal railings with the Docklands Light Railway track louring above us. My husband pointed to a neon lit sign some way ahead - "City Airport Travelodge". I stopped to consider our journey's destination. I said: "So we are staying at the Travelodge?" He said: "Yes, you said you wanted somewhere convenient and it's only £70." I tugged my wheely case off the pavement and towards the brightly lit entrance. I said: "We've been together for 19 years and sometimes I don't think you know me at all." He said: "Well, this is what I do when I come to London." I said: "And whose fault is that?"

He checked us in; I walked across to the vending machine in the foyer, put in a pound coin and a diet coke slammed into the drawer. I thought: "I think I need more than a diet coke." We took the lift up to the room and pushed open the door as a plane taxied past the window. I heard a roaring noise. I think it was a plane. There is a chance it was the blood in my ears. I put down the case on the floor beside the wardrobe and my handbag on the table in front of the mirror and cracked open the diet coke. It did not make me feel better. I put the kettle on and made a cup of tea. It did not make me feel better. I pulled the pillow length ways so that I could lean against it and sank into the bed. My husband lay down next to me. The weight of his body tipping me into him. I thought: "Could the bed be made of sponge I wonder?" I thought: "It is not so much the wallow in the mattress or the sound of planes or the fact its location seems so desolate - it is more that he thinks that this is what I am worth, what I deserve." I said: "This - is our first night away together in three and a half years and you have brought me to City Airport's Travelodge. The thing I want to do most of all right now, is cry."

I started getting ready for the party and he slipped out. I thought: "Maybe I'm tired from travelling. Maybe it's alright. I'll just get drunk at the party and when I get back, it won't seem so bad." My husband came back into the bedroom, his phone in his hand. He said: "OK I've booked the Savoy. Shall we go now?"
love
Wifey

Postcard from Frankfurt

Dear Wifey,
Went across to Frankfurt to see an old friend who is recovering from an operation. Like me, she moved away aways a couple of years ago because of her husband's job and since her operation has been locked tight into a very Germanic programme of recuperation and rehabilitation. She is very brave about it all - I would winge endlessly: "Meine leg hurtzen lotzen...Ich wolle grossen pillz bitte." While she was at rehab, I went to a Christmas market. Little wooden sheds with carved nativities and an orchard of ribboned baubles, hung about in different colours like so much exotic fruit. They tempted you to lean closer and bite through the glass to taste Christmas sweetness and emptiness. I resisted. I did not think I had the German to explain such behaviour to the police psychiatrist. I caught a cab from the market to the railway station. Is there anything better than a train station in another country? Arching rooves, a station clock at the head of each platform, electronic displays that tell you if only you were to turn up on platform 17 at 16.58pm you could go to Paris Est and then what? Life could begin again. I did not go to Paris Est, instead I got on a train to my friend's house. I was inordinately pleased with myself. I checked on board and a kind fellow traveller told me when to get off. He got off at the same place and walked up the platform ahead of me; I looked around deciding which direction to go and I noticed him hesitate then glance behind him. My friend had said to catch a cab when I got to the station. I remained inordinately pleased with my capacity for independent travelling even though I could not see any taxis at the station. Indeed from what I could see, it was not so much a station as a platform in the heartland of the German suburban night. Luckily, there was a phone box with an advert for a cab company plastered on the back wall. I rang, using my word scraps to say where I was. It was cold and nothing much moved. I stood by the phone box on the street corner. I hummed a few bars of Lilli Marlene. I rang the cab company again - I thought there was an outside chance I had ordered a cup of coffee with milk and no sugar rather than a cab. The taxi controller though seemed quite cross I still had not been picked up. I thought: "I wonder if I am where I think I am?" I began to doubt myself. I really do not want to start doubting myself - God knows where it would end. I walked past the recycling bank, back up to the station. My kind fellow traveller had put me off at the wrong station - instead of Kelkheim, I was in Kelkheim-Muenster. Nothing much happens in Kelkheim-Muenster. I thought: "If I was going to get off at the wrong station, it could at least have been Paris Est."
love
Wifey

All is vanity

I got a glimpse of what life may be like for my husband and by golly, it is not all roses. I presumed, since he was married to me, life overall would be pretty good. But this traipsing up and down to London is not easy. Sometimes he stays with friends and sometimes he stays in hotels. I had to go down to London again this week on business and this time, since I was going down for a dinner which probably would not be over till around midnight, I thought I would stay in a hotel rather than fetch up on a friend's doorstep in the early hours or indeed wander the streets. I booked the hotel on-line in a bid to be more organised. It boasted of a gallery of pictures on its walls and an atmosphere which encouraged travellers to return again and again and was central. Sounded perfect. I congratulated myself on my foresight as I climbed on the train.

I was cutting it fine to make it to the dinner so I decided I would do my make-up en route and change into my frock at the hotel. I spread out my bottles, potions, powders and creams on the table in front of me. There were a lot of them. There were so many I put around two-thirds of the ones I did not immediately need back into the bag. There were still a lot of them. I started work. It took quite a long time. The guard passed me twice. The tea trolley lady also passed me twice. She was about 20 years younger than I am and looked at my collection with a fair degree of interest. I think she understood what I was doing. Virtually anyone else who saw me would have considered me entirely vain. It took forever or at least till Peterborough. I felt like explaining: "It is not a question of vanity. It is merely that I have been ravaged by time." Eventually I finished. I considered the power point under the table. I thought about plugging in my ceramic poker with which I planned to curl my hair. I decided against it, not so much on the grounds I would make even more of a show of myself, more because I thought I might set my bag on fire when I put it away again.

When I arrived at the hotel, I was slightly disappointed at the "gallery of pictures" which had the look of prints you pick up in boxed-up batches at auction at a knock down price because no one else wants them. I collected my key. Usually I travel light, but this time I had shoes, a laptop and half a tonne of girly clart with me which I then had to heave up four narrow flights of stairs to the second floor. I pushed open the door to something that was not so much a room as a stopping-off space in front of a window. Twin beds lay end to end along one wall with a sink like a full stop at the foot of one of them. The strip lighting above the sink did not work. I suddenly realised if I could see a sink, the room did not have a bathroom. I did not know there were any hotel rooms in the centre of London without bathrooms. I sighed deeply and threw my bag down on top of one of the beds.

I had decided to wear ridiculous shoes for the occasion. I am not sure why I decided this. It had something to do with the fact, give or take the odd hunt ball, I do not go out a lot these days. They were black satin stilettos with a droopy bow at the back and shiny silver heels. Looked good. Felt bad. I dressed, primped my hair and tottered down the four flights of stairs and into the London night. I stood on my too high heels by the road for a long time without a smell of a cab. At last I caught sight of a lit-up taxi sign and just at that moment, a couple dashed out of a door further up the road and threw themselves into it. If my heels had been slightly lower I would have run up the road and berated them for being so un-British. As it was, I glared into the blackness of the cab's interior as it passed me by. I am sure it made a big impression on them. I had little alternative. I agony-staggered along and round the corner to a busier road and there, I finally caught a taxi of my own, with a driver who was a jazz drummer in his real life.

