Guiding Light

Where do you look for guidance if you don’t believe in anything other than free will and self determination? Who do you turn to for advice? Who do you whisper to in your head or maybe even in your heart?

Girls, we know the answer. Simply ask yourself: “What would Ripley do?”

Ripley gets mad. Then she gets even.Ripley sometimes feels sad. Things go wrong that she can’t change. Then she channels her emotional energy into fixing what she can fix.

Ripley is brave. She feels the fear and does it anyway. She is composed under pressure. She is strong and she is smart. She is practical and resourceful. She gets things done and makes things happen. She is bloody but unbowed.

Ripley is cool and beautiful and takes no prisoners.

Open your heart to the ways of Ripley. Follow her path and she will guide you through the toughest of times.

Own Goal

Everyone is supposed to have goals, aren't they? I became disturbed that I didn't seem to have any, so I bought a book, a few months ago. "Be Your Own Life Coach!" it exhorted enthusiastically. It promised me that in seven days I would have a compelling action plan, covering all the key areas of my life. Hurrah.

It divided life up into several sections, shown in a neat pie chart (no, I can't remember what they were - probably family, health & fitness, friends, career, all that..) I had to rate how satisfied I was with my life in these areas. My chart when I drew it was hideously mis-shapen and asymmetrical. Now there's a surprise. At first I was upset. Oh no, my life is all out of kilter - then I thought, hey I knew that, that's why I bought the flippin' book.

Pulled myself together and I set down some goals in each area. Wrote them in the neat little charts that were in the book. Drew up steps, how to make my way towards achieving them. Put them on a little card to carry around with me. I pursued these goals, half-heartedly, listlessly, for a while. If I was honest, they did not speak to me - I didn't really care whether I achieved them or not. I had created the sort of goals I thought I ought to have: I didn't know what I really wanted, couldn't find anything that mattered enough.

I still don't know now. I'm wondering if it's to do with the fact that a lot of the things I might want, underneath, I can't have unless there are earth-shattering changes that make me feel weary even just allowing them to creep into my peripheral vision. Everything staying the same is a dispiriting prospect too: I feel I'm between the devil and the deep blue sea.

Saw a great article the other day about how women in their twenties fantasise about meeting Mr Right and moving in together, the wedding, children, all that. Women in their thirties are too busy balancing family and career to fantasise about anything other than getting a decent night's sleep. Women in their forties, we fantasise about living in a small, uncluttered house with evenings free to read, chat to friends, take up forgotten hobbies, flirt on-line - and alternate weekends blissfully empty of children and available for hot, dirty sex with Sean Bean.

My newly-single friends however are finding that, as I have long suspected, all the nice men are hooked up with nice women, living in nice houses with nice children, nice holidays and a nice life. Even Sean Bean. They might be kicking over the traces just enough for an illicit skirmish, but they are staying where they are. The nice men are sticking it out for the kids, or staying because that's what they promised, or better with the devil-they-know.

So here I am - drifting, aimless, often lonely, busy oh god yes, but without any clear goals. Apart from one. There's one thing I'm pursuing relentlessly, with focus, with commitment, with enthusiasm. No matter the work commitments, the mounting ironing-basket, the taxi service, I am finding the time for this. You'd never guess it - unless you asked the girls. They know.

I want to play Lullaby Of Birdland, no mistakes.

I grew up to a soundtrack no one hears these days. Deeply unfashionable. Frank Sinatra, ok. Mel Torme, Peggy Lee, Julie London, Georgie Fame.... and I want to play the piano like George Shearing. (Who he? Shame on you). All those lessons with Mr Fenwick's wrinkly hand squeezed between my thighs till I told mum, the Beethoven, the fucking Goldberg Variations (music to prompt OCD and a nervous breakdown if ever there was an accompaniment to that) it doesn't help you play like George, no way, no how. My Uncle George, he's a jazz pianist too, had his own quintet, played with George Shearing sometimes, before they all went off to America.

