The joy of Getting Ready

Last night my daughter Erin (centre) and her six friends descended on our house to get ready for the school Christmas dance. Remember the joy of getting ready? It was often the best part of the night. In fact sometimes I'd feel a slight twinge of disappointment when the time rolled around that we had to actually leave the house and go somewhere. Getting ready always happened with a friend, preferably at their place, as it was always more fun to be somewhere else. And it took so long! An hour at least, but more likely two or three - ie, approaching half of a normal working day. My life these days is generally about trying to achieve as much as possible in the shortest time. I can hardly remember how it felt to have virtually limitless time to spend on something so indulgent.

Of course, it wasn't really about applying make-up and tonging our hair. It was about being together, gossiping and sharing confidences and amidst clouds of loose powder and Elnett hairspray. There's something particularly intimate about the process of transformation; few people see us 'half done', after all. I always love those old black and white photos of Hollywood stars captured in deep concentration in their dressing rooms.

Our dressing rooms were our teenage bedrooms, plastered with Paul Weller posters and heady with Lulu perfume. My friend Karen's duvet cover was made from the same fabric as her curtains, which struck me as particularly chic. No boys were around as we caked on Rimmel foundation, although we'd discuss them in forensic detail, of course. When my children were younger I often found we'd have our most relaxed and revealing conversations when I was driving them somewhere. There's something about being engaged in another activity - crawling through traffic, applying mascara - that's conducive to easy and honest discussions.

Do I miss getting ready? Not especially, as it belongs to a time and a place that's long gone. It would seem as crazy as filling empty Soda Stream bottles with illicit booze to slug on the way to a party, and I hardly ever pull that stunt these days. It belongs to an era of getting dressed in something low-key, then throwing a carrier bag containing the 'real' outfit out of my bedroom window (to be retrieved and changed into in a phone box en route to the disco).

Getting ready these days takes about 15 minutes, even for a really posh do. I can hardly believe I'd once have spent ten times as long dolling myself up for a ropey old disco in a community hall. But they didn't seem ropey back then. I vividly remember the clothes we wore, the songs we danced to, and the elaborate plots we came up with in order to start conversations with boys. I remember Karen and I hitching a lift - I'd keel over from a heart attack if my daughter did that - to a disco in a neighbouring town.

So many things could go wrong with a night out. The boy you liked could get off with someone else, causing you to seek solace in too much Pernod and black. There were frequently fights in the loos and distraught friends to take care of. Worse still, that willing parent might have ignored instructions to wait around the corner, and parked right outside the venue for all to see. Putting your face on at a friend's house never involved such horrors. The getting ready part could never disappoint.

These days I'm the chauffeur and am used to tuning out as I transport a bunch of excitable teenagers home. I know better than to quiz them about how their evening was - because all they're going to say is, 'Fine.' But maybe it was merely fine, and getting ready was still the best part of the night.

Essential ingredients for getting ready: 

- Best friend(s)
- Music
- Parents/siblings well out of the way, out of earshot
- Cotton wool pads to mop off make-up mistakes
- Clear nail polish to glue snags in tights
- Cheap perfume
- Concealer
- Lipgloss
- A zillion accessories
- Hair tongs (I thought these had died out at around the time of fax machines but it would appear not!)
- Toe separators
- All the time in the world

It's nearly Christmas. Let's drink, be merry and eat cheese!

When you're a child, Christmas is a massive deal. You count the days, and lie in bed straining your ears for the sound of sleigh bells and the clattering of hooves on the roof. The big day passes in a whirl of Chocolate Oranges and those Matchmaker chocolate sticks (well, in my case it was the 70s...) and you fall into bed exhausted, hot-faced and happy.

Then you grow up, and Christmas might plummet into a cobbled-together affair in a grotty flatshare with nothing to eat but Shredded Wheat with a smearing of Rose's Lime Marmalade - because you've spent all the money on drink. Still fine, though. There's something terrible thrilling about shaking off family traditions and doing Christmas your way. Or maybe you still return to the parental home and relish everything being just as it was. My own family situation meant I didn't experience this much beyond my early twenties, so instead I enjoyed creating traditions of my own.

During my thirties, I lost it a bit. With three children it seemed hugely important to create this amazing, perfect festive extravaganza, with limited resources: dragging a real seven-foot tree down the high street as it was the cheapest way to get one (apart from creeping into a pine forest at night, with a saw, which a friend still does. Sometimes, she sneaks back in the following night because the first one wasn't quite right).

I know people in romcoms always look terribly jolly as they carry their Christmas trees through town, but they never show the real stuff - the anger and swearing, and a dog cocking its leg against the tree as the couple pause for breath. You never see Jennifer Aniston ripping the netting off the tree, throwing a bucket at her boyfriend and snapping, 'You bloody well make it stand up.'

We made out own cards back then, creating a glitter tornado in the kitchen. Dinner for ten was crammed into a malfunctioning 1950s oven in our new (by which I mean old and crumbly) home, much to the consternation of our assembled relatives. And now? Well, I'm over all that. For everyone who groans about Christmas, claiming that they just want to run away to India or a little cave somewhere, maybe it's a case of making a big, stressy thing out of what should just be really... fun?

Here's what I won't be doing this year... 

- Gathering spiky foliage from the garden, like a country maiden, and draping it over the mantelpiece.
- Bringing a branch home from the park and spraying it silver. For years, I persevered with this bizarre tradition. It never looked festive. It just looked like a manky old branch.
- Wearing a onesie.
- Trying to 'force' hyacinths, whatever than means.
- Giving edible presents I've made. I'm always delighted to receive home-made things; I just have no wish to spoil anyone's Christmas with my disappointing truffles.
- Hand-printing wrapping paper with a little rubber stamper.
- Running around tidying up all day, like a paper-gobbling machine.
- Feeling bad about getting a bit giddy, or everything not being like it is at Nigella's house.
- Rationing myself of cheese, or in fact anything.

