I make a lot of mistakes.  I mean, I've never done anything really dumb, like move to the suburbs, but I have dropped more than my fair share of clangers and this week, I made the almightiest of cock-ups by upgrading my Apple MAC operating system from Leopard to Lion. 

The upgrade was a necessary step in migrating to Apple iCloud, which seemed like an essential lifestyle choice at the time, although for the life of me, I can't remember why. After the upgrade, my Mac  looked precisely the same as it had 3 hours and £20 earlier, except that all 48 movies in my iTunes account had vanished. I'm sure we can all agree that was £20 that would have been better spent on a lip gloss.

Three two-hour phone calls later, I was on first name terms with pretty much everyone in the Apple Technical Support centre in Amsterdam and I was building a particularly strong bond with a Senior Support Technician called Freek. This took some doing on account of him being Dutch and thus having no positive personality traits but at this point I needed him more than he needed me so I looked on the bright side that at least he wasn't French and I went with it. 

Anyway, neither Freek nor his 6 team mates at Apple could identify the root cause of my problem and the only thing they could agree on was that I needed to spend £249 on an Apple Time Capsule. Go figure. 

Apart from the missing movies, iTunes was now storing my TV shows as movies. This may not seem like a big deal to you but as an obsessive compulsive, this was anathema to me. I got no sympathy from the team at Apple because I had not purchased these TV shows on iTunes. I had instead downloaded them for free using bit torrent. Note: confessing this to the Apple support team is like confessing to the crew on NYPD Blue that you shot a cop. 

The third issue was that my playlists had vanished. But that was peanuts compared to issues one and two so I did a deal with God (who I don't believe in but sometimes you'll try anything)  that if he got me back my movies and correctly filed my tv shows, I would happily live without playlists. Kind of  the way someone who owns 15  Gucci handbags gets diagnosed with cancer and bargains that if only they can please live, they will happily start buying their accessories at K-mart. 

This whole I.T. problem was made worse by the breakdown of my Blackberry, which as anyone with a RIM Blackberry will tell you is a monthly occurrence.  I was having to use a Sony mobile phone that was the height of technical innovation when I had first bought it in 2002. For anyone who can't remember those days, they were the times when a phone was a phone, not a phone, camera, videocam and internet browser. Hard to believe now but there was a time we used a phone to phone someone, not to take a picture of our dinner and post it on Facebook.

 They were also the days when phones weren't alarm clocks. Hence, I had no way of waking up on time for my meeting Tuesday morning but I figured I was safe because my dog, Dorothy, wakes up every day at 7:05am. Of course, the one day I didn't have an alarm clock she slept in till 8:40, which pretty much sums up my dog. 

So - I had no way of reading emails, waking up or watching a movie. My playlists were toast and, worst of all, my illegally obtained TV shows were inaccurately filed. I could just about make a phone call, but without my blackberry I didn't know anyone's phone number to call them and besides, I had earache from listening to a Dutch accent for 6 hours. 


I could see that I had two choices - I could either panic and freak out, or I could relax and enjoy the peace and quiet.   I could fret about what I was missing out on, or I could curl up with my dog and read a book. I could worry that I was going to be fired due to an urgent email sitting unread in my inbox, or I could daydream about taking 6 months off work to write a book anyway. 

I would love to say that I relaxed, curled up with my dog and daydreamed the week away, but I think we all know me well enough by now to know that  I freaked out and went nuts. Mostly at Freek. 

Then I decided that all this energy could be better spent, namely on forgiveness. Not on forgiving Apple who I will continue to complain about for many years to come (then I'll go right out and buy all their products anyway because I'm shallow like that when it comes to luxury consumer goods). Instead I decided it was time to forgive my ex-boyfriend.  Yes, he lied. Yes, he cheated. Yes, he left me for a woman with bleached hair. But I've got to give that man his dues, he has a brain the size of a planet and if anyone could find my entire Alfred Hitchcock movie collection, it was him.

So I had two choices again, but two different ones. I could continue to resent him for hurting me and thus resign myself to a movie-less life. Or I could let it go. 


I think it was the thought of spending more evenings on the phone to Freek, a man who didn't understand me and was getting tired of trying (apparently this is a lot like marriage) that tipped the balance. I decided to let it go. I forgave, and in turn, he forgave me for all the things that I did wrong, that made him want to leave me in the first place (you weren't all out there thinking I was perfect were you?). And then, in about 30 seconds flat, he found the movie files, and - because unlike Freek he knows what matters to a crazy person like me - he correctly filed my tv shows too. 