By the time I arrived at the restaurant, I was half an hour late. I slid into the bar where a group of people were drinking together. I told the maitre d' the party I was with and he gesticulated to the people by the bar. He took my coat which is black boucled wool with a velvet collar and a lush silk lining. It has a vaguely early nineteenth century look to it and is entirely inappropriate to country living. Since I am very short and it is very long, it risks dragging on the floor but since my heels were so very high and I was in town this particular night, I wore it. As I turned my back to him and he shucked it from my shoulders and gathered it into his arms, he said: "Ah....beautiful". He meant the coat though for a brief moment I thought he meant me. Then he went over to get me a drink from the bar. I stood to one side watching the group. I could not see the one person I was certain would be there. I thought it possible she too was late. I looked at them. Quite a few were slightly over weight. One slightly blowsy woman stared at me as if she did not even have to speak to me to know she did not like me. I collected my drink, smiling sweetly at the maitre d' on the off-chance it had indeed been me and not the coat and walked over to the one black guy in the group standing by himself in the middle of the room. I held out my hand and introduced myself. He introduced himself. I nodded as if I might have heard of him. I said: "And who is it you're with again?" "The Metropolitan Police," he said and gesticulated to his colleagues. "Right," I said. "I won't be a minute" and sidled away.

I eventually found the right dining room and dinner was very nice although a part of me thought: "I wonder if I would have been happier with the police?". There were about 17 or so people at the table including the person I knew and another young woman who, years ago, had come into the newsroom I was working in for a couple of weeks work experience. She is very talented, already successful and will doubtless be even more so. I said hello and reminded her she had worked with me when she was a university student. She said something to the effect that the fact I remembered was "amazing" when it was so long ago. I waited for her to say: "I remember you, too - you were great." She did not say it.

When I worked in that newsroom, I was regularly assigned the young work experience folk on the grounds that I would not eat them up and spit them out. I listened to who they were and what they wanted and tried to be very nice to them. I wanted them to be useful, to shine; tried to get their name in print and make it a positive experience for them. Naively and entirely selfishly, I also wanted them to remember me as someone who had been kind, briefly significant even, as I advised them with immense wit and wisdom on how to make their particular dream come true. Sometimes they would come in and be useless. Occasionally, they would be great. This girl came in and was great. Over pear and almond tart with a scoop of chocolate ice-cream, I tried again, a little more desperately, for that elusive validation of my past. I wanted to say: "So do you remember me?" I did not. Instead I said: "So do you remember anything about it all?" She said gosh yes. She mentioned one colleague then struggled for the name of another in arts. Maybe she did remember me - I could not tell. I finished off my ice-cream and licked the spoon. I thought: "I hope this isn't what motherhood turns out to be - you think you're making a difference that'll last them a lifetime and actually, after a while, they can't remember who you are."

The North-South divide

We have to decide whether we stay living here or move back to London at the turn of the year. That is the timetable we set ourselves. Whether we end up staying or go back (I was going to say "home" there - oops), I am feeling increasingly frustrated by the bad news stories coming out of the North-East.

Twenty to 25 years ago, it was all pit closures and heavy industry closing with a constant stream of job losses in shipbuilding and engineering. No one rolled over and no one gave up - unions fought for jobs, "management" pulled together buy-outs and there was a fierce struggle for American and Japanese investment in car building and the high tech sector. There is still a skills issue in the labour market courtesy of the heritage of unskilled and semi-skilled jobs. But more people are in employment in the region than ever before. The implication behind the stories on Northern Rock, the child benefit debacle and this latest political fandango over David Abrahams is that something is "not quite right" about the North-East. Perhaps they are not as sharp as they are down South; the financiers oblivious to risk, the underpaid poor bloody infantryman following orders - oblivious to the need for security and rigor? As for the eccentric property developer, the conspiracy theories whisper that it might be the Israelis or it might just be that the Labour party of the 1970s is alive and well and living on Tyneside. Cor blimey. I do not think I knew what "community" was till I moved to the North-East. I have found the people to be sharp, funny, immensely decent and infinitely generous. I thought it might be the right time to say so. Perhaps I will open up an account with Northern Rock, pay in my next child benefit cheque and use the interest to send a donation to the Labour Party - in my own name naturally. I wonder if that would help my Northern credentials?

Still in La la land

Went to the doctor's yesterday I still felt so poxy after the fall downstairs. Nauseous, headachey and zip brain activity. He peered into my eyes with a torch which always makes me want to shriek with terror, then made me walk in a straight line which I can never do anyway - drunk, sober, concussed or entirely sane. As a finale, he peered down the back of my pants. Usually I would quite like that but I knew it was not a pretty sight down there. At least, it was a locum. One of the problems living in the country is doctors see you at your very worst and then you get invited out and find yourself sitting down for Sunday lunch with them. You are nibbling your sausage thinking: "Last time we met you were looking up my nose." The doctor said it was not surprising I still felt so bad because the body needed time to recover and to rest after traumatising it. (What is this thing doctors have with "rest". It must save them a fortune on their GP budgets. "I prescribe Rest and a lot of it.") On the way out of the surgery I picked up some leaflets including "Avoiding slips, trips and broken hips - How to avoid falls in the home". The leaflets are aimed at the elderly but then who would pick them up if they said "For klutzes of all ages." Apparently you spend 40 years trying to minimise your cellulite then you hit 65 and have to climb into a "hip protector" which is a giant pair of knickers with concrete pads along each side . According to the leaflet: "Hip protector underwear cuts down the risk of a fracture if you fall" and "You should wear it day and night". I am not sure how my husband will feel if I started wearing hip protector underwear at night although I quite like the idea. It also says to consider a "personal fall alarm system" and if you have a pet "fit a brightly coloured collar so that you can see it more easily and are less likely to trip over it." I do not have a pet anymore but I could make the children wear collars. I got home and said to the girl who helps me with the children: "I am thinking of getting hip protector underwear to save me breaking my hip next time I fall over." She said: "Why don't you just wear a cycle helmet whenever you're at home." One pratfall and suddenly everyone's a comedian.

La la land

I keep having to go lie down in a darkened room. Every now and then my husband says: "I think you need to get your head examined." Mind you he quite often says that. I rang the doctor and he told me you are fine providing you do not vomit twice in the first 24 hours which means you might have a bleed but to get lots of rest, not to work at the computer, drink lots of water and avoid caffeine. I put the phone down and thought: "I can't "not work". I'm on deadline" and then collapsed in a heap on the sofa. My brain has been a wide open, echoey sort of place. I could have stood in it and yelled "Halloooooooo" if I could only have thought what to say. Sometimes words went missing from my sentences and I discovered you can live without them. Sometimes the entire sentence went which is more difficult. Every now and then my husband would ask me a question and I would say "Gobbledi-blah-blah-meeeeurgh" and he would say in a worried sort of voice: "Should I take you to the hospital do you think?" and I would shake my head and say "I can't go to hospital - I'd have to shave my legs." Which proves reason had not entirely deserted me. I have had so much sleep I woke up at 4am this morning and decided I might as well get up and have a bath. I caught a glimpse of my arse in the mirror (usually I try to avoid this view). If the inside of my head looks anything like my backside I am going to be living in La La land for some weeks because it is black and blue. I am also slightly worried that a bang on the head can bring on a personality change. Maybe I will get nicer. That would be a terrible thing to happen.