Really, it amounts to one day with lots of food and telly. That's the way I look at it now. It's a day. You're not at work. It's perfectly okay to have a glass of Prosecco for breakfast. And on Boxing Day a pile of friends come over, and we all tear into the leftover food, play drunken board games and appear in possibly the worst photos ever witnessed. I can't wait.

Lists, glorious lists...

I love a list. I couldn't survive without lists. Well, I could, but I'd be in a permanent flap and miss deadlines and there'd be nothing to eat for dinner. Since I was a little girl they've been a crucial part of my life - stuff to pack for a holiday, things I hoped to do when I was a grown up, plus lists of favourites - songs, TV shows, possessions. I diddled away with my lists, paying less attention to them during my chaotic twenties - and then kicking into serious list-making on an industrial scale in '97, when our twins were born.

Suddenly, living haphazardly with nothing in the fridge but a lump of cheese and some suspect milk didn't seem quite so much fun. One simple factor seemed to dictate whether the day was relatively disaster-free - and that was whether I was organised or not. Which meant writing down everything that seemed crucial to the survival of these two tiny people.

For one thing, I had to learn to cook. In my previous, pre-babies existence I used to buy ready-made bolognaise sauce (nasty) when friends were coming over and bury the boxes at the bottom of the bin. Now it was necessary to cook proper meals, which meant having the right stuff in, which in turn meant remembering to buy it all - thank God for lists! Armed with a notebook, a pen and a Jamie Oliver cookbook, I slowly managed to cobble together reasonably okay-ish things to eat.

There was work to keep track of, too - I carried on freelancing a little during my sons' nap times, if I could manage to synchronise them (brandy helped. JOKE!!). Notebooks were filled with magazine feature ideas, plot outlines and titles for books I hoped to write one day (I had yet to write anything longer than 3,000 words). Floundering in the fug of early motherhood, I listed ways to rejoin the human race: Drink water. Sort hair. Change out of dressing gown. There were lists, often scrawled in the night, about how to be a better person: Don't smoke. Donate blood. Read Crime And Punishment. Be nicer to J. Oh, and the usual daily stuff: Eggs. Sterilising Solution. WINE!!! 

During those frantic days, the very act of writing things down was somehow reassuring in itself. A list says, 'This can - and will - all be done.' It's excellent for calming the brain. The act of crossing things off, as any list maniac knows, is immensely satisfying. A friend of mine scores things off her list before she's done them - to make herself ruddy well get on with it.

What I love about lists is the fact that they're always lying around - forever handy - to be added to the instant you think of something. Dog licking foot obsessively? Call vet. Bad smell in shower? Get stinky egg drain stuff. I list everything: books to read, films to see, Ways To Improve Our House. As I'm in the process of selling Mum's house for her, that has a list of its own. My list making goes through different phases: in notebooks, on my phone or laptop, on an array of Post-It notes plastered all over my desk. If someone were to steal all my pens, phone and laptop, I'd probably write one in lipstick.

Well aware of my love of lists, Jimmy bought me a brilliant book called Lists of Note, compiled by Shaun Usher (Canongate). Among the 125 lists are the scribblings of Jack Kerouac (his list is entitled, 'Belief & Technique For Modern Prose') and F. Scott Fitzgerald ('Thing To Worry About').

Marilyn Monroe's list ('Must Make Effort To do') includes:

Go to my class on my own always - without fail 
Work whenever possible - on class assignments - and always keep working on the acting exercises 
If possible take at least one class at university - in literature 
Try to find someone to take dancing from - body work (creative) 
Try to enjoy myself as much as I can - I'll be miserable enough as it is

And Woody Guthrie felt these things were important:

Work more and better 
Clean teeth if any 
Drink scant if any 
Shine shoes 
Change socks 
Help win war - beat fascism 
Love everybody 
Wake up and fight 

That's Woody's list in full, above. Makes my own to-do list (mum/vet/blog/accounts/Gracie b'day/cheese/J's shoes/call Carrie) seem pretty mundane. But I guess that's the whole point. Whether you're writing down things to achieve by the end of the decade, or just the ingredients for dinner tonight, everything feels more achievable when set out in a neat little stack of words.

Dresses are the thing! (plus my love affair with tights)...

I was packing for a weekend jaunt to Liverpool last night when it hit me... just take dresses. I LOVE dresses. I especially love them in winter when you can wear them with chunky cardis and - best of all - thick black opaque tights.

Was there ever a cleverer fashion invention, apart from shoes and the bra? Imagine flicking through a fashion magazine and reading this startling announcement: 'Pretty soon, a new kind of hosiery will be invented which will have an intently cheering effect. If your legs are feeling a bit chunky, they'll seem perfectly un-chunky once you pull these babies on. They are instantly slimming and miraculously flattering. If you're as hairy limbed as Corsican boar, no matter - nothing manages to poke its way through 50 dernier nylon. And if your legs are merely pallid of hue (as mine are - ie, not merely white but verging on blue, like the lights they have in those mysterious Turkish social clubs named after football teams), it doesn't matter a jot because everything will be blacked out, black as can be. Veiny bits, weird bruises and knobbly knees: all blacked out.' 

If I'd read that back in the late 70s I'd have been very pleased indeed.  In fact, as far as I can recall, we had to wait until the mid-'80s for proper sturdy opaques to appear. I certainly remember the fashion department becoming quite dizzy with excitement over Wolfords - Fashion Ed Karen's preferred brand - when I worked at Just Seventeen. Soon, the entire staff's legs were encased in thick, matt black nylon (apart from Andrew's, Andre's and Scoffer's - ie the lads. But I saw them them glancing over, jealously). I do always go for black, although more adventurous friends sometimes step out in teal, plum - even red. They look very bold and dashing. They're just not quite my style.