I curled up and watched "Somethings Gotta Give". It was better this way.

Lets Be Having You

For someone who has never robbed a bank or killed a person, I seem to spend an awful lot of time explaining myself to the police.  


Last night, I was on my way to a girlfriend's house because she has recently had a knee operation and so can't walk. More to the point,  she can't dance on the tables at nightclubs either, so we decided to spend our Saturday night at home eating pizza and watching a rerun of the Golden Globe awards. My girlfriend lives in the suburbs (everyone has their faults) so I packed an emergency survival kit and headed out of London to see her. I had got no further than two streets from my home, when I saw the oh-so-familiar blue lights flashing behind me.  At the time - and I'm not proud of this - I was programming my GPS with my left hand, texting her for the address with my right hand, and steering with my knees. 


"Do you know why I've pulled you over?" the policeman asked.


"No", I replied, because innocent until proven guilty.


"I've pulled you over because you've got no lights on" he explained.


"Oh fab!" I shrieked, understandably delighted at having got away with the whole dangerous driving thing, but causing the policeman to surmise I must be drunk. 


"What have you been doing for the last hour or so?" he asked me, and I answered as honestly and thoroughly as I could that I'd fed my dog, vacuumed the stairs, re-arranged my cookbooks, had a shower, changed into my pyjamas and left the house. 


It didn't take Sherlock Holmes to see I was telling the truth because I was standing there in my pyjamas with wet hair and a dog. But this policeman didn't seem to read those telltale signs and so asked outright if I'd been drinking, which caught me somewhat off guard because who drinks in the shower?


He explained that one of the most common things people do when they're drunk was to forget to turn their lights on. I thought of telling him that the most common thing most people I know do when drunk is have wild sex with work colleagues, but I decided against it.


Eventually, I convinced him that I was stone cold sober and crime-free, other than being a little casually dressed for a Saturday night, and he let me continue my journey. 


Hardly more than 12 hours later, I found myself face to face with one of his colleagues in Holland Park this morning.  Holland Park is a beautiful space and has many things going for it, including wooded areas, tennis courts, wild peacocks and a Marco Pierre White restaurant. On the downside, they don't allow dogs off lead. Possibly this is to prevent dogs running onto the tennis courts, possibly to prevent them attacking the wild peacocks, possibly to prevent them attacking Marco Pierre White. Who knows. But the point is, your dog has to stay on the lead.


Now, if you consider that I am someone who doesn't comply with the 'No Texting While Driving' rule, how much attention do you think I pay to the 'No Dogs Off Lead' rule? 


Precisely. 


So, there are me and my dog Dorothy -  me happily walking around the park and Dorothy happily running amok chasing the peacocks - when a policeman walks around the corner, closely followed by the chip on his shoulder. He took out his notebook and pencil in a very official manner, seemingly in an effort to make me feel intimidated but actually having no effect on me whatsoever because I've got loads of notebooks and pencils at home and don't find them intimidating in the least. 


He proceeded to ask me where I had been that morning. All this interaction with the local constabulary, who's first question always seems to be what I've been doing for the last hour, caused me to consider popping a daily timesheet through the letterbox of the police station every morning, so as to save us all some time. I've had pathologically jealous boyfriends who needed less information on my whereabouts. 


However, I answered as thoroughly as possible that I had read the New York Times on my iPad in bed, had a shower, eaten breakfast (tea and a bacon sandwich, ketchup on the side), walked the dog through Hyde Park and  was now on my way home.  And I was thoughtful enough to speak slowly so as to give him enough time to write it all down on his nice little pad.


Despite me being so helpful, he issued me with a written warning anyway. Although I should point out that I had no I.D. on me at the time so I'd be lying if I said the idea of giving him a false name and address didn't cross my mind.




Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I wasn't in the wrong to have Dorothy off lead. Clearly I was. I just can't believe that one cocker spaniel loose in the middle of a park is the biggest problem facing London's Metropolitan Police force and the best use of this policeman's time.  


Or, for that matter, his notepad.