Heads or tails?

Think I'm concussed. Actually pretty sure I'm concussed. I keep. I keep repeating myself. Did the silliest thing yesterday morning - fell from the top of the stairs to the bottom. I believe my lambskin slippers to be haunted. I had just started to walk down the stairs and suddenly my feet flew up in the air, I crashed down onto my arse, thought "Bugger" then continued to travel bump, bump, bump down the entire length of the stairs. My head slamming onto every stair as I careered down. I think I may have screamed the whole way and was fit for nothing by the time I reached the bottom; just lay there sobbing. Luckily my husband was in the kitchen so he was there to pick me up. Think I may have traumatised the children. I was left with the most terrible headache and a throbbing noggin yesterday and this morning when I woke up, my head still hurt. I am bruised to blazes, jarred and generally jangly with aches and pains. I also feel periodically nauseous. Forget the concussion - what is wrong with me? Can you get late onset dyspraxia? I have turned into a klutz. In the past three weeks, I have sprained my ankle jumping off a fence, walked into a door and now fallen down the stairs. It is also the second time this year I have taken a tumble down stairs although my trip was shorter last time. Perhaps I need to try doing one thing at a time. When I jumped off the fence, I was thinking about history: when I walked into the door, I was thinking about the screaming baby and when I was coming down stairs, I was thinking about my six-year-old's reluctance to do homework and whether he would opt out of university in 12 years time.

I would not mind but I have one of those phone interviews with insurance companies later this afternoon where they try to figure out if you are a safe bet to insure. I have had one before and aside from asking you a variety of highly personal medical questions which immediately make you feel like you are about to die from some horrible disease, they have a whole section on dangerous pursuits - Do you rock climb...scuba-dive...rally drive?" I hope they do not ask "Can you walk and chew gum?"

Down and Out 2

I was sent down to London on the strict understanding I did not spend any money. The house still is not finished and we have not paid our last set of bills to the builders. It is a very middle-class sort of broke - big house no money sort of thing. Despite that, after my Northumberland mate disappears into the London sunlight, I contemplate checking into a good hotel in the centre of town. I only have a handbag with me. This is because I travel light when I do not have the children. The handbag has everything I need in it - purse, toothbrush, change of underwear, change of dress, lipstick, powder, mascara, novel, newspaper, notebook, pen, tube map and mobile phone (which works.) I wonder whether hotel staff would think I was a prostitute if I check in for the night with only a handbag. Would they ask themselves where my luggage was? Would they presume the handbag also contained baby oil and handcuffs? I decide I am prepared to be considered a prostitute for the sake of knowing where I will sleep that night. I use the mobile phone to ring a good hotel. The receptionist tells me it will cost £250 to stay the night. £250? I would have to take up prostitution to be able to afford £250 for a night in a hotel. Prostitution seems like too much trouble. I ring the London Diva. I say: "Hi, it's me. I'm homeless." She listens to my story of scruples and inhibition. She laughs. She says: "That's fine. Come stay with the 'B' team."

I spend the night with them and then go to my business meeting over breakfast. The woman I am breakfasting with wants bacon and mushrooms. She is not allowed bacon and mushrooms. She is forced to order "The Traditional Breakfast" for £10.95 and say "No eggs and no sausage." Oh and she wants toast and not a bagel. As the waiter moves away, she leans back in her chair to ask for bacon that is "crispy". I order scrambled eggs and smoked salmon which I do not eat because it tastes like plastic and when my tea comes I send it back after I taste salt from the breakfaster who used the cup before me. We spend three hours over the meeting and by the end of it, the white-aproned waiter hates both of us equally.

On the train back North, still hungry, I decide it is OK to have lunch in the restaurant car. It is a nice lunch. I have a table. I do some work. I drink some wine. I sit there till Durham then move back to my original seat in the buffet car. When I get back, I find a man sitting there who looks vaguely bemused as I ransack his coat and go through his newspapers searching for the Waterstone’s bag I left behind to mark my place. The bag has vanished. I search the floor and the overhead compartment and the luggage storage behind the seat but it has disappeared. It has my favorite brown hat in it which I bought in Germany a year ago and nine new notebooks. I curse. I had been searching for exactly these notebooks for three months and was wildly excited when I found them in the Piccadilly bookstore earlier that morning. Despite my husband's strictures about money, I had bought them.

I go back down the carriage to look for the guard. The guard is not there. I tell the steward who is leaning against the bar chatting to his colleague that my bag has disappeared and he asks me when I checked on it last. I tell him about three hours ago. He is not impressed with such a cavalier approach to my belongings. He says: “Things get stolen every day on the train.” I say: “Right.” He says: “There are 400 people on a train. Would you trust these 400 people with your stuff?” He asks me whether I still want to talk to the guard. I say: “No. Not if that’s GNER’s reaction to something getting stolen – there’s not a lot of point is there?” His buffet car colleague tucked behind the bar is silent throughout this exchange. The steward says: “Well, if you tell me what I can do about it, I’ll do it.” My opinion of him by this point is not a lot higher than my opinion of whoever took the bag. I start walking up and down the train trying to spot it. I even check the toilets. I see a Waterstone’s bag on an overhead shelf of a luggage compartment and immediately rifle it. A mildly irate middle-aged man tells me: “That’s not yours.” He obviously thinks I am trying to steal it. I tell him my bag has gone missing but I am not convinced he believes me. I do indeed look as if I am reconnoitering things to steal as I walk slowly past everybody’s tables, my eye snagging on their mobile phones and shiny laptops. I am thinking: “Why would anyone want my notebooks and hat when they could have your stuff?” The unsympathetic steward pushes his tea trolley past me and as he sees what I am doing he says he will keep a look out for me. I think: “It's a shame you didn’t volunteer to do that in the first place.”

I decide to risk the guard’s scorn and report the bag missing. The guard is called Terry and does not pour scorn on me. He says things do get stolen but not every day. He is genuinely concerned. He is sorry that my bag has been swiped. He tells me Darlington to Durham and the Durham to Newcastle stretches of the journey are particular hotspots because they are such short journeys. He says a thief can come on, steal something and be off again with his swag within minutes. Sometimes they stand on the platform, duck in, take the nearest item and are off again without even the price of a ticket. I say pathetically: “I know you can’t do anything.” He says: “I’ll have a good look for you” and he takes my number and says whatever happens he will call when the train gets to Edinburgh. When his first call comes in later that night, he has found nothing. About an hour later, he finds the bag as the train starts its journey down the line again. I do not know who is more pleased him or me. He tells me the bag was near the kitchen. We wonder if someone has picked it mistakenly thinking it was theirs though this seems unlikely. Or whether a thief had hoped for a bag of expensive hardback autobiographies for Xmas and got a bagful of blank notebooks and a funny hat and dumped them. Terry asks me which station I want the bag left at. We decide Berwick and he even rings me a third time to say he handed the bag over to station staff and they will keep it for me. I decide my adventures in London have a happy ending: I do not slide into prostitution, I get my bag back; the thief, as yet, has to buy his Xmas presents and Terry ratchetted back down the line knowing he made a difference.