It's a bloody hard piece (if you're a grade-5-at-school piano player like me). Every chord needs to be mapped out note by note. It's in a weird key to start with, and then all sharpened and flattened. And when you play it slowly, to learn it, each individual chord sounds wrong: they only make sense in the progression of the phrase. Undeterred, I am making my way through. It's been taking me ages, months. The commitment I'm showing, the time that I'm carving out for it, the slow but perceptible progress...... maybe anything is possible......

(Well maybe not playing it like this... maybe that's not possible. But certainly something worth trying):http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1CAgSbNDLc&feature=PlayList&p=2C3EE439D886B3D3&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=47

On my wavelength

Earlier this year, I bought tickets for a film because the poster made me smile:

"For anyone who’s ever tried to make someone fall in love with them by making a compilation CD."

Now I’m showing my age here: in my day we made tapes. On everyone’s eighteenth birthday wish list, right at the top, was radio cassette player. This was back at the time when bigger was better when it came to technology, so if your boom-box had detachable speakers, and was heavy enough to pull your arm out of its socket when you carried it around, you were cool. (In today’s topsy turvy world, you’d have your music on something as small and light as possible, and you’d be hot). In order to make compilations you needed an additional feature: tape-to-tape. If you didn’t have this, you had to tape your music from the radio. We listened mostly to Laser 558. My tapes are probably a valuable archive of this long-sunk pirate.

I still have all my tapes. I don’t listen to them, the quality is unbearable. But I do look at them, and think about the tracks and the memories they hold. Inevitably it will prompt me to put a CD on. I was conscientious and wrote on the card sleeve - gave them all titles, too. Party (1-8, although seven is unaccountably missing). Dancing. Romantic. Sad. The sad ones feature Phil Collins a lot. The romantic ones major on Sade. Music to screw to. Your love is king, baby.

I reckon people are divided into two groups: music matters or it doesn’t. For me, everything has a soundtrack. There are songs playing in my head the whole time. I’m not welded to my iPod when I’m out and about (well, only sometimes) but in the car, in the house, music is always playing. Selection of the CD is just as important as selection of the wine, sometimes more so.

I don’t like buying downloads, I prefer to have the CD. It’s a hangover from vinyl (yes, still got that too, still played) I like to see the covers. I like the process of choosing, looking across the neat spines (CDs are so tidy, I love that about them) choosing for mood, vibe, time of day. Sometimes I’m thinking all the way home about what to put on when I get home, an anticipatory buzz. Often I’ll sit in the car outside the house, waiting for a song to finish on the radio before I go in.

All my CDs are in alphabetical order by band or artist. Then there are separate sections beyond the main collection: smaller sections for jazz, classical, Christmas. All the compilations are together, but I’ve sorted them by theme. There should by rights be a couple of hundred more classicals, but I let the ex-husband have all the CDs because I felt guilty about leaving. Big mistake: I missed the CDs more than I missed him. Still now, I will go to put something on, and realise with a pang I don’t have it any more. I’m replacing every time I do this, but it’s taking me a while.

The house is usually very untidy, but never the CDs. Alphabetising has thrown up some interesting dilemmas. The Cure, The Cult, The Strokes, The Thrills, The Killers, The Kaisers, The Fratellis, The Police, I’m disregarding “the”. Van Morrison, Def Leppard, Led Zep, Bon Jovi, I’m not sure. I probably need expert professional advice from my librarian posse. I have such an eclectic selection, whatever you fancy will be in there somewhere. The only music I don’t like is gospel, rap, country & western, folk (although I can edge quite close to C&W, at times). The records, I decided to do them the Nick Hornby way, the way that only I can do them: in the order that I got them. That means my records are not allowed to be mixed with his records. (And believe me, another time guilty or not, I would be taking my CDs with me).

I think the people that wrote the film poster don’t understand what they’re messing with there. Making the right mix-tape can have enormous significance. I’ve definitely fallen in love with people based on their ability to make up a compilation that pressed my buttons.

My friend Katy and I, we reckoned that the quality of a boy's mix-tape told you everything you needed to know about whether they'd be any good with you in bed. Either you get me or you don't. Get the soundtrack right and everything else is easy. Music is a sure-fire way to my heart - and other parts of me too.