Happiness is an iNap

Technology sales people the world over (and I should know, I'm one of them) love to tell you that technology improves productivity. Not to cast dispersion on my own profession but what a crock. 

Technology means that we spend our evenings in front of a laptop screen rather than having meaningful conversation with our families (or maybe meaningless conversation - you know your family better than I do). Owning an iPhone means that the first thing we do when we wakeup in the morning is check email rather than make love to our girlfriend (not that I'm bitter but you know who you are and no, I still don't care that it was marked urgent). While 90 trillion emails are sent every year, 89 trillion of them are utter rubbish unless you happen to be on the lookout for a penis extension but why would you need one of those when the only women you ever meet are your opponents on Xbox Live? 

And who am I to talk.  I just spent 20 minutes typing and sending an email to the person sitting next to me.

Don't get me wrong, technology would have made us more productive if we still communicated only the same amount of information we used to.  But we don't. Now, because people can share Youtube videos of their one year old Tommy eating a carrot, they do. And even though everyone except his Grandma thinks Tommy looks like a gremlin, we all waste two minutes of our lives that we will never get back posting a comment about how adorable he is, when lets face it, if we really thought Tommy was that cute, we'd have our own child and stuff it with vegetables.

Because it looks cool (my benchmark of whether or not something is a good idea), I recently converted to using an Apple Mac at work, rather than a Microsoft laptop. Talk about mistakes. 

First, none of the standard Microsoft applications such as powerpoint or excel work as well on a mac and the excel files I did receive from colleagues were populated with blank fields where there should have been numbers.  This turned my sales forecasts into a game of Bluff. (By the way, it was 6 weeks before anyone realised I was making the numbers up - further proof that while we may think we're being productive all day, we're kidding ourselves).   Secondly, nothing says "Bill Gates for President" like a week of heavy emailing with any application other than Microsoft Outlook. And finally, good luck installing an office printer on an Apple Mac. Do you know which print driver the HP LaserJet Enterprise M4555fskm uses? No, neither do I. 

For this reason, I am possibly the last person in London to get an iPad. Constantly being told that life without an iPad was so 2009, it became clear I needed to get one (remember 2009? That was the year Air France flight 447 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean killing 228 passengers on board, Israel invaded the Gaza strip and started a war that resulted in 1400 deaths, and Apple ran out of the iPhone3, forcing millions of mobile phone users to survive with only 16Gb of mobile data storage. Just an all-round dreadful year). 

As it happened,  thanks to a wonderful Santa, I received the surprise gift of an iPad on Christmas morning. While I didn't care whether my iPad was 3G or Wireless, or whether it had 16Gb or 64Gb of memory, I will admit that Christmas Day would have been a miserable write-off for everyone in our house had my iPad not been white with a pink cover. 

Thankfully, Santa had read my mind this year, meaning that everyone could happily enjoy the true meaning of Christmas without any tantrums from me. Not all households were that lucky. My Mother, for instance, telephoned in a terrible mood, because she had been given a Nintendo which she didn't want. Last year she had received a KitchenAid ice cream maker which she also didn't see a use for, so she was furious with her boyfriend for ruining her Christmas by giving her "duff presents two years running". Oh yes, It's the thought that counts in our family. 

Anyway, as I said, I was given an iPad. I fell in love with it immediately and  fast became one of the "I don't know how I ever lived without it" set.  And so began my metamorphosis from a person fully engaged in the life, environment and people around her (except when I am at work obviously) to someone who can think and talk of nothing but Apps. 

With there being 140,000 iPad apps available, and me having a pathological fear of missing out on something, it was just a matter of time before I became an addict. There hasn't been a day in January that I haven't bought a new app.  I have apps that tell me the latest golf scores, the weather in Beijing and the local time in Portugal. No matter that I hate golf, or that I have no plans to travel to China or Portugal, on the basis that I have previously been to both places and the only positive thing I could find to say in either country was that at least I wasn't in New Zealand.

I also have an app called Dropbox, which enables me to store the book I still haven't started writing yet (by any other definition, a blank document) in my 'dropbox' so that I can easily continue to not write my book on my laptop.  

I can now read the newspaper in the coffee shop, except I don't drink coffee.  I can zone out the other passengers on a London bus by watching Downton Abbey online, although the only way I would ever get on a London bus is if I was hit by one first.  And I can get instant access to extra recipes in the online Donna Hay cooking magazine even though I use my kitchen so rarely I asked my landlord if I could convert it into an extra cupboard (Which was a silly idea. My kitchen is nowhere near big enough to be a cupboard).