Down and out

Had to go back down to London. Bumped into my nearest Northumberland neighbour while I was there who was also down for a couple of days work. How about that for a coincidence? To celebrate we had coffee and pastries in a chic pavement cafe. I rang my husband. I said: "You'll never guess what?" and explained I had just run into my friend. I figured I had better call in case someone else we knew walked by and presumed we were having breakfast together after a night of illicit passion.

So on the down side there was no passion in my trip to London but I did fit in a haircut which is always a good thing. I think I have been "letting myself go" a little for the past while. I wash obviously. But in the past year I have gone up a dress size and now my only question when I look at clothes is: "Will it keep me warm?". My lacksadaisical approach to my appearance got so bad about a month ago I cut my own hair. Not just my fringe. All of my hair. Not entirely off. Not like Britney but a pretty thorough scissoring trim down both sides. Not long ago I would have cut off my own hand rather than do such a thing to myself. Anyway, I got the haircut which is a start at least and I have made a resolution to make more of an effort.

Despite the haircut, the trip was a vaguely uneasy one all told. I was supposed to spend both nights with a friend. When I arrived on Tuesday, she was hideously stressed by a work deadline, a poorly child and the fact she was due to go away on holiday a couple of days later. She was so stressed it became blazingly apparent I could not stay there two nights or I would pitch her over into insanity. There was nothing I could do about the first night so we had a nice dinner and I said I would stay somewhere else on Wednesday. Of course Wednesday comes around and I kiss her goodbye and I think: "That's it. I'm homeless in London." I cannot go home early because my business meeting is not till Thursday. I am now caught between ringing someone else who will feel like she is my second choice or staying in a Travelodge. I seriously contemplate the Travelodge option but decide it would be so miserable I might throw first the executive trouserpress out of the window and then myself. It is at this exact moment I run into my Northumberland neighbour. I know people who would think this was the work of Jesus. There I am homeless in the Big City and I run into my best friend from home. Do I tell him my problem? Of course I do not. I cannot possibly tell him I am homeless in London and do not know where I am going to sleep. It sounds as if I am so dull my friend has decided she has asked me to leave. It would also sound as if I am inviting him to that night of illicit passion. Instead, we drink our coffee, discuss the relative merits of city and country, and I say "See ya" and wave merrily as we part.

Call for help

My baby daughter was sick for five days. Ear infection - "My ear hurts"; eye infection - "My eye hurts". Every little while: "I feel sick." Every wake-up time: "I want medsun". She wanted so much medicine I began to worry I had made her a Kalpol addict. The good thing about it was my husband was home for four of the five days and caught two of the cough-induced vomits. This is what you call a result. A messy one but a result. He is hardly ever home when the children are sick. Ever. And they used to be sick a lot courtesy of the younger one's stomach migraine. Like clockwork. Daddy would pull out of the road to go catch a train and the four-year-old would start vomiting.

One night she called out and I staggered out of bed and grabbed my dressing gown. My husband had only got to bed in the early hours because he was mired in a work crisis and was dead to the world. I had carefully left the bedroom door open because I figured she would wake up and by golly I was right. She did wake up and it was indeed much easier to hear her with the door open. Only problem was I forgot it was there and walked straight into it. This gave me a large lump on my eyebrow and cut my lip which immediately swelled up so that I looked like Marge Simpson, only without the blue hair. Naturally enough, as soon as I had whacked myself nearly insensible on the door she stopped crying. I crawled back into bed having inspected the damage and I lay there whimpering, thinking: "I am going to wake up in the morning and look like I have been walloped. People are going to say: "What on earth did you do? And I am going to say: "I walked into a door" and they are going to think "Yeah right"." But by the morning it had gone down. Now all I have left to show for it is a sore eyebrow and an ulcer on the inside of my lip from the cut.

Meanwhile, I decided I could not keep wandering around without a mobile phone. I do not have a good history with mobile phones. I have come to the conclusion, cars would rather I did not drive them and phones think I do not deserve them.

I have two mobile phones. I gave up using them because they were either flat or I could never get a signal. The reason they were often flat is that there is no incentive to charge them if you do not think you will get a signal. It can be a bit of a vicious circle and you fall out of the mobile habit. On Wednesday, I thought: "Enough. Call yourself a modern woman. You need a mobile phone so that when you run into trouble you can ring a man to get you out of it." Every now and then I try to sort out the chaos in which I live; one decision I made recently was to change banks. This worked very well but paying the mobile phone bill fell down the crack and when I picked up my old phone I discovered that the company had cancelled my service and I could not even use it if I wanted to. I paid my bill and the girl said to reconnect the service would be £35. I thought: "I am not paying £35 for a phone that never works" so I said: "It's been great but no thanks."

I picked up my pay-as-you-go. Pay-as-you-go is great till you discover you have run out of credits and cannot figure out how to top it up. There is no signal where I live. Unless you count the pigeons I occasionally snare and send back to London with coded messages like: "Send more coffee beans." I took the pay-as-go outside. I came back in because it was too wet. I took off my lambskin slippers (I feel guilty about them but not that guilty) and put on my wellies. I went out again. I walked along the access road waving the phone about as if I had poured gin and vermouth into it and was looking for a glass with an olive. No signal. I swore then went down on to the drying green where we dry our clothes in the North wind (whenever the tumble drier breaks down). Still no signal. I stood on one of the 44 molehills. Success - a signal. I tried to ring a number and a message came through with a three digit number to press. I called it and kept pressing "1" as you do till you talk to a real person. The real person was charming. I explained I wanted to top up the phone and he said: "No problem. What is your mobile number?" I said: "I have no idea." He said I had to ring off and get my sim card out and get the sim card number. I swore - but not at him. I went back in, trailing muddy footprints across the kitchen floor. I opened up the phone, swept away the sand which had inveigled itself into it and eventually extracted the sim card with my teeth. I wrote down the number and went back outside. I stepped back on to the mole hill, realised I had inserted the sim card in the wrong way round, swore and went back in. I unclipped the back of the phone, extracted the sim card, turned it around, clipped it up and went back out. I breathed deeply. I did the three digit thing, the pressing the "1" thing, and got another real and equally charming person. The signal was not as good this time, I think because I was slightly lower courtesy of having flattened the molehill from the earlier call. I explained I did not have the phone number but I did have the sim card number and gave it to him. He said: Great, thank you. May I have the first two digits of your four digit personal security number?" I said: "No, I have no idea what they are. Is that a problem?" He said: "Give me a minute please" and went to talk to his supervisor. I imagine the conversation went something like: "I have an idiot on the other end of the line. I am not sure she has any idea what a mobile phone is for, should I let her keep it?" Luckily the superviser had sex the night before and decided it was OK I could register myself, my debit card and get myself a new security code. We did all this, then the nice man in the call centre said: "I am afraid we are having problems topping up. You will need to ring back and do it yourself automatically." I contemplated burying the mobile phone in one of the molehills and telling the children they could have it if they could find it. I said: "OK, thank you for your help." I meant it, he was lovely. I called back and topped up the phone. It is simple when you know how. Yesterday, I go to use it and it tells me my sim card is not working. My friend who is with me when I realise this says: "I never have any problem with my mobile phone." I swear.