Anyway, I started off intending to write about dresses, and how great they are because they remove a tiresome step in the decision-making process: ie, what goes with what. I've never been terribly good at putting things together, and a dress means you don't have to bother with any of that. The dress above is my current favourite: Hobbs, but from a charity shop. Can I just add how delightful it is when you see something you love in Oxfam, and it fits perfectly? I mean the odds are pretty low really. So it's far more satisfying than just wandering into a high street store and selecting your size off the rail.

In fact, it's as pleasing as the first day of Tights Season. I have never understood the appeal of blamming wildlife with a big gun - but I'd imagine that those who enjoy it experience a similar thrill when the grouse season starts. But never mind that. We are now in the thick of opaques season which, in our chilly northern climate, can easily stretch to about nine tenths of the year. Hurrah for tights!

Older, happier... and waking up with a dress on

I couldn't wait to get my hands on India Knight's new book, In Your Prime: Older, Wiser, Happier (published by Penguin). I love her non-fiction writing. It rattles along, and you feel like you're in a cosy corner of a bar with her, getting stuck into a bottle of wine. There's advice on pretty much everything about being an older (ie, post 40-ish) woman here, although often it reads more like India's breezy thoughts on a topic, rather than anything deeply researched - which is fine. It's all I really need right now on the subject of menopause, ageing parents and stomach holder-inner pants.

India touches on crepey cleavages (bugger all you can do about it) and how to avoid looking muttony.  She advises on whether to try Internet dating (yes), have an inappropriate crush (no) and how to enjoy pottering about, doing nothing much, and not stressing about it either. So it's all good, illuminating stuff.

As an aside, having turned 50 last week, I'd like to add my own checklist of stuff to bear in mind, now I've hit that half-century. That's my cake above, created by my talented friend Elaine. For the moment I am choosing to ignore India's suggestion that my old-lady knees are no longer up to the job of running.

My own rules for ageing... 

- A hairdresser told me she always uses a magnifying mirror. I could't believe anyone would willingly inflict such trauma upon themselves. But then, she is 27 and very beautiful. At my age, I wouldn't dream of magnifying anything. In fact I prefer to undertake any mirror-related duties without my glasses on.

- Saying, 'Where are my glasses?' is a phrase uttered far more often than, 'Where are we going tonight?' We're staying in, that's where we're going. To hunt for our glasses.

- We all know it's more flattering to have your photo taken from slightly above. I now ask anyone wielding a camera to do so while teetering at the top of a wobbly stepladder, thus creating 'blur'.

- It's completely acceptable to resign from your position of Chief Sock Sorter...

- ...And to buy a bagged salad and fry and bit of fish and say, 'Dinner's ready.' I no longer feel required to create a sumptuous meal in an attempt to please everyone - because it never did. By this stage, everyone is perfectly capable of foraging about at the back of the fridge anyway. My friend Tania reckons that, due to rapidly-dwindling oestrogen levels, I am losing my nurturing tendencies.

- Certain types of music are becoming unpalatable to me and that's fine, I don't have to pretend to like it. As I type, the lyric, "F*** ma ho'" has just boomed through the house. Another apparently favoured track involves a man screaming - not in a belting out lyrics way. I mean really screaming, as if being burned.

- No need for waves of crushing self loathing the morning after a boozy night. I am over that now. The morning after my 50th birthday - possibly the best night of my life - I woke up fully attired in a black dress and tights and thought, This is all right. This, I can handle. I'd tumbled into bed at 5 am after a night with my very favourite people in the world.

That, I decided, is all that really matters: not wrinkles or saggy bits or spotting the odd scary hair poking out from the chin. Just being with people I love, and laughing. A lot. And I'll be too busy doing that to sort socks.

A lifetime of things

Mum moved into a care home a month ago, and I've spent the past few weeks clearing out her house. It's the kind of job I'd have imagined to be pretty harrowing - but in fact, the enormity of the task has been helpful. There's been no time to dither over every item. Instead, I've clicked into practical mode. The whole process has also made me realise that, in most cases, things are just things: the stuff we collect over decades without stopping to consider whether we still need or want them.

When it comes down to it, all that really matter are photographs - like the one I found of Mum and her fellow newly-qualified nurses in Liverpool in the early 50s. There are very few photos of Mum as a young woman so I was delighted to find one where she looks so happy and proud. Mum, who's fifth from the right, loved being a nurse. She left the profession before I was born in '64 - she and my dad ran a youth hostel, then Mum helped with his photography business - but returned to it in the 80s, driving all over South Ayrshire as a Macmillan nurse.

I've kept a few mementoes from Mum's house, but her vast collection of fabrics (she was an avid crafter and quilter) has been passed onto neighbours and friends. Mum would want her belongings to be used and enjoyed. Daughter and I spent a lovely couple of hours sifting through an entire attic's worth of material, selecting the special vintage pieces to pass onto our creative pal Cathy.

Amazingly, some of the sorting has been enjoyable - even fun. I found Mum's ice skates, which I wore in the 70s to skate around the Silver Blades ice rink in Bradford. No one else had their own skates! I loved them. I've also unearthed fantastic vintage knitting patterns and dressmaking books. I probably took Mum's creativity for granted until I was faced with her entire collection of fabric, wool, threads, three sewing machines (!) and a host of half-finished projects. Mum also dabbled in embroidery, woodwork, calligraphy, stone polishing (she requested a stone polisher for her 70th birthday) and even had a go at making marbled paper. There was nothing arty or crafty that she would't try.