Consider the iNap app - which allows you to sleep at work without your colleagues noticing by making "work sounds" like a tapping keyboard, paper shuffling and mouse clicks. I haven't spent the 99c on that one yet, but i can see how it would have it's uses. Think about it - organisations spend on average $15,035 on technology per employee, and the employee uses that technology to play an app that means they can snooze all day at the office. Still believe technology improves productivity?

On the other hand, I can now view the YouTube videos of little Tommy eating his carrots anytime I like.  

Marvellous.

How to Be

I don't know about you, but no matter where I am, I always want to be somewhere else. Many people have experienced this feeling, most typically when they are at work, but for me it is an affliction that can strike anywhere. I could be sipping champagne in St Barts with Russell Crowe, and there I would be, suntanned and tipsy, wondering what Hugh Jackman was up to.


If I am at home reading a book, I wish I was in a cafe writing a book. When I am in a cafe writing a book, I wish I was in Provence writing a book. And now that I am in Provence writing a book, I wish I was in Las Vegas playing low-limits poker and knocking back rum and coke with my $20 buffet breakfast. 


No-one understands better than I, the Freudian explanation as to why I am haunted with an inability to simply 'be', rather than to 'be somewhere', but this understanding has done little to lesson the problem and so there you have it. Or more to the point, there I have it, 'it' being a life sentence of discontent. 


Take this week for instance. No, really. Take it. 


Here I am, in a lovely farmhouse, with a heated pool, overlooking the hills of the Luberon Valley, with the most gorgeous cocker-spaniel that ever lived as my companion, and all I can do is wonder what everyone is getting up to an hour down the road in St Tropez.  It's all I can do not to jump in the car and go and find out.


I came here alone to write. I thought that the only thing standing between me and becoming the next Agatha Christie was a week of peace and quiet. Instead, I've learned an invaluable lesson. In fact, I've learned a couple. And one of them is that if you want to write, you have to have something to write about.  


Here in the French countryside, I am struggling to find anything noteworthy. Or perhaps I am just struggling to find anything funny. I get up every morning, I buy a croissant, I eat the croissant, I lie by the pool all afternoon, I have a glass of the local Chateauneuf-du-pape, and then I go to bed with a book. (The book is not to read, you understand, but to swat things with. The bugs here are amongst the biggest I have ever seen and that includes my stint living in Australia which has the scariest creatures anywhere on earth, and I don't just mean the men. Last night I killed two bugs in one go by swatting a moth, which was being carried across the floor by something resembling a tiger prawn. That's how big the bugs are in this place).


The only activity in my week thus far has been a trip to the vets today, to book a Friday afternoon appointment for Dorothy's tick and tapeworm treatment, which is a requirement for re-entry back into the UK 48 hours before we travel.  The receptionist at the Veterinary clinic spoke not one word of English, and whilst my french enabled me to secure an appointment for 5:15pm tomorrow, I needed to rely on charades to explain what the appointment was for. I don't know if you've ever tried miming "Tick and Tapeworm Treatment" but let me tell you, it's very difficult to do while still maintaining an air of sophistication.  

I have come to the conclusion that, despite convincingly proclaiming the exact opposite in every job interview I have ever had, I'm not a self-starter. Unless someone is telling me to do something, I just can't see the point of doing it. So vacations alone lead me to mope around all day, unable to simply 'be', but likewise having no idea what to 'do'. 


A friend of mine, Tony, is a wonderful, arty, creative type who makes new friends more easily and more often than I make tea. At this very moment he is on vacation himself in India, no doubt stumbling on a previously-undiscovered Punjab tribe, wow'ing the locals with his Flip camera, and getting them all to pose for his next award-winning photography book. His advice to me is that what I lack on these trips alone is a project. Something not only to keep me busy (my cocker-spaniel has that covered) but also to give me a purpose for being here. 


I'm sure he's right. He does yoga, after all, and don't all people who do yoga know a thing or two about life that will forever elude those of us who forgo Sunday morning Ashtanga for a bacon sandwich in bed? (Or is it the other way around?)


But right now, what I really feel I need is not a project. What I would really love at this very moment in time, despite being forty years of age, is my Mom. 


