I’m so cross about this that I can hardly type. Child 2 and a friend were harassed by a large group of boys yesterday as they walked home from the bus stop – a stroll of only about 200 yards. Her friend is 11, and has just started year 8 at the big school. Child …
Sponsored post The crack of dawn on a Monday morning, when the schools have just gone back and my street is so quiet you can hear the first autumn leaves fall, is the ideal time to contemplate how work is going to shape up this year. It’s not easy to get motivated when working from …
I used to stay in a hotel in Alsace for a horrible job I once had working for the European Parliament. The hotel was called the Pax, but was (un)fondly known as the Pox to everyone in the office. The room I was always allocated was so small you had to open your suitcase on …
Off to Guy’s Hospital again today but this time, my appointment wasn’t a horrible operation or a nasty or uncomfortable check-up. It was a lovely aromatherapy massage, courtesy of Dimbleby Cancer Care. I was astonished when the St John’s Dermatology department at Guy’s and St Thomas’s, who have handled my malignant melanoma, asked if I …
Yesterday morning, a dancer called Jonathan Ollivier was out on his motorbike in central London when he suddenly collided with a car. A couple of hours later, we sat in the packed auditorium at Sadler’s Wells watching Matthew Bourne’s extraordinary ballet Car Man, loosely based on the Bizet opera Carmen. Car Man is set in …
I was thrilled to be taken to Bend it like Beckham last week. I used to think I didn’t like musicals – but that was before I had ever seen one in the West End. I’d just seen sappy musical films on TV and started to yawn as soon as the hero started to sing. …
Here we are, with sunny summer days ahead, and our thoughts naturally turn to ….deodorant. Well, mine have turned that way, because I am very Lymph Node Aware these days and don’t want to fill my poor remaining nodes with potentially toxic gloop. Apparently 98 per cent of women with breast cancer have parabens from …
I was going for a walk the other day – I’m supposed to walk for at least twenty minutes a day to keep my lymph system going and I’m getting to really like it – when I saw this little shoe perched up aloft on a fence post. It seemed so poignant and so lost. …
I don’t love theatre nearly as much as I feel I should – huge ticket prices, uncomfortable seats, the awkwardness if things on stage aren’t working – but I do adore Oscar Wilde and Shakespeare. They seem such bullet proof writers – their plays make sense to me no matter what silliness the directors/set designers/actors …
I’m so glad I live in England. I have a very funny friend who lives abroad – no prizes for guessing where – who tells me the only correct answer to the question ‘how are you?’ is to say, ‘FANTASTIC’. At that volume. He explains, “If you answer, ‘Well, I mustn’t grumble’, what you are …