Bang bang bang

Had three bang bang bang nice things happen on one day. I dropped the car off at the garage in the village to get the new tyre put on and went round to have tea with the little old lady who used to live along this row. She moved because she does not drive and she was on her own up here and wanted more independence. "Didn't want to be a burden" - (I am so being a burden when I get old. A big one. I am looking forward to it.) I go down occasionally for tea and cherry cake with occasional cherries. I had only been a couple of days before but she lives near the garage so I walked across and rang the bell. She came to the door and she looked so pleased to see me standing there on her mat. That is it. That was the first nice thing. The tea and cake and chat were all good too but it was her smile when she saw me. I put it in my pocket and I am keeping it. When I went back to the garage to pick up the car and pay, the garage owner who is a strong silent type told me I had done for the tyre "good and proper" driving it home after I realised I had a flat. I shrugged. I said: "What can you do? I was in the middle of nowhere. I had the baby. I didn't have my phone. My husband was away in London so he couldn't have done anything. I had exactly the same thing a couple of weeks ago and it took forever until someone passed by who could help." As I say, this man is the quiet type. With oily fingers, he rifled through some paperwork and pulled out a couple of business cards and said: "Keep them in the car. You can always call us and we'll come and get you sorted." I mean how good is that? Last time the RAC would not even come out to me and the AA could not find me. I am tempted to have a microchip embedded in my ear and let him track me with satellite technology 24/7. Then I got home and had to ring the farmer who owns the fields hereabouts because I wanted to know whether he used names for the fields and if he did whether they were the historic ones. As it turns out some of the names are the same and some of them have changed a little in the past 240 years: what was Dinner Flatts is Dundee Flatts; Garner Flatts, Gardiners and Wheat Riggs, Wheat Ridge. He told me this and then said: "We're away for a couple of days but when we get back, we'll ring you and come round for supper." I think I live here.

Somewhere

This morning, the sky was bruised blue yet the light was gold and true. I had dropped the boys at school,was driving home and saw an arc of splintered light as bright as I have ever seen. In London, years ago, I saw a prism, a stripe - no more, when someone I once loved, died and thought: "That gleam in this gritty dirty sky, that gleam is meant for me." Today, between the hedged gaps, we glimpsed the rainbow's fall to earth, scattering its colours in the grass. I said: "Look, look, there are two" as the other, shadowing, pastel bow appeared. The baby and I gazed content. I looked back to the road, a car approaching. I braked, swerved slightly, hit the only curb on the country lane and my tyre blew. Again. I thought: "Bloody hell. Bugger the tyre. I'm getting home this time" and drove back slowly, my road ahead, ribboned through the coloured "Welcome to Northumberland" arch.

Mapping out the past

It is a cold, gold, old time of year as autumn readies itself for winter. Trees which flared like brands plunged into the earth, have lost their claim to flame; embered leaves, dead and dusty now, tumbling over their roots while grey hawthorn hedges twist and turn in the low slung sunshine thrown splendid across the fields. I thought: "I live in the country. I'll go for a walk."

I have a copy of a map from 200 years ago, the fields named: Wheat Riggs, Bottle Banks, Gin Quarter, Old Cow Pasture, Kings Chambers. Wells and a windmill, limestone quarries where once men gouged out the land, all etched in ink. I like history on the page or on the ground. I thought: "I shall walk around Barley Close to the pool where marsh grasses grow and deer drink and once there was a ford." I walked down the winding lane and over the rough ground edging the new sown crop, the land sliding out to the horizoned Cheviot hills, till I found the blue green pool water, bullrushes and reeds swaying in the picked up hurly burly wind. I walked around the pool, its leaf beach empty of deer, slender grey trees and dead nettles guarding the privacy of a lost and ancient Britain. My way blocked, I scrambled onto a lichen painted fencepost to better clear the strung out barbed wire. I paused, considered, jumped; my ankle turned on the rutted ground and I thought: "You just cannot trust the countryside." I limped slowly back to the cottage and the present. I think I may have sprained my ankle.

Postcard No. 3

Found a postcard at the bottom of my handbag.

Dear Wifey,
I walked through Greenwich Park on my way to the children's playground. The benches at the bottom of the green and tree-splattered hill outside the Queen's House, were full of promises on steel plaques.They dated from the "Year 2000 Year of the Promise" part of an ITV initiative to mark the millenium.

It made me wonder how many of them were kept.

Some focus on the family:
"We will always remember our family - past present and future." (The Mason Family). (I rather like the idea of remembering a future. When it happens, do you think, "Ah yes, I remember now - that is how it should be."?
"We will adopt a child and give it a loving home." (The Cesvette Family).

People are so brim full of good intentions and all the better for it:
"I will give time, comfort and support to anyone who is less fortunate"(Tracey Fuller).
"We will do a good deed every day and more if possible"(The Hare Family).

There are those with simple ambitions:
"I will practice my bass every day so I am good enough to play in church" (Janine-Jacquline St Leger)
"I will wash up the dishes" (Katie Lansdowne Gillespie)
"I will lose three stone" (Teresa Borg)
"We will make each other laugh every day" (The Murley Family)

Those with big ambitions:
"I will try to be a better person" (Suzanne Sutton)

And those with broken hearts
"I will love Lee and Louise as much as I loved their late mother Maria XXX"(Thomas Anthony Tobin)

Ah promises. The most fragile of things. I have promised any number of things in my time. As a child, I promised to be a good girl. As a seven-year-old I promised a judge to look after my stepfather after he had married my mother and legally adopted me. I promised various bosses that I would "give it my all" and "do what I can." (Occasionally I meant it.) As a journalist I promised to keep comments "off the record" which I did and as a bride I promised to "love and honour" which I do when I remember. 2000 was not a good year for me but I made a promise. My husband and I promised each other we would try to be happy and do what it took to get there, to that place called Happiness. Promises...you should check the small print sometimes.
love
Wifey

Through the looking glass

We went to the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich and on the way in I saw a sign that my favorite patisserie had opened a cafe there. I gasped, bringing the buggy to a stop and making the four-year-old stumble slightly. My six-year-old said: "What is it?" I said: "It's Mummy's favorite cafe darling...We can get hot chocolates. And cake. We can have cake." He looked at me, accusingly. He said: "Are you crying? Mummy, you must love coffee a lot if you cry about it." I pushed the buggy forward. I said: "Mummy's not crying. Mummy is just very pleased."