Each year, my Mom and I used to take an annual vacation together. Nowhere too exotic, unless  you think Puerto Banus is exotic, which actually we did.  Just somewhere in Europe like Spain or Mallorca or Sardinia. The main criteria for the destination was that it had to be fun and it had to be sunny, our measures of a successful holiday being 'number of nights we got home after 5am' and 'strength of suntan gained'. There were two inventions of the 20th century that were of no consequence to us, one was Ovaltine and the other was SPF. 


Every single day of every single one of those holidays followed the same routine. Each morning my mom would make us get up and go somewhere, usually a shop but if we ran out of shops then an ancient ruin, before we were 'allowed' to spend the rest of the day relaxing. I would resent not being left to lie around the pool all morning but she would insist that I would enjoy my afternoon rest much more if we busied ourself with some activity first. We would then return to the pool just in time to get the best suntanning hours between 11am and 3pm (the ones all dermatologists tell you to avoid) and while I went for a swim, my Mom would make lunch. Every day she would ask me what I wanted on my sandwich and every day I would say Ham and Cheese and every day she would give me Tuna and Cucumber. 


And now here I am on vacation alone, eating a ham and cheese sandwich and free to do nothing all morning, hell,  all day if I like, and all I can think is how I wish my mom was here to drag me to see some old village tomorrow morning, then come home and make me a tuna baguette. 


So, having thrown more money at this little experiment in self-discovery than Marie Curie spent discovering penicillin, I've basically learned that a) there are more important things in life than sandwich filling; b) never again should I live in the middle of a major metropolitan city wishing I lived in a log cabin in Alaska, and c) neither will I sit in a busy office kidding myself that it's a lack of peace and tranquillity that is preventing me from becoming number one on the New York Times bestseller list. 


In the meantime I will spend one last day twiddling my thumbs in the middle of nowhere before I leave the french countryside to drive to Paris on Saturday. 


And no doubt, as I move through the hustle and bustle of the city on Saturday night, fighting with four million other people for a seat in Cafe de Flore and paying ten euros an hour for a parking space, I'll wish I was back here.

Peace in the Valley

Having dreamed of going away somewhere peaceful and relaxing, to start writing my crime novel, I settled on Provence. It seemed idyllic.  I saw pictures of lavender fields and olive groves and flea markets, and I thought "what's not to love?", completely forgetting that I don't actually like lavender, olives or fleas. 


I found a house with a heated pool, a view of the Luberon hills and a grand piano (which I can't play but it will look good on the photos). Even though the rental cost is more than the house I rent in Notting Hill, which I would never have believed possible,  I sent off a cheque for one week, because not content with merely dreaming up a crazy plan, I then like to throw money at it and make it happen. 


I left England via the Eurotunnel and  drove for 12 hours from one end of France to the other, subsisting on nothing but ham sandwiches and Jelly Babies until finally, I arrived at my new home for the week. Exhausted, I forced myself to stay awake  just long enough to heat a bowl of "soupe de legumes", take a long hot shower and curl up in bed with my dog for a good night's sleep. And only then did I find out about the bats.  


The master bedroom would indeed have a view of the Luberon hills if they cut down the tree directly in front of the window, but then where would the family of bats live?   If the fear of bats ripping my eyes out hadn't kept me awake all night (and it did), the flapping of their wings would have.  My Mother, in an effort to be helpful, reminded me that bats are blind but how does that help? So they can't see me when they tear my eyes out. And? 


Fortunately, my bedroom is swarming with bugs as big as saucepans, so if a bat did come indoors, the competition for airspace would probably cause it to fly straight out again. 


At 6am, I gave up on getting any sleep and headed out to Isle Sur La Sorgue, the famous Provencal flea market, where I had read that french antiques can be found at bargain prices. You may think that 680 euros for a brass lamp is a bargain but I struggled to see it as such and I treated myself to a chocolate croissant for 80 cents instead. Anything with chocolate in the middle for under one euro is a bargain in my book. 


It started to pour with rain (lucky I spent all that extra money renting a place with a pool, eh?) so headed home to make breakfast and watch a DVD of "Murder, She Wrote" for research purposes. The fact that I could have saved myself a small fortune and watched DVDs in the rain back in London was not lost on me.