In case you're wondering, I can't sew for toffee, or even crochet or knit. I'm a complete klutz with a needle and it took me an entire school term to make an apron edged with ric-rac braid. Mum tried to teach me once, and when I my attention wandered she laughed and said, 'That's not the attitude!'

As a little girl I loved that she could make me dresses to match my own whims and preferences - until I started to covet the styles depicted on Jackie's fashion pages and yearned for C&A jeans and Miss Selfridge gypsy skirts. Mum kept on sewing clothes for herself, and when my twin boys were born in '97 she presented them with beautiful hand-made quilts, blankets, soft toys and pyjamas made from Butterick patterns.

I love to think of my crafting friends' sewing machines whirring away as new things are made from the fabric of a lifetime.

My next book is finished! Hello flowers!

It's a lovely feeling. I've actually emerged from my workroom and been out on big walks with the dog and drives in the country like old people do! Hence the pics of flowers. Jimmy unearthed a book called 'The Wild Flowers of Britain and Europe' which we've been taking on our jaunts. One of our sons asked, 'Is it issued automatically when you turn 50?' But I don't care because I HAVE BEEN OUT OF THE HOUSE! 

After months of grafting away, I can't tell you what a relief this is. I used to find this part - sending a book to my editor, and waiting for her feedback - completely terrifying. I don't anymore. Not because I think it's perfect - every book comes bouncing back to me, requiring loads of fixes - but because it's basically written which means the hard graft is done.

It's also the first book I've managed to finish at home, with normal life going on around me, rather than hiding away in a hotel for a few days. There are several reasons for this. First, my kids have reached that age (boys 17, daughter 14) when they no longer want to converse with me. In fact, days - WEEKS - can go by and no one bothers me at all.  The older they get, the higher my daily word count. I'm hoping that, by the time my boys are 19, I'll be dashing off 10,000 words a day.

Also, I realised how much I hate leaving my family to go away and work alone. It's utterly miserable. Going away should involve much laughter and fun and chat and alcohol, but holing up in a hotel room to finish a book means no such pleasures are allowed. So you sit there, typing, feeling deprived of fun - and also horribly ungrateful because you're in a hotel and should be enjoying yourself. Basically, much of it involves gazing mournfully out of a window which won't open properly and wondering what everyone else is doing. 

This time last year, I was in self-imposed exile in a Premier Inn in central Glasgow. Yes, I battered through the final chapters and got lots done. I wasn't having to break off to throw a chicken in the oven or wash anyone's pants. But I have never been so bloody lonely in all my born days. Only a friend dropping by to take me out for sushi - and sneaking out to Frasers to buy a ruinously expensive BB cream - saved me from tipping over into insanity.

I vowed to never put myself through that again. In fact I work better these days amidst the muddle of music and TV and people shouting and life going on about me - in other words, all the usual hubbub of home.  I also enjoy writing on trains and in coffee shops. But more than anything, after months and months of battering away at the keyboard there's nothing nicer than not writing at all. To be idle of finger, and devoid of plot-related thoughts - to stop working and admire the flowers. By the way, 'The Wild Flowers of Britain and Europe' is an excellent reference guide, if you ever find yourself with time on your hands. 

The almighty trauma of the school photo

Facebook's been full of school photos this week. Parents whose children have just left primary school have been posting pics of their children - sweet pictures showing big smiles. It struck me that, during the primary years, those regulation school photos (mottled grey/blue background, hair neatly combed) are fine, usually. It's in secondary school that the whole business becomes something else entirely. 

Take this: Exhibit A. It's my husband Jimmy, aged about five, with neat side parting and finger waves (his dad was a barber). It's a lovely picture, I think. I like it so much, I persuaded him to use it on our wedding invitation.

Then there's this: Exhibit B. That's me at about seven, girlie swot in the school library in a polo neck sweater. I wasn't embarrassed that Mum had sewn braid around the neck. In fact, I'd probably asked her to do it.

Then we come to Exhibit C when I'm about 13. I'm no longer happily parked behind a table of books. I am a seething mass of hormones and mortification. There's so much wrong with this picture I don't know where to start. 

By that point I had decided that my nose was so large, I had better do something to detract attention from it - hence the two low pigtails, which I hoped would make it look smaller. I'm not quite sure how that was supposed to work, but it was a trick I believe I'd read in Jackie magazine (big pigtails = smaller nose, in comparison!). I'm also caught in a half-blink, and my fringe was obviously cut by my mum, possibly during a power cut using those round-ended scissors that small children use to cut paper.

As a final touch, in the actual photo, inky blots are visible on the hand I've raised, as if waving feebly at the photographer. 

We keep reading how under stress teenagers are these days, with social media and the relentless pressure to be as skinny as Cara Delevigne. Okay, I didn't have that to contend with. This picture was taken around 1978. Cara had yet to be born. And I never aspired to look like one of the models in my favourite magazine. But at least today's teens are allowed to go to proper hairdressers and would surely remember to wash their hands before having a photo taken. 

Come to think of it, it's been years since I have been offered a school photo 'for approval' from my kids' school. Either the school has stopped doing them or my offspring have decided to not bring them home. Perhaps I'm a bad parent because I never think to ask. Back in the day, though, my own mum would ask, 'Have your school photos arrived yet?' and she'd snatch them from me, all excited. 

I remember her looking at this one in particular. 'Oh,' was all she said.  

We left the kids home alone... for a week!

My kids' school just had a talk about university applications. It was all about this course and that course and all I could think was, How can this be? That my boys will soon be applying for college or uni and washing their own pants? 

It only seems like last week that I was shepherding them home from the park, dripping and filthy and attracting those 'Look at those poor, sodden children!' type looks. I walked through the park yesterday for the first time in about eight years. It's been completely gentrified with a renovated paddling pool and loads of shiny new play equipment. In our day there'd been a burnt-out climbing frame and a stinky little hut full of fag butts.