The whole day went very well till the loud crash. That evening, I was in the kitchen of the house we had borrowed from friends while they were on holiday. My gay best boyfriend had come round for supper to keep me company. I started to make tea and the boys chose just that moment to decide to play with the large silver exercise ball in the basement TV room. They could have rolled it gently between them but that would have been no fun at all.


Luckily when they broke the large dressing table mirror balanced on the cast iron stove, my gay best boyfriend was still with me. He took over cooking tea while I swept up the shards of etched glass and glittering dust that littered the carpetted floor. I said to him: "The baby had already pushed over one of the speaker's for the stereo and broken the front off it. I think she may have peeled off and eaten some of the pink gel hearts on one of the bedroom windows. There is also a suspiciously straight bit in a metal slinky which I don't think was there before. But apart from that, it was all going so well. What am I going to tell them now?" He said: "They've got children. I'm sure they'll understand." I picked out a fragment of glass from the ball of my index finger and watched the tiny globe of blood rise to the surface. I said: "They've got teenagers, not children. They might have forgotten." What really worried me was the fact I thought the husband might have been left it by a dear departed ancient relative. I thought: "He'll have said: 'There's only one thing I want from the house - her mirror. Maybe one day, I'll look into it and see her little wrinkled face smile back at me'." I did not sleep well that night. My friends rang the next morning from South Africa. I said: "I'm so sorry. I'm afraid we broke your mirror in the basement." I explained the how's and why's to the wife. I said: "We're just on our way out to get you another mirror." I said: "It wasn't 'Granny's' mirror was it? He wasn't left it in a will was he?" My friend said: "Don't worry. We got it from a skip."


Since they said they did not want another mirror, I thought I would get them a photograph of London as a thank you for letting us use the house. My husband took the children to a playground and I had an hour to myself in Greenwich market. In retrospect, maybe I should not have been allowed out on my own. Maybe I should just have kept busy. On my own, I wandered into a photographic gallery and felt myself seized again by London in all its black and white beauty. The exile home again; I stood before my past. Each view opening up a wound in my soul: Big Ben spiking the sky, a rainy embankment with a solitary woman, a riverscape at night - the Eye, Parliament, the bridges and pontoon, the magnificence of a city sky. My soul trembled to see London within my grasp again. I thought: "I can buy a photograph. I can buy two. Or I can move back." I bought a photograph. Two. I thought: "Are these photographs enough? I don't think I should feel this way."

Postcard No. 2

Dear Wifey,
This has been the first visit to London for a long time when I have been willing to risk haunting the old neighbourhood and seeing a whole parcel of old friends, all crammed together in a week. On previous visits, I have had to avoid former routines because it just made me feel bad, this strange halfway house between living here and being a visitor. Maybe I am feeling braver or maybe enough time has ticked on by to be more comfortable about it all. Yesterday on a trip to an East End park with my six-year-old's best friend and his artist father; the boys threw up armfuls of dry autumn leaves and showered in them while the baby girl kept saying: "What dat noyuz?" every time she heard a police siren. The only problem is struggling around London with three children and a buggy requires more patience than I have. Yesterday it was counting grey squirrels and talking about art, today it was all more of an effort. I knew it would be because I missed my slot to go out this morning. If you time it right you can go out before the baby has her nap. This means she goes without the nap but the alternative is what happened today which meant she got the nap and we did not get to go out till after lunch (which incidentally was pasta and all three of them hated it) and which is far too late for an expedition any further than the corner shop. The poor behaviour was all pretty low grade stuff but built up to the point where I was not even out the door when I was forced to utter The Mother's Prayer: "Dear Lord, give me patience." I have variations on this prayer. Sometimes I make it: "God give me strength." Occasionally, I just say: "Fucking hell." We went to a movie, they ate their own body weight in popcorn, had a quick tootle round Canary Wharf shops which meant you had to keep finding and then going up and down extraordinarily slow lifts which smell of cheese, my bank card got declined, I realised my two mobile phones did not work and then we went into a pizza restaurant where we were meeting my husband and I ordered a glass of wine and the waiter said: "Would you like a small glass or a large glass?" If you say large glass you sound like an alcoholic. If you say small glass, you sound like an alcoholic when you drink the first one in 30 seconds and then order another. I felt like saying: "I am sitting here with three children, the baby girl is fractious - despite the nap, the two boys are quarrelsome, getting everyone home is going to be a nightmare, I obviously want the large glass."
love
Wifey

Postcard No. 1

Dear Wifey,
Spent yesterday at the dinosaur museum with the children. This was a good idea. It was such a good idea every other mother in London decided to have it too. Utterly heaving. Thought about queuing for dinosaurs, decided the queue was too long; similar decisions regarding Antarctica exhibition, coffee and even the shop. Saw a large number of stuffed birds and a great many backs of heads. The very worst moment was in the picnic area where we were waiting for friends. It too was crowded. I had wrapped four salami sandwiches in a tea towel, popped in three satsumas for the children and a bottle of mineral water between the four of us. I had been entirely happy with this as a lunch until I sat down at a table with a woman, a baby in a pushchair and a little girl. There was a reason this table was the only one with free seats. Every other mother in the place knew that this woman was going to make her look bad. My children ate their baps watching the banquet opposite with wonder. I knew I had made a mistake as soon as I saw the first Tupperware box, but it was too late - we had already sat down on the bench. Sandwiches, hummus, carrot sticks, raisins, yogurt, chocolate soya dessert, sliced melon, green grapes, juice. There was probably more but you can only use your peripheral vision for so long before your eyeballs drop out of your skull. She also made endless "happy chat" with the little girl; the more happy chat she made, the more silent my own children became. Having watched for long enough, my baby daughter decided she had no intention of eating the substandard fare I had provided; she emptied out her salami on to the floor, picked apart the bread and then dropped half her satsuma segments. My six-year-old immediately handed her what was left of his. The Picnic Queen took pity. "She can have some melon if she likes," she said and pushed over the left-over melon. This was so humiliating, I blushed. The boys leapt on the melon as if they had never seen an exotic fruit before in their lives. Obviously, I said "Thankyou; that's very kind" as you do when someone has just shown you up in front of your children as a mother who cuts corners. She then compounded it by telling me: "You worry too much." I "worry too much"? I felt an incredibly "British" locking up of those facial muscles that were not already in spasm from the humiliation of the pity fruit. I wanted to say: "If I worry too much it is because women like you make me feel bad." She was the sister of that irritating stranger who accosts you in the street with "Cheer up! It might never happen." I hate people who tell you to cheer up. I hate mothers who feel sorry for my children. I stopped hating her as they left the table when I heard her say to the little girl: "I told your mummy..." I thought: "Oh, you're a nanny. You should have said. That's alright then. That explains the carrot sticks in their own tupperware box and the expensive fruit and the relentless chat. Right. I'll stop worrying then."
love,
Wifey

Boxes and blues

Ever since we moved up from London, we have had "stuff" in cardboard boxes hanging about us. First, we kept the boxes in our own house; then, desperate for space, we stored them in the empty cottage next door; when our builders started, we asked the farmer whether we could keep them in a large metal container in the barn behind us. The barn is due to be demolished and this weekend we opened up the container and emptied it. Straight into the bin for the most part - or the brazier, tip, or for recycling. I cannot believe we wrapped it, moved it and kept it all for so long.