After a deep sleep ("Murder She Wrote" has that effect) the dog needed something to distract her from eating the 18th century  sofa so - still in torrential rain - I walked her to the nearby village of Menerbes. The house owners had advised, in their advertisement, that Menerbes is a mere 2km walk away.  They had neglected to mention it was 2km up a steep hill.


The sun came out so I headed back to the house and pool, but got lost. Luckily, my dog is a cocker spaniel, a breed that has an incredible sense of smell that enables them to track their way home, so I let her lead the way. When one hour later I saw a sign that said "Welcome to Oppede" , a village 3km in the opposite direction, I reminded myself that this is no ordinary cocker-spaniel.


Miraculously, but no thanks to my dog who would be half way to Switzerland by now if she was still navigating, we  made it home while the sun was still shining. 


Being British, I like nothing more than getting topless and lying on a sun lounger. And so there I was, topless and lying on a sun lounger, when my next door neighbour chose his moment to come on over and introduce himself. Wearing nothing but bikini bottoms, I racked my brains back to my french lessons at school but struggled to recollect the past participle and so, try as I might, I couldn't remember the French for "My boobs used to be a lot firmer than this". With my broken french and his broken English, I learned that he is a film director and has a problem with the heating system of his pool. Either that, or he watches a lot of films and cleans pools for a living. He would have to clean a heck of a lot of pools though - his house is directly next to this one and it would take ten  minutes at a brisk pace to jog to his front door. He also told me that he is here to be alone because his Mother died last month at the age of 60, which is odd because he looks 55 if he's a day. 


After making a supper of beef stew and plum crumble, all the while bewildered why I was cooking on vacation when I never so much as boil noodles back home, I lit the candles on the terrace and sat down with a glass of wine to write. Peace at last.  A full five seconds elapsed before I heard a rustling in the woods and my cocker spaniel - ever the loyal guard dog -  ran inside the house and hid, leaving me to fend for myself. Figuring that the noise lurking in the bushes was either wild dogs or the French Film Director, I prayed for wild dogs, ran inside and locked all doors and windows. 


I now lie here in bed and I can hear a banging sound every few minutes. Bearing in mind that I am alone in a 5-bedroom house in the middle of several acres of woods, what can the sound possibly be other than a mass murderer?


I have realised that going somewhere peaceful doesn't necessarily bring you peace. But come hell or high water, the book starts tomorrow.

Ignorance is Bliss

In addition to not having a television, I do not read newspapers. This is why I couldn't pick out Lady Gaga in a lineup.


I realise I should read a daily newspaper. For starters,  I would perform better at work as it would keep me up to speed on the financial issues affecting my clients and my industry (snore). Moreover, a better understanding of current affairs would enable me to make light conversation at cocktail parties, rather than relying on tequila body shots and a limited repartee of blond jokes to pass the evening. 


But the thing is,  I can't be bothered.  


Besides, at any given point in time, one can actually guess the news:- Someone in the Middle East will be fighting with someone else in the Middle East; Somewhere in the world is experiencing the worst droughts in history; Somewhere in the world is experiencing the worst floods in history; America is in even more debt than they were last week; the French aren't getting involved; and the English Prime Minister is cutting short his vacation in order to deal with it all.


(Sidenote: As the English Prime Minister has had 4 vacations this summer, perhaps someone should point out to him that if he really fancies a refreshing change of scene, he could always try popping into Number 10). 


Occasionally though, I get caught out. 


Friday evening, I returned home from a 3-day business trip to find that, in my absence, my bath had begun leaking through the kitchen ceiling below and my kitchen floor was a swamp. So far, so normal. Living in a Victorian Notting Hill townhouse, leaking pipes are as normal a part of daily life as mice and Prada-clad neighbours. When I first moved into the house, I didn't realise this. A dripping ceiling would have me in a flap, calling in an emergency 24-hour plumber and locating the stopcock to switch off the water supply. But these days, I'm so used to the sound and sight of dripping water that the combi-boiler could explode and I would barely bat an eyelid. 


So, anyway, I called my landlady, who had left London for  a weekend shooting clay pigeons and drinking martinis at her country manor, to tell her that we had a leak.


 "Oh dear", she responded  "another one?"