Wire

Oh god.

Count to ten. Count to twenty. Count to ten thousand. Count for ten years until they've gone to college. That's a long time to be counting. Don't count on me making it that long. Something's got to give.

What lies beneath

Sure I think about dogs, and twins. White noise growing loud enough to drown out the other, spikier, more uncomfortable thoughts. Yesterday I cleaned the bathrooms, hoovered the stairs, did a lot of laundry and never had a moment spare to ask any of the big questions.

I feel that I live my life behind a plate glass window a lot of the time. Like the Truman Show in reverse - everyone else is really getting on with things, and I'm just watching. Meaningful connections have been forged with people I can count on the fingers of one hand. Beyond that it's automatic.

That's where this course last weekend was hard. It asked the questions I try to ignore. I guess that's why I went. And now they won't go away as easily, they are clamouring for answers. I guess that's why I went.....

Dog's Dinner

"You look like a dog person", he said, walking over with a smile.

Oh so wrong, so very wrong. I can't think of anything good about dogs, really. Imagine therefore my delight to see today on the news a review of book that urges its readers to:

Save The Planet! Eat Your Dog.

Hurrah for this book. Probably the very best place for a dog is in a casserole, turning gently in a rotisserie cabinet, grilling over the barbecue coals. (That's not actually the exact title of the book.... although near as dammit, the real thing is called Time to Eat the Dog: The real guide to sustainable living). I looked in there for recipes, but sadly there weren't any.

The eco-pawprint of a pet dog is twice that of a 4.6 litre Land Cruiser driven 10,000 kilometres a year, so they reckon. I wish I'd known this before I guiltily chopped in my Chelsea Tractor for a super-environmentally-friendly BMW 325i convertible last week.

The interweb, source of all knowledge, tells us that the Vietnamese have seven ways of cooking dog. And I thought it was Koreans that liked hot dogs: truly my ignorance knows no bounds. It reminds me of one of my old blog entries, and I said I was going to revisit those. When I find it, I'll paste it onto the end of this post.

Gemini

Every day on the way to school we see The Funny Twins. Two men in their fifties, walking to work. They are identical - and I mean identical. They wear the same clothes, carry the same bag. They walk in step, and have the same pursed, purposeful expression as they stride out. We gauge how early or late we are by the point at which we pass them: "Oh no! The Funny Twins are at the roundabout - we're going to miss the start of assembly".

We are fascinated by these Funny Twins, and in fact now by identical twins in a more general way. Our au pair is one-of-a-pair, and there is a set at school. Not to mention the Funny Lady Twins With The Big Hair, often to be seen in our favourite coffee shop of a Saturday morning. Guess who we think they should be hooking up with?!

We wonder about twins. If one gets a freckle, does the other one? If one has a headache, does the other one? Do they dream the same dreams? If they both eat the same dinner, would they both fart at the same time? And then do the same poo? (I don't wonder so much about that myself, I'm just reporting...) Would they both get cancer?

We worry a lot about the Funny Twins getting older. What would happen if one of them was killed in a freak accident, space-junk falling from the sky or suchlike, and the other one was left alone? Sometimes we don't see them, and we have to remind ourselves that they might have taken a day off, or gone on a course, or booked fillings at the dentist, identical fillings in the same tooth, caused by eating the identical number of toffees, chewed on the same side.

After half term we are going to start waving to them - to see if they wave back at the same time, in the same way. Everyone knows who they are, but the Funny Twins don't seem to have a lot of friends.

New Possibilities

Woke up on my own in a hotel again this morning. It struck me that I'm lonely - but that's to be expected, waking up alone in a big city. Then it struck me that often I feel lonely at home too - and that can't be good, can it?

My small but select group of dear and lovely friends are all the same as me. So busy that we barely have time to spend with each other, even though we know it makes a huge difference to the rest of life. And then there are other people who are more significant than they think. People where I skate across the surface and don't allow myself to connect with them. I was going to say, we both skate across the surface, but actually I have no idea whether they are doing that or not; we're not close enough for me to know.

