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?