I assured here that I had put a bucket under it so not to worry, we'll deal with it in October because there is no sense ruining the last of our summer with it. She was audibly relieved and agreed this was "A marvellous idea" and we moved onto more pressing matters. (More pressing, that is, than the fact that - judging by the regularity and strength of the dripping - my bathroom and kitchen were about to become one room). 


"I'm absolutely having kittens about all this trouble in New York", she said, and of course, I had not got one clue what trouble in New York she was referring to, but by the concern in her voice I was getting the distinct impression that I should.  I bought myself time with a sympathetic "Mmmmm" and she went on to explain that her daughter was scheduled to fly out of Manhattan to London for business, and she was frightfully worried. Now, because two of my best girlfriends live in Manhattan, I was also frightfully worried and I didn't even know why. 


You see, this is why I don't read newspapers. Now I was imagining terrorism, plane crashes, rioting and civil war whereas 5 minutes previously, my biggest concern had been locating a mop. 


I went online and checked SKY NEWS and the problem, of course, turned out to be Hurricane Irene. 


For 48 hours, I have been held in the grip of newsmen everywhere because nothing makes a newscaster's day like a good natural disaster. I have not slept properly, read a book, walked my dog or left the house. For two days, I have alternated between SKY news, BBC news and CNN, searching for the best online coverage of subway closures, power cuts and scenes from the "battered Bahamas".  I focussed my attention on nothing but Hurricane Irene as it "roared up the East Coast" towards my two friends with whom I have been in constant email contact. We decided whether they should evacuate the city and debated the best way to safely store their Manolo Blahniks out of water's way (remember, I have become an expert at this - see above).  


Even as late as 8:30am EST today, we sat waiting on the edge of our seats as the storm surge was expected to hit Lower Manhattan within the hour. Carnage was expected. New Yorkers had stockpiled food and water. "The edge of the hurricane is finally upon us" advised mayor Michael Bloomberg. 


And then..... nothing.


Turns out, it was just a tropical storm. By 9am EST, people were out buying their New York Times and enjoying Sunday brunch. By 10am, sunshine was peering through the clouds. By 11am, my girlfriend was at her yoga class. 


Please don't misunderstand me - I am obviously very, very happy that the Hurricane did not strike this wonderful city and it's people. And I recognise that even as I write this, 15 people from the East Coast have been killed by Hurricane Irene,  that damage to New Jersey and NYC boroughs like Brooklyn and Queens has occurred and that acres of real estate have been flooded. I empathise that the last thing the people of NYC deserved was another crisis and that the last thing the US economy needed was four days of economic shutdown. I am immensely relieved for NYC and it's people that this natural disaster was averted.


My point is this - I have read the newspapers and watched online news for two whole days and where did it get me?  If I had not known about the hurricane, I would have had two wonderful days happily watching back to back episodes of "Murder, She Wrote" and throwing a frisbie for my dog. I would have sat down to read my new James Thurber short-story collection and dozed off on the second page. I would have baked myself a rhubarb crumble and had a mani-pedi. And what would I have missed out on? Nothing. 


I could spend my life reading The Times and worrying about what's happening in places I have never been to people I have never met. Even if what journalists report wasn't exaggerated with an air of impending doom in order to keep us from switching to a different news channel, what can we actually do about it, other than worry? Statistics show that 40 percent of what people worry about never happens, 30 percent has already happened and can't be changed, and 22 percent is beyond our control.  In other words, whats the point of worrying? And if we're not going to worry about it, whats the point of missing "Murder, She Wrote"? 


The next time someone tells me they are stressed and anxious about a world news item, I am simply going to remind them that "stressed" is "desserts" spelled backwards.  That can't be a coincidence. 

I've always been plagued with the vague notion that everyone else is having more fun than I am. Then, one day, university student Mark Zuckerberg invented Facebook and proved it. 


I was frantic. Thanks to Facebook, it had become clear everyone else has 180 friends (I have six), people are at parties till 3am (most nights, you can find me on my sofa reading the collected poems of Edna Vincent Millay) and seemingly everyone I have ever known is happily married with two beautiful, well-behaved children (I am single and have one cocker spaniel, who's hobbies include digging a whole in the hallway carpet and eating my Manolo Blahniks). 


According to Facebook, everyone was richer/happier/thinner and having more parties/holidays/sex than I was. Even people with children, which can't be true, can it?