I have had quite a lot of relationships like this, when I think about it. I'm so desperately worried about saying the wrong thing, looking like a fool, seeming weird, I don't like to say. Why would a kitten choose to spend her life in a submarine? Why do I do this? Another thing that occurs to me is that my few close friends have done all the running to make that connection. They have fought their way into the submarine by really going out on a limb to tell me how much I meant to them. I can think of particular moments with each of them where they told me, meaningfully, that I was important to them in their lives and they wanted me to understand how much they valued and loved me. And I was moved and things were different between us, the barriers had gone and we could be close.

I have been racking my brains and I can't think of a single time where I have done the same in reverse.

I'm so afraid of being rejected and looking stupid that I can't even make friends properly; it's all superficiality and not really saying what I think. Why would I do that? I can think of occasions, more than I'm comfortable with, where I haven't really said what I felt. And not because I was being polite and didn't want to appear rude. Quite the opposite. These were situations where I was touched, where something was said that was meaningful and important for me - and I didn't say a word. Play cool at all times (in case anyone finds me out, finds out I'm not cool).

What a strange way to behave. No wonder I feel lonely. I'm considering the possibility of doing things differently, of being authentic.

How terrifying.

Kitten Caboodles

Look at me

Look at me

Look at me now!

It is fun to have fun

But you have to know how.

I learned a lot on the weekend's course. Practical tools to improve my life and my interactions with other people. [I also learned a lot about how cults function, but that's another story].

Now I need to start putting the lessons into practice. But one thing I have realised is that fretting about the past, and worrying about the future, can distract me from enjoying the moment. That's got to stop. Let the frolics begin!

Toiling Upward

The heights by great men reached and kept

Were not attained by sudden flight

But they, while their companions slept

Were toiling upward in the night

A woman I had never met 48 hours ago said to me: "it sounds as if you have climbed to the top of your ladder, but now you're realising it's up against the wrong wall".

..............

I am hoping that the commanding view will help me to see the right wall.

Back Story

I had a blog before, but I took it down (long story). I missed blogging though, and that's one reason why I started this one. So I was very excited when I got my old writing loaded back onto my laptop yesterday - and I thought I might occasionally re-post some of the old stuff on here to see if I've changed.

I started to read, but I didn't get far, as I had signed up for a three day intense course which kicked off today. I had imagined that I would from my blogging some progression, a development, a learning coming through from the posts over those years.

The course was talking a lot about the stories we tell ourselves, that then define the things we do to support those stories and keep on making them true.

I have lots of different ways of telling the same story...... I see that now, looking back. I'm trapped in a story of my own making, putting myself in a place I don't want to be. I don't know whether blogging those old entries will carry on reinforcing something that perhaps I should be working to shake off?

Looking myself in the eye is never pleasant, as I don't like what I see. And if I don't like myself, I guess that might be why I accept other people sharing my view..... me me me blah blah blah zzzz

This course is already holding up some uncomfortable home truths. I'm having to force myself to go back tomorrow and take some more medicine. There's a song I'm reaching for here....

Wishful Thinking

A man that can write you a song like this.....

"..At the top is stopping by your place of work

And acting like I hadn't dreamed of you and I

And marriage in an orange grove -

You are the only thing

in every room you're ever in.."

I think Guy Garvey is secretly in love with me, and wrote me this song to let me know.

Working Girl

Which damn fool decided that our main industry dinner and piss-up would move from a Thursday night to a Monday night?

Having always had to give out an award in the past has saved me from myself: couldn't start drinking too early, as I needed to be able to walk across a dance floor, onto a stage, give out a trophy, have my picture taken in full view of 1000 of my peers.

This year I didn't have to do the trophy thing, I just trolled along as a regular punter, and boy what a difference it made.

I started warming up early, so I was in the party frame of mind before the drinks had even started. I haven't done a list on this new blog yet, so I think now is the time.