One box though was worth the waiting. As I unwrapped the newspaper from the cut glass candlesticks, I thought: "Ah, home." A wooden bowl from a hot and dusty place and a blood red vase with a golden glass stag, fragile and at bay, once my grandmother's. A doll from my childhood, all smile and shiny blue trouser suit, the double of a songbird cousin. Photographs too: my husband, absurdly young, holding a glass of champagne and looking out into his future; my mother in hyacinth blue, more radiant than the bride I think, on my wedding day. Two small and rose strewn hearts capturing the exchange of rings, though not the congregation's laughter when the wedding band would not slide onto my finger. A picture of my eldest the day after he was born and in folding pine, my wrapped up boys fishing and laughing hard. Memories then and my precious and most sparkling things; no hallmarked value, no antiqued glory, important just to me. But I grew sad as I unwrapped my loot which had once sat on the mantelpiece of a black stone hearth against sunshine yellow walls in London. " I do not have a mantelpiece," I thought, "and now my walls are cream." Still, I polished them and scattered them about, sat back and thought: "My memories about me where they belong. Now, am I at home?"

What am I bid?

Thought I might try to save some money by going to an auction in the village. (A hotel was closing down; the owners have plans to develop the site.) I thought about equipping the kitchen with 13 small stainless steel teapots or a double basket electric fryer but decided against it. I toyed with the pair of ornamental stag's antlers and the pool table but I ended up bidding for an old Ordnance Survey map of Northumberland and a print of the wrecks off the Farne Islands. I took a little time to figure out my bidding strategy. A couple of lots had come up, a tent and a blackboard. Tucked away at the back of the bidding, panicked by the auctioneer's song of "DoIhearfiveIhavesixonmyleftsevensirthankyoudoiheareightninetenonmyrightten
tensoldtotheladyonmyright", my nerve failed me and I ducked out of the bidding. I decided on the "I want it" approach for the maps. I stood at the front and nodded decisively at every opportunity. I thought it might psyche out any opposition although I think I may have been bidding against myself at times. I paid £25 for the OS map; tonight I realised it is marked with railway lines which were closed down more than 50 years ago. I paid £50 for the framed print of the wrecks; I suspect you can buy it for £2.50 in the local lifeboat station but it was worth every penny.

It is a work of art, put together by a lifeboatman of 20 years who doubled up as the local funeral director. The map has a little scroll in the bottom left hand corner telling you his name: "For Those in Peril John Hanvey 1976". I rang him. (Life is like that in Northumberland.) I said: "I love your map". He told me he spent seven years researching the wrecks, using information from the logbook of the Longstone lighthouse keeper as well as RNLI records, Lloyd's, a local museum and newspaper. He said: "I carried around a pocketbook. Any old fishermen I met up and down the coast, I would say 'I have the name of a ship I suspect was wrecked, what do you know about it?'." When he had the information together, he drew up around 50 of the maps; each one taking him a week at a time. Later, he had the prints made up.

The names of the ships and the small hand-drawn crosses remind you this is a map that charts bravery, smashed hopes and the graves of drowned men. The earliest wreck: November 2 1462 "Two French caravels" in the area off Bamburgh sands. Another early disaster ("vessels foundered...positions doubtful"): November 1774 six ships and "100 souls perished in one night". Some of the losses are more modern. East of Longstone, January 25 1940 the steamship Everene of Latvia sunk by torpedo with nine drowned. Cobles, sloops, ketches, tankers; the hungry sea will take what it can. Occasionally, it will lose its grim and salty battle and the ship can be refloated. More often though, they are lost and there are deaths like those on October 11 1840, the steam ship Northern Yacht with 22 passengers and crew, or again on July 20 1843, the steamship Pegasus with 54 passengers and crew (both around Goldstone Rock midway between Holy Island and the Farnes). In the worst cases, they are lost with "all hands".

The map of the wrecks is in blue with the rocky islands brown and lapped by a dangerous and broken green. The sober columns of dates and black inked names are broken by the picture of a seagull aloft, a ship in full sail and a lifeboat breasting stormy waves. Underneath the lifeboat are the words of the sailer's prayer: "Oh! Lord the sea is so large and my ship is so small." These lost ships and sailors are not forgotten: their names still sail on a paper sea. John Hanvey made it so.

Show stopper

I think you can go to one country show too many. We went to the border shepherds' show, cutting across the browning moorland and into the Cheviots. Bit of a problem - no sheep, courtesy of Foot and Mouth restrictions. At least we had the terrier racing. I swear to God my palate is jaded, because if the terrier racing could not do it for me what could? They had sixty terriers racing, boxing up five or so terriers at a time before letting them chase what looked like a fur tail on a piece of string, leaping a pipe at one point almost as big as they were. We could see the finishing line but not the start. Only one terrier finished the race in one of the heats; we were told the other dogs had a bit of a scrap at the start. Without jockeys, it was also difficult for them to know which way to face. In another heat, the commentator said: "We won't be starting just yet because I can see one head and four tails." Then there was the Cumberland and Westmoreland wrestling. This is very popular. A significant number of competitors were members of the local wrestling club. The advantage of being a member of the wrestling club is knowing how to throw your opponent to the grass; the disadvantage is the strip. White long johns, white vest; baggy pants outside of the long johns, sometimes in velveteen burgundy. But who is brave enough to tell a wrestler that the outfit does nothing for him? The men would lock their fingers together, wrapping their arms around their opponent, their cheek against the other fellow's cheek. They would stand apart, legs akimbo and lean into one another. Then they would attempt to toss their opponent to the ground, unbalancing, lifting up, wrapping one of their legs around one of his legs. In one heat between boys, the bigger opponent got hold of the littler boy and was swinging him round and round by the smaller boy's head. I was worried it might come off. It is the best of three falls. Sometimes if both competitors smash to the ground at the same time, it can be difficult to tell who won; sometimes it can be difficult to care. My boys needless to say loved it all: the terriers, the wrestling, the fair, the stalls. My husband loved it almost as much as they did. He said: "What did you think?" I said: "I think I need a few days in London."

Foreplay

The North East is big on golf. In my previous life, I never saw the attraction; the clothes for one thing. All those pastel colours and slacks. But I like to give things a go and look the part when I am doing it. Move me to the country and I will buy a tweed cloche and wellies; invite me to a golf club and I will buy a pale pink golf shirt, sun visor and one pink leather glove. (You only buy one glove for reasons that defeat me.) And golf shoes of course. They get quite fussy about the shoes you wear. (I had thought I might get away with my lambskin slippers.)

