What a brilliant way to start the festive season. Lunch at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese in Fleet Street with some of my best pals from the old Evening Standard days, followed by a drink or two at one of our favourite haunts, the Punch Tavern. As the drinks flowed, the years rolled away and the stories got wilder. We reminisced about the days when mobile phones were the size of bricks, ...keep reading
December is a frenetic month.Like everyone else, I’m scrambling to get work deadlines done and dusted, sort the Christmas shopping (and wrapping – I always forget that bit) and stressing about lunch on Christmas Day. On the plus side the tree is up (and unlike previous years it’s surprisingly unwonky) but on the minus side I still haven’t fixed the lights or made up beds for guests. But in amongst ...keep reading
One of the loveliest presents I’ve ever received is this pen and ink drawing of London by my daughter. There are loads of maps of the capital but this one is very special. Why? Because it’s a record of all the places in London that have meant something to me over the years – from Lavender Hill, where I used to hop on the 6.30am bus for the early shift ...keep reading
Am I the only person who isn’t watching Wimbledon? It may be the world’s greatest tennis tournament but I couldn’t care less about Andy Murray’s quest to win the men’s title again. The two-week championships were ruined for me when I covered them as an Evening Standard news reporter. Instead of watching matches that kept me on the edge of my seat I regularly spent Wimbledon fortnight chasing news stories. The sillier they ...keep reading
Mobile phones are so much part of our lives these days that it’s hard to believe we used to rely on old-fashioned phone boxes when we were away from home. When I tell my children that in my university days I queued outside my college phone box to ring my mum once a week they look at me as if I’m 103. I can still remember my family’s phone number from ...keep reading
Liz Jones sparks more controversy than any other journalist I can think of. She’s infuriated virtually the whole of Exmoor with her excoriating columns about the unfriendliness and the cold and shops closing on Saturday afternoons and she hit the headlines again last week with a piece about the bloggers she met at the recent Mumsnet Blogfest. Just to give you a flavour, she wrote about being in “a tangled ...keep reading
Tony Blair reckons he’s better equipped to be PM now than he was during his Downing Street years. He says he’s learned “an immense amount” and would love to have another go, even though it’s unlikely to ever happen. I was never a Blair devotee, but his words – during an interview with Evening Standard editor Sarah Sands – made me think. In my 20s I worked as a news ...keep reading
“Car boot sale…16 years of junk gone and £150 better off…result!” Those were the words of my friend Jennie on Facebook last night. Her update status caught my attention the instant I spotted it and I immediately set about trying to persuade someone to do a car boot sale with me. My daughter says she might, so you never know, maybe I’m making progress. Our family has a real problem ...keep reading
Sitting on the Oxford Tube on the way home from London last night, I flicked idly through the Evening Standard. There, on page five, was a single column paying tribute to one of the most outstanding reporters on the paper – Patrick McGowan, who died last week at the age of 60. Pat was a straight-talking Yorkshireman, who joined the Standard in 1978 and for nearly 30 years covered all the ...keep reading
We’re not even halfway through January and my son’s stressed about exams, my daughter’s up against an essay deadline and my husband’s in Malaysia. But my spirits rise when two thank-you letters arrive in the post. Coincidentally, they’re from each of my god-daughters – Kitty, a sophisticated 24-year-old Londoner, and Maddie, 11, whose gymnastic talents are a joy to behold. They live at opposite ends of the country and I ...keep reading