But actually, I'm enjoying the fact that they're older. The whole uni/college thing is thrilling to me because I didn't go.  I left school at seventeen - the age my boys are now - and, thanks to my dad spotting a tiny recruitment ad in our local paper, applied for a job as a trainee journalist at DC Thomson in Dundee, publishers of Jackie magazine.  

Is anything more thrilling than leaving home? I was desperate to get the hell out. Having applied for art school, and failed to gain a place due to being pretty crappy at drawing, I realised how lucky I was to get a job of any description, let alone one on the magazine I'd loved since I was thirteen. The next three years were spent writing about blusher and how to make 'Dave' notice you. I lived in a bedsit, then flatshares, surviving on toast and beer, mostly. It was like being a student, without the lectures - the average age in the Jackie office was about nineteen.

Jimmy and I gave our boys a taste of independent living recently, and left them home alone for a week. We'd asked them if they wanted to come on holiday with us (our daughter had been whisked off to Spain by her friend's family) and they replied with a resounding 'NO THANKS.' Then they proceeded to organise a 'gathering'. Yes, I was worried about returning home to be greeted by inebriated teenagers and scowling police. But, desperate for a break, we set off.

Friends moan about not being 'needed' any more, and feeling redundant, but these days I think, what are you on about? Who wants to be needed every minute of the day? I've had seventeen years of being on hand, attending to my offspring's every needs, and my reserves of patience and dutifulness have all run out - peeling the top off a pot of Petit Filous would break me now. Anyway, Jimmy and I had a marvellous time, doing the stuff we love to do - chatting, eating, looking at art, quaffing a bottle of rose over a salad nicoise at lunchtime. And we came home to a tidy house and no evidence of excessive partying.

My chilli plants had been watered. There was milk in the fridge. One of my boys reported that he'd made a Caesar salad - yes, an actual salad, with leaves. 'Next time,' he said, 'you might as well go away for two weeks.'

My husband, the Kitchen Lurker

I love being cooked for. Nothing makes me happier than watching someone beavering away in their kitchen making something lovely for me. I decided that Jimmy could possibly be the father of my future children when I was perched on a stool in his tiny kitchen in Leyton back in '94. 

It was around our third date. I was sipping white wine. He was rustling up a Thai chicken curry from scratch (in those distant days, Thai curry was exotic in the extreme). He worked within striding distance of Chinatown, and at lunchtime he'd nipped out and bought all these fancy ingredients. Lemongrass! Some kind of stinking fishy block! And coconut milk! (I'd only ever encountered coconut in macaroon form before). 

The curry was delicious. I planned to marry him as soon as the opportunity presented itself. Bear in mind that my own fridge housed a lump of Cheddar freckled with mould and a bottle of vodka.

While I am a slave to recipe books (things tend to go awry if I venture off piste), Jimmy is an instinctive cook. He chucks stuff in, utterly confident amidst all the hissing and sizzling. I do enjoy cooking, but only in my own, cautious, instruction-bound way. And this is where we come unstuck.

You see, he can't just let me get on with it. He hovers, with a worried expression, making 'helpful' suggestions. Sometimes he prods things and he's always standing precisely where I need to be. The more keenly he observes, the more my confidence plummets. He is a Kitchen Lurker, prone to the following:

- Asking, 'Does that need a bit of salt?'

- Casually giving a pot a stir, even though there's no heat on under it.

- Shaking in random dried herbs which are not part of the recipe.

 - Dredging up the memory of my Terrible Mango Chicken Debacle and honking with laughter (note that this happened 20 years ago and only because I was bloody trying to impress him). 

- Saying, 'You could add a bit of Tabasco to that. Just, you know, an idea...' 

- Asking, 'Are you sure it doesn't need salt?'

- Having a sniff of whatever I'm cooking and looking slightly concerned.

- Adjusting the gas flame under a pan.

- Actually throwing salt in, without permission!!

- Remarking, 'It's okay, I'll do this bit' and muscling in - usually to fry steaks which, admittedly, I am always grateful for as mine tend to turn out 'lightly poached.'

So yes, he is useful. And he's a far better cook than I am. But, unless steak is involved, I do wish he'd take a leaf out of my book and sit back and watch and quietly drink his wine. 

And no, IT DOESN'T NEED MORE SALT!

Edging towards veggie

I wasn't overjoyed when my 14 year-old daughter said she wanted to stop eating meat - and only have fish - soon followed by not wanting much fish at all. But then I thought, this is okay, I've wanted to do this for ages. Our two sons (aged 17) are confirmed carnivores and it's been meat, meat, meat all the way for as long as I can remember. Whopping amounts of beef and chicken and lamb - it's vastly expensive, and also feels a bit... unnecessary. Too heavy and fleshy and animally. So instead of moaning about all the extra work daughter's meals would entail, I decided to go with it and join her and it's been fine. Things may be more challenging if, or rather, when - she is a teenage girl after all - she goes fully veggie. But maybe I'll join her in that too.

We've been scoffing loads of curries. My favourite Indian cookbook is by Rick Stein, accompanying his brilliant series - here's Jimmy making daughter something spicy with peppers and haloumi (instead of paneer) which was SCRUMPTIOUS. If I'm cooking, I'll generally knock up a chicken/lamb curry for the boys and a veggie one for daughter. It's a tiny bit of extra work, but when you think about it, making any curry tends to involve raking around for about half a day to find all the blasted spices and then grating and chopping and destroying the whole kitchen and using every implement you have. So you might as well make two - or even three - curries rather than just the one. And of course, most freeze brilliantly so you can eat another day without grating more bleedin' ginger. 