My friend said he would take me golfing about six weeks ago; we tried but it was pouring down so we only made it as far as the clubhouse. I made the mistake in the intervening period of wearing the pink shirt. (What can I say? It was new.)This meant that when we tried to play golf again, I had a lovely stain of pasta sauce just where the baby girl rests her head when you lift her out of the high chair and carry her upstairs after dinner. I did not have time to attempt an industrial strength stain removal. Instead, I tilted my head so that my hair which is shoulder length and frankly, badly in need of a cut, would cover the stain. It worked but I looked as if I was slightly simple or needed a neck brace.

One of the attractions of golf up here are the views from the courses; this one has sandy beaches, pounding waves, a castle built on a basalt crag, the Farne islands, lighthouses and Holy Island in the distance. All that beauty and you spend your time looking at or for a small white ball. I would stand, legs slightly apart, hands gripping the club, I would attempt to keep my left arm straight as I swung the club then I would bring it down in a fluid motion, entirely missing the ball. I think the damn things jump. It reminded me so much of playing rounders at school that I almost broke out in acne. Then, I could never decide which I found more traumatic batting or fielding. There I would be in my games skirt and my sports knickers, rounders bat gripped in my sweaty hands. I would stand sideways on. I would look at the girl about to throw the ball. I would grip the bat a little harder. I would think: "This time, I am going to hit it." She would throw it. I would thresh the air with my bat and the ball would sail by into the hands of the backstop. I hated that game. Even now, the thought of it depresses me. That must be why golf courses have those little sandy oases with the rakes: when it gets pressured, the players can unwind with some Japanese gardening. They do make life difficult for themselves though. As we walked the six holes we played, I noticed various gullies and ravines, gorse bushes and hillocks. If they levelled the ground, they would find it so much easier to play although they seem happy enough wandering around with their teddy bears. Or maybe that was just the chap I was playing golf with. All very Brideshead. Apparently, if you have a soft toy covering the head of your club, it shows you have a sense of humour and do not take the game too seriously. Right. That would be why they have so many rules then because they treat the game as a bit of a laugh.

They have rules for everything:
Rule 1-1/4 "Player Discovers Own Ball Is in Hole After Playing Wrong Ball"
Rule 1-2/4 "Player Jumps Close to Hole to Cause Ball to Drop"
or this one
Rule 1-4/3 "Flagstick Stuck into Green Some Distance from Hole by Practical Joker"
or Rule 1-4/10 what you do in the event of a "Dangerous Situation: Rattlesnake or Bees Interfere with Play"
or my personal favorite Rule 2-4/17 "Player in Erroneous Belief Match Is Over Shakes Opponent's Hand and Picks Up Opponent's Ball"

Having trawled the rule book of around 500 pages, I guarantee lawyers like golf. But it is fair to say, despite a chronic inability to hit the ball, I enjoyed my game of golf more than I ever enjoyed a game of rounders. My friend said as we drove away: "If you want to take it up, you'd have to have lessons." I said: "How can I do that? I'm working: I'm supposed to spend any spare time I have with the children." He said: "Well, men do it." I said: "Exactly."

Samaritan city

My friend's husband just broke his hip - he is a dairy farmer and was involved in a fracas with a cow and a large amount of slurry. I always suspected cows were dangerous. I buy walnut whips and pineapple chunks and set off for a visit to the sick.

I pull off the A1 onto a country road. I check I do not have the handbrake on. I check I have enough petrol. I think: "The car is going to break down" and realise I have a flat tyre. Thinking about it, it must have been flat for a good 10 minutes, maybe longer. I climb out of the car to stare at the smoking tyre. It smells bad and it is pouring with rain. I am in the middle of nowhere and have given up on mobile phones as there is never a signal or the battery is flat. I have been happier.

I think: "Right, well it can't be that hard to change a tyre." I open the boot and find a jack, screwdriver, dirty nappy, pushchair, large amount of children's clothing, two teddybears, banana skin, spacegun and underneath it all, a tyre which I cannot lift. I go back to the front of the car with the jack. My husband has always maintained that if you use a jack in the wrong place on a car, your car will break. I slide it next to the wheel. A car goes by in the rain. I leap up and wave at it frantically and a nice man stops. He lends me his mobile phone so that I can call my husband (who is of course in London) and he can call the RAC. I think: "I can't call the RAC direct because it may take too long and I do not want to keep the man waiting for his phone." I have to ask the driver what road I am on. It turns out he is another local farmer and has heard all about the broken hip. He drives off.

I go back to the car and cautiously try turning the screw in the jack while working out whether the car could kill me if it falls off the jack. I decide I am reasonably safe as I am not underneath it on a trolley but kneeling next to it in a muddy puddle. I go back to the boot and pull out a few other pieces of metal that are lying around the spare tyre. I realise that rather than lifting the rear end of the car off the ground in a bid to extract the spare tyre from the boot, it may be easier to unwind the bolt holding it in place. I feel inadequate. A car drives by and I try to attract its attention but the driver does not see me. I contemplate putting on some lipstick and undoing some buttons. I am glad I have not done this when a little red runabout draws up and a white haired old lady peers out. I say: "Hello." I do not want to frighten her. I crouch down. I say: "Do you by any chance have a mobile pohone I could borrow?" I wonder if she knows what a mobile phone is. She says No, she is driving to see her daughter and had not wanted to drive by me. I know she is wishing she had a toffee she could offer me. I say how kind of her to stop and thank you. She drives on.

I go back to the car and look at the wheel. The tyre is still flat and I am getting wetter. I look at the signpost at the junction. I am about four miles from my friends. I wonder if I shout very loudly would they hear me. Another car draws up. I think: "For the back of beyond, you get a fair amount of passing traffic" although the hands on my watch stopped going round some time ago. I say to the elderly man driving the car: "Could I borrow your phone?" He hands it to me. His elderly wife looks at me with deep suspicion. I ring my husband. He tells me the RAC will not come as I am not named on the cover for the car and the AA cannot find me. While I am trying to explain where I am to him despite the fact I have no idea, the elderly man goes over to look at the wheel and says he can fix it. I tell my husband I will ring him back. The elderly man, a caravaner, digs around his own boot. He pulls out a walking stick come zimmer frame and then a wheel brace. I wonder if he is carrying it in case the zimmer ever gets a flat. We spend some time trying to find a place for the jack to go. He is incredibly game but is now wheezing very badly. His breath is so laboured I am seriously worried he is going to have a heart attack while he changes the wheel. I suspect his wife is sitting in the car having a hissy fit. He has to give up when the jack refuses to go any further. I shake him by the hand and thank his wife for lending him to me. I do not think she likes me.

I go back and have another go. I pull the jack out and slide it further along the car and turn the screw, but the wheel remains resolutely on the ground. I am not sure I care by now as I have no idea what to do once the wheel is in