Things I lost last night/yesterday:

• the plot
• my composure
• my best Chanel lipgloss
• my cool (too drunk to be cool)
• £100 cash (duh)
• all the business cards I collected earlier
• my inhibitions (within acceptable limits)
• my liver function (probably)
• the ability to string together cogent sentences
• reassurance that I can still party hard till 5am and do a teleconference at 8

Things I gained as a result of last night:

• a shocking hangover
• some new friends
• some reassurance that I would be eminently employable
• a possible enormous new chunk of work
• brand reinforcement (get me, dressed in the corporate colours...)
• a series of creepy texts from a little engineer guy that looked like a mini Salman Rushdie
• a big smile

Someone needs to telling that little fella I was only chatting to him because no one else was, and he was on my table, and I was trying to be the consummate guest. I figure with my cleavage at eye level, he became distracted.

You know what? I had a blast.

What Not To Wear

After a slow start, I have pulled myself together enough to pack for the Event Of The Year (we don't get out much in my profession).

• Twirly frock - check.
• FM shoes - check (and aren't we lucky we can have the double-meaning? only one other sector gets that).
• R&P lingerie - check (and underneath my clothes, I'm alway naked).
• Nice hair - check (courtesy of the Demi-God of Hairdressing, as the God himself was away doing a magazine shoot; Although the colour still leaves something to be desired).
• Good jewellery - check.
• Smell nice - check (Frond - from the Burren perfumery, so heaven knows how I'll replace that when it runs out, unless I have a trip to west of Ireland just to buy body lotion.....hey that's a good idea...)
• Fab make up - check (Bobbi Brown will never let you down - all colour co-ordinated).

I wonder whether any of this will disguise the fact that my eyes are red and swollen and bloodshot and tired? Can't work out why that would be. Possibly spending nearly the whole of yesterday crying, howling that I couldn't cope, that might have been a factor.

I was lucky that I had Jo to howl to, as no one else was taking a damn bit of notice (rugby on TV, and the trampoline has been reassembled). I do find being told I'm "acting like a loser" doesn't really help when I'm sobbing and rending garments because I'm feeling like a loser. I did get a "mummy you look really awful today, you should go to the spa" but this did not help, as we were supposed to be going to the spa and had to cancel due to shitty shitty work. Jo, having been an oasis of healing calm and common sense, then had a phone call to say her grandfather had died and slipped down to join me at the bottom of the "I Can't Cope" pit.

Realising I must gird my loins and go do the corporate-success-everything-is-wonderful thing, I know exactly how to get myself into the zone by 7pm this evening for the dinner.

But what about the eyes? I look about 75. So I'm going to wear a blindfold, then no one will notice. Or maybe I could get everyone else to wear blindfolds so they can't see me? Hard to organise but would probably be a lot of fun....

I feel alcohol coming on.

Keep Pedalling?

Meanwhile, backstage, I am not coping. No, not at all.

Putting The Band Back Together

After we'd watched The Blues Brothers, Thing Two wanted to know why I hadn't put the band back together. It's odd how much of an impact it's made on the girls, this band, given all that remains as concrete evidence of its existence is a photo of us all at my 21st birthday party (not playing, just standing together) and one very poor cassette, made on our state-of-the-art four-track, with five badly-mixed songs on it, four of them covers.

I seem to recall we had to layer up the tracks to get it all on, and this recording-in-relays over the top might be one reason why it's so loose, when we used to think we played so tight. Or maybe we really were that crap -there's every likelihood. Nowadays, pop-star is apparently the number one career ambition for children of ten, jointly equal with sports-star. But by the time we knocked together our band, we were all living our Bright Young Things Oxbridge life, and had career ambitions to become high flying suits.

One main reason we can't get the band back together is me.

At the time, I was going out with A the guitarist. At one point I thought I might marry him. I loved his guitar playing; and his sisters; and his house with the power shower and the American fridge with ice-dispenser and the hall so lofty they had a 15 foot Christmas tree every December; and their maison de maitre in a bastide town in the Dordogne. After we left uni, we came to live up round here, oddly enough. And I realised that when you took away all our friends, and all the cool stuff there was to do, and it was just the two of us, going to work and coming home, I loved all those other things but I didn't really love him. At the time, I'm sure I must have uttered the immortal "it's not you, it's me" line, being too nice to point out that his dislike of sex would render me extremely unlikely to stick it for the next 50 years. I started going out with someone I met at the gym.