Also - the wonderful Jack Monroe's carrot and cumin burgers (from her cookbook, A Girl Called Jack, but the recipe is everywhere), which daughter makes for herself. They're easy, delicious and - according to Jack - work out at 9p per burger. Although ours are frisbee-sized, compared to her dainty ones. Anyway, they beat their meaty counterparts hands down, I reckon. 

We've also plundered Leon: Fast Vegetarian - it's modern and fresh and doesn't make you feel as you've been propelled back to Crank's, circa 1983, in the days when veggie food was terribly farty and made you want to sleep, fartily, for a week. Daughter has made a yum butternut squash stew, and a sort of posh beans on toast thing, with an egg draped on top. The book recommends a kind of bean we didn't have, so daughter used Heinz baked beans with the overly sugary sauce washed off (a Jack Monroe tip). 

Fish-wise - as we still have fish about three times a week - a sort of spaghetti puttanesca-with-tuna is easy as pie (why do people say this? Pie recipes ramble on for page after page!) for teens to make. Another fave is a big slab of salmon dribbled with fish sauce, honey, a few flecks of chili and lime or lemon juice, all wrapped in a greaseproof paper parcel and baked. 

This, too, is gleaned from a Leon book. I'm a little obsessed with Leon cookbooks. Everyone's so jolly and you get the impression that no one looks at the clock and thinks, 'Christ, teatime already, I really can't be fagged cooking tonight.' And there are always faded old photos of the contributors having big family holidays in the Dordogne in the 70s and we only went to Scotland or Wales. I used to dream about being propelled into a Famous Five story and now - Christ, I must be old - I want to live in a Leon cookbook. 

Anyway, back to our food thing here in our un-Leon world. It's early days, I know, and true dyed-in-the-wool vegetarians might mock my excitement over our tentative steps towards a new way of eating. But daughter's happy, as am I. I'm more energetic, my skin's looking better and I haven't felt remotely deprived. 

Also, after 17 years of trying to control what my kids eat, it's immensely refreshing to throw in the towel and say, 'Okay then - you decide.' We've been poring over websites and cookbooks and it's been a lovely thing. Any edging-towards-veggie tips gratefully received. 

Forever young? No ta...

I turn fifty this year. How did that happen? Half a century! Before I fill in my date of birth on an online form I have to scroll down and down for at least twenty minutes until the correct year (1964) appears. I've started running again, and I'm loving it - but only on soft, grassy surfaces, ie, Old Lady Running. But you know what? It's fine. Heading for 40 was scarier because back then I was far more sensitive about the whole ageing thing. And now I'm pass all that. I don't care anymore. It's extremely liberating.

When I was younger I'd be terribly upset at being perceived as middle-aged. For instance, one fine summer's day a bunch of friends and I took our children to some botanic gardens. I must have been about 36. We were admiring the blooms, bothering no one, when an elderly man stared directly at us and announced loudly, to no one in particular: 'Women are having children much later these days, aren’t they?' 

I couldn't believe it. This man was properly old! He could probably remember the war and rationing and I bet he'd eaten those foods you only find in old-fashioned cookbooks - things like suet and dried egg. My friends and I limped away feeling thoroughly depressed.

Then there was the 'kids policing my wardrobe' phase as if, without their intervention, I might accidentally step out in golden hotpants, like Kylie. When in fact I'd merely selected jeans and a bright top, possibly with dangerously short sleeves. These days my teenagers are too preoccupied with their own lives to care what I'm wearing. In the unlikely event that they happened to pass comment, I'd pay no heed - because I am old enough to know what suits me, thanks very much.

That's what's so great about heading for fifty: you stop minding about very much at all. Of course I care about my kids' wellbeing, and their futures, and my husband and our marriage, and my own parents and what will happen as they grow older. My dad is 80 this year. 80!! He sails his boat up and down the west coast of Scotland - he even sailed to Antigua a few years ago. This summer he plans to jaunt down to Liverpool, because sailing into Liverpool (instead of taking a train there) is something he can do. He is a fine example of someone who never worries about things that don't matter.

Like wrinkles, for instance. When those first lines appear it feels pretty catastrophic. And now I look back and can see that my skin during my thirties was fine - at least, I had yet to acquire geographical faults. Now I have plenty, but what I don't have is the terrible ashen-ness, and the colossal under-eye luggage that plagues the parent of small children. That's something to be very happy about.

I have also discovered that going to bed early with my Kindle and a cup of tea is an extremely lovely thing to do.

Yep, I know - just like an old person. Night all! x

Dusting down the trainers...

I’ve just started running again. I did my first 10k about eight years ago, but since then it's been an on-off affair. Each time I think, I really should start running again, I'm filled with dread about the pain and torment I'm about to put myself through.

And of course, it's never like that. Every time, I forget that going back to running isn't like starting from the very beginning, when you stagger along, gasping and purple, worrying that you'll fall over or puke. Starting again is painful - for ten minutes max. That's all it takes to overcome the initial 'Why the hell am I doing this?' bit and be back on your way.

In fact, going back to running has loads to recommend it. For one thing, you're always way better than you think you'll be. Also, you remember, pretty quickly, why you put yourself through it. It's liberating and exhilarating - it's probably the closest a human being gets to feeling like a dog. All those knotty problems start to unravel. A bad mood miraculously fades away. The only thing that makes PMT bearable is pulling on my manky old trainers and getting the hell out of the house. 