No, it can't. The more I used Facebook, the more I began to see that the opposite is true. Judging by the frequency and content of their posts, people weren't having fun, they just wanted to pretend they were. Or, giving them the benefit of the doubt,  their benchmark for 'interesting and noteworthy' is much, much lower than mine. 


Three Tuesdays ago, for instance, I arrived home and found Ronny Wood of The Rolling Stones, sitting outside my house playing with Dorothy, my cocker-spaniel (she was taking a break from my Manolo's and chewing the buttons off Ronny's cardigan). I said Hi to Ronny and thought nothing more of it, other than to bath Dorothy to wash off the smell of his unfiltered cigarettes. I certainly didn't post about it on Facebook.  


In comparison, here are some of the things my facebook 'friends' have shared on their 'wall' in the past seven days:-

• Angie went for a shower before her evening shift
• Helen ate a sausage sandwich, with ketchup!
• Peter has passed his Kayak Level 1 course
• Maria's pet budgie lost 8 feathers

Are you bored yet? 

They can't actually think these things are interesting.  Oh God, do you suppose they think these things are interesting??

I started to question the quality of my friends. One girlfriend of mine  - she is a successful and highly-paid Director of a multi-billion dollar company, so presumably  not a complete imbecile - was at a restaurant and posted a photograph of her husband's meal on Facebook. Rather than share in the delight at his 16 ounce sirloin steak, my first thought was "For the love of God woman, get yourself a hobby".


I could only think that people need to post these things because their daily routine is so boring and this is a way of bringing it to life. Why else would a person eat a cheese and pickle sandwich and then feel the need to tell 278 of their closest friends about it?


Because in the same way as people who tell you about all the great sex they're having, aren't really having any, people who want to show you what a fabulous life they're leading, aren't really leading one. If they were, they would have neither the time nor the inclination to post a minute-by-minute account of it on the internet. 


But for people who are not leading lives that incite the envy of others, Facebook presents a wonderful opportunity to draw the admiration of those around them, simply by being selective about what to share. This is why no-one ever posts a picture of themself on a "fat day" even though we all have them. It's why there are no youtube videos of frazzled mothers failing to calm their toddler throwing a wobbly in the supermarket, even though every toddler throws a wobbly in a supermarket. 

Do the maths - if Facebook is an accurate representation of life, then how is it no-one ever posts details of the extra-marital affair they are having, even though 76 percent of married people are, at one time or another, having one? 


I no longer fall prey to these tactics, and instead feel only pity when someone posts that they have just landed safely in Malaga. (Actually, to be fair, I have always felt pity for anyone who finds themself in Malaga). And I merely roll my eyes at the people who share their achievements online. "Just ran a half-marathon!! " posts James on a Sunday morning, as I lie in bed reading novels and eating jam donuts. 

Rather than feel I am missing out on something, Facebook has given me a new sense of contentment with my own life. I have realised that for every evening these people are out until 3am, there are twenty other evenings they are home watching Eastenders.  And while I may have only six friends, they are six real friends who I truly love (and none of them would be daft enough to run 12 miles on a Sunday morning, even if George Clooney was giving out free cupcakes at the finish line). 

You may ask why I am even on Facebook in that case. And I would tell you that when someone comes up with a better, faster way to stalk an ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend, I'll be dropping FB like a sack of spuds but until then I'm stuck with it. 

I'll be honest. I don't post pictures of myself on a fat day either. My facebook entry includes a profile photograph of me sailing a yacht in the Caribbean seemingly having a wonderful time, when in truth, the week on that yacht was the closest thing to hell I have come yet (and remember, I once spent a week on The Algarve).  There were times on that sailing holiday when I wanted to get off the boat so badly, I seriously considered putting on my life jacket and swimming to Florida.  But you wouldn't know that from my facebook page. 

I don't share my true self online because I have to protect my online brand. Facebook is a world without walls. If you're not careful, it's a place where your Managing Director from the office gets to meet your best friend who's a lap-dancer and your ex-boyfriend who has "Thunder" tattoo'd across his chest (because that's his name). 


So, one has to assume nothing is private and accept friend invites only from people who will give a good impression. Recently, I refused a friend request on this basis and was rebuked when we next met in person. "I'm sorry", I explained, "I had to ignore your request. That's my online presence and I can't be friends with just any old body".


"But I'm your Mother!", she cried.