I moved to London (partly to escape the meathead gym boyfriend and his ability to accept he was chucked) and lived in my cousin's flat, near C the sax player. He'd spent too much time acting like a rock star, failed his exams and got sent down. He came and temped for a while at the place I worked, as I tried interminably to build a database of about 2,000 records that I could create in about an hour on my phone nowadays. He was back living with his parents - a wiser choice than it might first sound, as they had a massive old house overlooking Blackheath, and were always away travelling so we had the run of it most of the time. We spent our evenings loafing outside the pub on the heath, smoking weed and listening to CDs on his dad's Walkman, one earpiece each. Just mates.

J the drummer, another linguist like me, had just come back from his year abroad. His brother, working for a funky new-style US investment firm in the very immediate aftermath of Big Bang, had a house on the other side of the heath, so J would often also appear at weekends to join in with the smokes. His brother was convinced that hotel Gideon Bibles made for better papers than Rizlas, so I knew from the age of 21 I was going to burn in hell. That probably explains a lot.

L the other (better) singer had dropped away before her finals. Partly the volume of work on her hard, hard course, partly she was so much cooler and trendier than the rest of us and had better things to do.

M the keyboard player we never liked all that much anyway. He was a pretty shit keyboard player (although he had some really nice kit) and we even considered at one point calling the band One Too Many in his honour. He hung in doggedly, believing we were his mates and thinking we were the cool people. To our secret derision, he used to call A's room, where we practised, "The Factory". After we left, we never gave him another thought.

So that left J the bass player. He had a brain the size of planet and was doing a PhD. He started coming down weekends, I had a spare room in my flat. The first ever Comic Relief we got trollied on cheap beer and the heating was broken, so I ended up in bed with him. Lovely guy. Never really fancied him and still didn't - and his intellect might have been massive but he had a cock the size of an acorn. Which makes it hard to explain why we ended being married for seven years. Band reunions would have been awkward, after all that.

Where are we now? Well none of us ended up in jail, or frying chickens (or making plain white toast, for that matter).

A the guitarist still lives in the town he moved to when we graduated, working for the same company, although that's not as boring as it sounds: after all this time he has reached a stratospheric level of management and it's one of the biggest companies in the world. He lives with another man.

C the sax player, the one who didn't do the Oxbridge thing in the end, works in a groovy job in the music industry. His smart, funny, vibrant, extremely successful parents just this summer had a little mini break together at the Dignitas Clinic and didn't come back.

J has lived in places you only hear about on the news, working for the World Food Programme. He's not married, which is surprising as he's an all round lovely guy. I'd have imagined him with a family.

L qualified as a vet. I just Googled her and she's back in Cambridge training up the baby vets and publishing obscure learned papers. I wonder if she's still funky?

M is a Reader in the chemistry department at a good university in the north. His CV lists 152 publications, all of them incomprehensible. I went for a coffee with him a few years ago, when I was working up there. He had already lost most of his hair, and still hadn't sorted out his protruding teeth. His stammer, however, had improved a lot. He's not married.

J the bass player and I had an amicable, civilised divorce - rather like our marriage. When he met someone else afterwards, and became a bit bitter and angry and shouted down the phone about some money in a shared account, I wondered whether a bit more shouting and throwing things around might have been one of the key missing ingredients. A relationship needs a bit of passion to keep it alive, I think. Although the sex was always rubbish, even after my extensive tutoring. He's a professor, has his own top-ranking department, an acknowledged world expert who has written the seminal textbook in his pet subject. His second wife must be irked that his PhD thesis is dedicated to me. I used to bitch about her for freeloading her way into a house/car/lifestyle that I'd paid for (you can't get much on a university salary) but now I hear she's going blind and I feel sad for any mum who won't see her children growing up.

Which leaves me. Sometime singer, sometime manager. Living in Smallville, a working mum of two. A Suit, of all things. Although I do have a house with a powershower, an American fridge that makes ice, and space for a 15 foot Christmas tree in the hall.

We're none of us quite so rock'n'roll these days.