I read recently that writer Caitlin Moran swapped running for swimming when her joints started to feel creaky. Mine did too, so I now run on an abandoned railway track that's conveniently grassy and soft. I try not to run on consecutive days and am building up slowly - 40 minutes is about my limit at the moment. But then, I've only been at it a couple of weeks. My friend Tania and I fell into a habit of meeting at 7.30 am in the Easter holidays and running with our dogs. I prefer running with a friend, and chatting all the way - listening to music doesn't do it for me. I've never liked earphones plugged into my lugs and I'm always worried about some approaching hazard (escaped bull, angry golfer) that I'll be unaware of with music blaring.

It's so much more pleasurable that the many gyms I've belonged to over the years, cringing at the sight of an unused membership card stuck in my wallet. My thinking was: if I set up a direct debit, then I'll go. Then: if I spend £150 on fancy gym wear and book a session with the gym's personal trainer, then I'll go. I just ended up mired in guilt and a lot poorer. Mainly, I just used the cafes. 

In contrast, running is fantastically simple. Yes, it's deeply unphotogenic when you start, clattering along and swerving dog poo with the straps of your unsuitable bra dangling down at your elbows. It feels weird, too, running for 'fun' when you've previously only done it only out of necessity - legging it to school with kids in tow, or racing across an airport concourse with a LATE PASSENGER label stuck to your luggage.  But pretty soon, it changes from being an ordeal into something you want to do, just because it makes you feel good.

If you need a kick start, grab a copy of Alexandra Heminsley's funny and brilliant book, Running Like  Girl (Windmill Books) which details her transformation from couch potato to marathon runner. In fact, it inspired me to dig out my hideous old trainers again. Hope it does the same for you too. 

The dirt on country living

I grew up in a village in West Yorkshire, where our neighbour tried to revive his deceased corgi by placing him in the airing cupboard. After moving to London, and vowing to never go near the country again, let alone live in it, here we are in deepest, greenest South Lanarkshire in Scotland.

We've lived here for fifteen years. I now own countryish things I never thought I'd own: a rake, warm gloves, a waterproof coat. Finally I grew sick of Jimmy telling me off for clopping around country lanes in sandals and mules, and saying smug things like, 'There's no such thing as the wrong kind of weather, just the wrong shoes', and got myself some wellies.

If you're thinking of taking a similar step, here a few things I've learnt about the country over the years.

1. It's not like Country Living magazine. We have yet to furnish our home with 'charming finds.' It's a mixture of knackered Ikea stuff and a lumpen brown DFS sofa chosen in haste as our children were jumping on everything. 

2. You can be noisy. At least, if your house is apart from other houses which, thankfully, ours is. So our teenagers' drums and guitars can be played at deafening volumes, which they don't appreciate at all. In my Hackney flat someone would complain if you walked across your own living room in anything other than carpet slippers.

3. It's a myth that everyone's friendly in the country. But when they are, they really help you out. I'll be forever grateful to the newsagent who phoned me because he was worried about my mother spending too much money in his shop. Also the butcher who, when I ran over yelling that there was a crow in our house, shut up his shop and heroically removed the bird from our living room, with the aid of a small tea towel. 

4. It's dirty. Sure, I was a dirtier person in London: when we moved to Scotland I was amazed when a cotton wool pad didn't come away gunmetal grey after being in contact with my face. But our house here definitely sucks in more filth than any of our London flats ever did. It comes in on your wellies and stuck to the dog. I'm not saying this is a bad thing. Just that the countryside somehow manages to sneak into your house and there's no way of keeping it out.  

5. Animals. Everyone knows that bulls are dangerous, but what about the rest? I mean, cows are big and therefore intimidating, but could they harm you? All these years here and I still have no bloody idea. Would a ram actually ram you? While some people move to the country and immediately acquire all manner of hooved beasts, it's not essential. Some, like us, remain city cissies where livestock is concerned. 

6. It can become very competitive. In terms of being a proper rural type, I mean. Not real country people, who've grown up here - they build dry stone walls and help calves to be born without making out it's any big deal. It's the newcomers who shout about being country people now. They're the ones curing their own bacon and going on butchering courses and posting pictures on Facebook of themselves surrounded by entrails and blood. 

7. You'll feel compelled to make jam. Fruit, sugar and a load of boiling - how hard can it be? Let's just say Bonne Maman aren't exactly quaking in their little gingham boots. 

8. You get used to not having access to everything 24/7. It's fine, it really is. My mother never needed to buy oven cleaner or chicken breasts at 2.30 am, and neither do I. 

9. People never forget things. When I was about three I had a pee in our road. It just seemed easier than going home and using the loo. Being a tiny community, everyone knew about it about five minutes later. It was still being talked about as we packed up to leave when I was 14 years old.

10. Children love it. As a nipper I spent my whole time rolling down hills, jumping in rivers and having a fantastically free time of it. I even saw a flasher once - a proper old-school one, with his beige coat held wide open. 'I saw the front of a man!' I yelled, tearing into our house where Mum was tending something on the stove. She didn't even look round. It was hardly unusual, I suppose. Think of the seventies and what comes to mind? Soda Stream and men flashing their bits. Anyway, to me the country wasn't boring at all. Then I became a teenager and wanted access to Miners make-up and boys called Dave like the ones in Jackie stories, and nothing was ever the same again.

So be prepared for your children to grow out of their rural habitat. When that happens, naturally they'll blame you for their crappy life. But then they'd do that wherever you lived.

How should new mothers dress then?

Here's some shocking news. After having babies, women tend to alter the way they dress. According to the Daily Mail's 'report' last week, we lose all interest in fashion until our children reach the age of three years and nine months. Only then do we start to take a pride in our appearance again. That's almost four years in the saggy-arsed leggings, massive gravy-stained Garfield T-shirt wilderness. What are we thinking?

