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.