There was an odd moment the other night. We were at Up the Creek, the comedy venue in Greenwich, and it had already been a curious evening. There was a restless air of violence, as though the whole crowd was saying, ‘you looking’ at me?’ in that moody, twitchy, dying-for-a-fight kind of way. Someone had …
I’m not at all surprised at today’s newspaper reports that children from poorer backgrounds (are we even still allowed to say that?) are much less likely to go to the ‘better’ universities. It seems that without all the relentless parental hovering over their reading as tots, without the improving visits to museums and galleries, without …
A friend of mine has been playing hostess to a young relative for several months. He tipped up from his home in foreign parts with vague thoughts of maybe working, maybe not, and has been pootling happily around London ever since, lucky thing, his options open, his horizons wonderfully wide and a comfortable home with …
Child Two has always had a problem with milk. As soon as she started on formula at a year old, she began to develop mysteriously persistent coughs and colds, which for a long while I put down to Belgium’s climate (even damper than the UK). It got so bad that I had to take her …
OK, I admit it, I did look at the clip of Madonna falling on her backside at the Brit Awards. But I (sort of) had no choice, as the TV was blaring on in a waiting room …. and I was curious. I already knew about her tumble, because all the freebie commuter papers yesterday …
Wow and well done to Patricia Arquette. Admittedly, fantastically beautiful Oscar winners don’t really come across as the most oppressed group on the planet, so I doubt she’ll be the one who finally forces the patriarchy to stump up equal pay. But on the other hand, when does a woman ever otherwise get such a …
OK, can you read on, please, and tell me if this ever happens to you: 1. I decided I HAD to have a new waterproof mascara to take to hospital. As you do. I think I was envisaging brave tears of pain, without panda smears. Little did I know there is no pain in hospital …
1. Nurses are wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. Well, of course we all know that – but it probably takes seeing them working 12 hour shifts with a bunch of difficult customers to appreciate fully just how lovely they are. 2. More goes on in one day on an NHS ward than in a year’s worth of …
Sponsored It’s hard to know what to say when a child confesses they’ve been awake all night worrying that you’re going to die. So I did what any good parent would do – and lied my head off. ‘Of course I’m not going to die. What a ridiculous idea,’ I blustered, knowing all the while …
It’s been a while, what with all the medical stuff – in a nutshell, there’s another operation to get through in January, then that should be IT. There’s no radiotherapy or chemo with melanoma as it doesn’t work, so I might try to get on a drugs trial ….sounds more fun than it is, probably. …