The figures are shocking. 21% of new mothers ditch short skirts, while 17% swap skinny jeans for something altogether more forgiving and comfortable. Talk about letting the side down! More alarming still, 40% of us lower our heel height by a whole two inches after producing a sprog. 'Slummy mummies,' the headline chastises. I'm still reeling in horror on learning that 16% of new mothers abandon their crop tops.

Reading this propels me right back to those baby and toddler years (my eldest - twin boys - are now 17). By far my happiest memories involve being with my gang of new mum friends, in Victoria Park in East London. That's my friend Fliss, above, with my son Dex. We bonded over picnics and long walks with our buggies, delighting in that, 'Thank God I've met someone like me!' realisation that hits us when we find kindred spirits in between all that bib laundering.

Long, sunny afternoons were filled with giggled confessions over the outrageous parenting shortcuts we took. We made each other laugh on those days when a nappy had exploded, or a toddler had disgraced himself by kicking over a display in a supermarket - those small disasters which seem altogether less awful when you have someone to share them with. 

These women were brilliant fun and saved my sanity when I feared I was losing the plot. I don't remember ever looking around and thinking, 'Haven't they let themselves go?' They wore T-shirts, strappy tops, jeans and combats (which were a thing at the time, and ideal for early parenting: roomy, cool - in the temperature sense - and virtually indestructible). Perhaps surprisingly, considering the sleep deprivation we were enduring, everyone looked healthy and glowy due to being outdoors with active children in all but the worst weather.  

For the first time in my life I had toned arms from pushing the twin buggy for miles every day. The group's hairstyle of choice was generally longish, and hastily pulled up - which happens to be pretty flattering - or an impish crop. The Daily Mail  laments that 18% of new mothers have their hair cut into a more 'practical' style - but since when did practical mean unlovely?

In fact, motherhood doesn't necessitate the wearing of horrible T-shirts that you wouldn't have slept in previously. Sure, comfort takes over; no one has time to 'plan' outfits, and easy, washable fabrics are the order of the day. But no one I knew went to the shops in their dressing gown with sick down the front, or gave up on hair and teeth brushing. Personally, I had a 'put your lipstick on' rule, which wasn't always achievable, but was at least something to aim for. And when my shins started to resemble those of a bear, more suited to roaming about in an Alaskan forest than a terraced house in Bethnal Green, then I'd get my razor out.

None of us had much cash at the time. We bought our kids' clothes from a little second-hand shop called Chocolate Crocodile in Hackney, and headed to the charity shops of Roman Road for ourselves. Cheap cotton dresses were grabbed in the market. No one worried about grass or ice cream stains, and our footwear (flat, obviously) enabled us to sprint across the park and rescue an escaping child whenever required. My new friends fell into an uncontrived way of dressing which looked all the fresher and lovelier for being thrown together at 6.15 am amidst babies braying for attention. If we cared about our appearance it was to reassure ourselves that we were in control(ish), and managing fine, rather than about keeping up with trends. We weren't 'slummy', but comfy and happy and enjoying a time which flashes by in a blink.

Interestingly, no one seems to have researched the percentage of men who swap their skinny jeans and snug T-shirts for more forgiving attire when Junior comes along. But that's fine, right? Because they're dads.

Who cares about reviews?

I mean, really, what do they matter? They're just a person's opinion. A review might have been written when someone was in a furious mood - maybe their goldfish had died, or they'd eaten a bad egg sandwich. Everyone knows this, but when you've made something yourself and it's out there, being given the thumbs up or down, then of course it matters a lot what others think of it. 

These days everyone reviews everything, all of the time. I buy some vacuum cleaner bags and next thing, up pops an email asking if I'd care to review them. WHAT AM I MEANT TO SAY ABOUT VACUUM CLEANER BAGS? They are bags! They fill up with dust, dirt and weird fuzzy stuff. What else is there to say? Books, of course, are different, as we tend to have pretty strong opinions about what we've just read. And authors want to know what those opinions are, even if we say, 'Oh, I never read reviews.' Take Mum Out, my latest  novel, came out three weeks ago and guess what? I've been checking my Amazon reviews as often as the chilli seeds I planted in a plastic pot - ie, daily. I know: embarrassing. As my 17 year son put it, 'You are a boring middle-aged woman.' Luckily, the reviews are making me happier than the progress of the chillies (a tiny sprouty thing poked out of the soil, then keeled over and died).

Of course, everyone gets the odd iffy review too. Sometimes, a certain phrase sticks in the mind for months, even years after it was written. Like this one: 'This book was just one sentence after another.' What on earth did she mean?! I still think about it now, occasionally - in the the way that I'll never forget a scaffolder yelling, 'Your arse looks like two footballs' - back in 1983. 'My daughter agreed,' the reviewer added. Now I imaged the two of them, muttering together about my piled-up sentences.

As for positive reviews, naturally any author is delighted by praise. Yes, glowing reviews can boost sales, but there's more to it than that. Writing a novel is a fairly long-term endeavour - mine take about nine months - and every author I know suffers terrible crises of confidence from time to time. At around the middle bit, usually, when the euphoria of starting something new has worn off, and you're not yet charging towards the finishing post. (I sometimes joke that chapters 3-40 constitute 'the difficult middle bit'). When you're feeling that way - worrying that it'll never come right - then reading a few enthusiastic reviews of the previous book goes a long way to restoring confidence.

'Well, she liked it,' you can tell yourself. 'She found it funny and snorted with laughter on the bus.' Then, as if by magic, getting on with the book-in-progress feels a little less daunting.

If you've enjoyed a book, I'd encourage you to take a few moments to post a review. Even if you wanted to set it alight and drive over it in a truck, then you are, of course, still entitled to share your opinion. Reviews matter, in that they can get people talking and encourage others to act on your recommendation. They can even make or break someone's day. So please, don't believe any writer who says they don't read them.  They do, even if they're peeping between their fingers.