Wasp Factory

Suddenly, the tiny room where we keep the computer servers had filled with bees. They were oozing out from around and under the door in their dozens. In the autumnal chill of the upstairs landing, they were moving slowly, seeping like a stain towards the top of the stairs.

Thick underfoot, we whacked them with trade magazines (one markedly better than the other one for this, if for nothing else) and hoovered them into the vacuum cleaner, which began buzzing in a sinister fashion. I remembered my fire-warden training and blocked up all the cracks around the door with damp tea towels, sealed the bigger holes with wet kitchen roll. I'm nothing if not practical. The inside of the frosted glass half-window became gradually obscured with a shivering yellow-brown mosaic, and then they found their way into the roof space.

As the afternoon progressed, wasps (as it turned out, not bees) dropped heavily from the light fitting onto my keyboard, my papers, onto my hair, into my coffee. I let them bumble around drowsily before they met their doom. I hit them with a ruler. I smacked them with my shoe. I got bolder and crushed a couple of them with my clenched fist, just to see if I could.

I was having such a shit day in the office I didn't even care.

The Secret History

"Rien ne pese tant qu'un secret". Well he might think so, but I've never found that to be the case myself.

People who know me a little bit think I'm a talker. This is a good thing - it makes them drop their guard, and they don't notice how carefully I'm listening while I'm nattering on, seemingly wrapped up in the topic of the moment.

I was a Samaritan for 15 years, and a Rape Crisis counsellor, and worked on a listening and befriending service for people who are mentally ill. There's probably nothing I haven't heard; few stories that would shock me now.

I don't ever feel the urge to blurt things out, betray confidences, treat people's secrets like shiny coins to be traded in the currency of new friendships. I hate that thing a lot of women do, getting to know you, when they tell you something - something deeply personal, something you really didn't want or need to know this early. Then they wait: and you are expected to respond in kind.

I'm thinking of making up a couple of "secrets" for these eventualities. I'm adopted? (bit disloyal to the parents). I only have one kidney? (but that might tempt fate, or they might think I sold it for cash). I've been invited to play in a pro-am tennis tournament but I'm too busy at work to take it up? (manifestly untrue). I am the real Belle de Jour? (for every person who would be impressed, another would just look blank or be appalled). I'm going to confess, in a conspiratorial whisper, that I once spent a night with Jarvis Cocker, after a gig at the Leadmill. It's nearly true - I turned it down. One because I thought he was a geek, two because my mum and dad would think t'Ripper had got me if I was not home at the agreed time.

Secrets don't burn a hole in me. Not at all. I just keep them safe. That's what you're supposed to do.

Which Is The Age Of The Train?

Something terrifying is happening tomorrow.

Something that scares me even more than my first-thing trip to worship at the altar of the God Of Hairdressing, and hear what he's got to say about my rather nasty home-colouring episode.

Thing One, at the grand old age of nearly-eleven, has been recalled to a third audition for a very cool role. This is impressive as she only registered with the agency on 1 September and this is her first attempt. However.

And boy oh boy it's a really big however. M can't bring her down to London, as he has to go Oop North in the afternoon to see the Overlord. I can't bring her down, as I'm already down. So the plan is that he puts her on the train in Smallville, and I meet her at the barriers at the other end. All she has to do is STAY ON THE TRAIN.

The furthest Thing One has been on her own so far is - let me think - nowhere. She hasn't even been to the corner shop without Thing Two for moral support. Life isn't like that these days, is it? At her age I could stay out all day on my bike till the street lights came on. Didn't have a watch, never mind a mobile phone.

So, spare a thought for me between 1329 and 1501, as time will stand still.

Help Is At Hand

Times are tough for the working mums of Smallville. I don't know anyone who is isn't struggling more than ever to keep the damn plates spinning. Sure it's hard for the dads too, but a lot of the mums are on their own - and for the ones that aren't, that's not always necessarily a blessing.

Having a man around the house whose career is not going well can be like living with an angry toddler. Worse actually - you can't smack them and send them to their room. (Cue Political Correctness Death Squad). Well, I guess you could smack them, but you're running the risk that they might smack you back harder. And they're already in their room, sulking and watching football or Dave or Red Hot Teenagers or whatever.

Don't be fooled into thinking he is watching TV and deliberately ignoring you. That's impossible, because then he'd be doing two things at once, and everyone knows men can't multitask.

Women, on the other hand, we like to pride ourselves on doing lots of things at once. Let me ask you this though. Do you know anyone who doesn't find that multitasking just engenders enormous amounts of stress due to not doing anything properly? (Properly. Oh god how I love that word).

So today when I received an email promising A Working Mum's Top Tips On Multitasking, I was excited. I and the other Scummy Mummies so badly need to know how to get more done in less time.

I've just re-read the Top Tips, and I'm still not sure whether this article is a joke. It's certainly a route map to a fast-track nervous breakdown. So if you'd like something a little more helpful, here's my current favourite cocktail recipe.

1 x tin of Red Bull (gives you wings, if you don't already have them on your panty-liners).
2 x generous measures of vodka (you know it makes sense).
1 x capsule of evening primrose oil (for the PMT..)
2 x soluble Solpadeine Extra (to numb the pain).
2 x finely crushed antidepressants (Prozac, if you like brand names in your cocktails)

Serve over ice in a martini glass, and sip through a dark chocolate straw.

There, that's better.

This is not flying

Presiding over the decline and fall of the brainchild can be quite a strain. Especially at this time of year: the time of glittering industry dinners, major conferences, awards and the main trade show. Never mind the mists and mellow fruitfulness, autumn in my sector is all about new launches, announcements of exciting collaborations and big contract wins, dressing up and showing off.

Smiling slyly and channelling my Type-A, rutting-stag, Inner Alpha-Male (indispendable for these occasions), I report that business is "great", "busy", that we're "stacked out with projects". I lament the absence, even in a recession, of smart people to fill the posts for which I'm currently recruiting. I ask my competitors whether they'd be prepared to accept sub-contract work, if we get too busy to handle it all.

I give and receive business cards like a ten year old collecting First Division players for his Panini album. I flirt, I sparkle, I dress to the nines. I go to as many events as I can shoehorn into my schedule, and I get up on stage to talk about topics like Look Good, Earn More, Managing Work Life Balance in a Successful Career and Do What You Love, Love What You Do. I figure that no-one will give work to a company that looks like it's going down the pan.

This is not flying - this is falling with style.

Are You Sitting Comfortably?

Then I'll begin. Today's workshop on Writing For Radio has made me realise what a poor listener I am. All the examples we heard, I only started paying attention when the voices began. How much richness and detail am I missing - how many regions of my brain are languishing unlit?

I worked out that I haven't been to a writing group since 1985. As I have spent a significant amount of the intervening time whining on endlessly about wanting to be a writer, it's a shame I haven't applied myself more assiduously to learning the craft. Obviously I kid myself that reading a lot is part of my research. This can include reading about writing, but not actually doing many of the practical exercises that unsurprisingly tend to form a major part of How To Write books.

I write lots of other things. Reports. Proposals. Training manuals. Trade press articles. Birthday cards. Shopping lists. Drivelling self-indulgent teenage bedtime diaries that can reliably track my hormone cycle for the last thirty years or so. But proper creative writing? Published pieces (any sort): nul. Completed novels and short stories: zero. Shards and scraps: a lifetime's worth.

Sometimes I toy with the idea that I could piece them all together to create a whole. I picture an amazing creative meisterwerk, a Gaudi mosaic. When I've tried this, though, the results are redolent of Scrapheap Challenge or the hideous mutant dolls-head-on-spider-legs the evil boy next door cobbles together in Toy Story.

I harbour the urge to create something new and pure. If only to quieten somewhat the maelstrom of characters, events and snatches of conversation that circle eternally through my head, imploring me to sow them in a suitable spot and see how they might grow.

Audio drama is therefore appealing. Having given this medium never a moment's thought before today, the freshness of the challenge enthused me with the energy to make a fresh start.

Me being me, I am now of course avoiding writing a new radio play by setting up a new blog instead.

Must try harder.