Halloween horrors!

I've never been one for horror films. I'm a bit of a wuss, to be honest. But earlier this year, my husband and I watched the gorgeous Mark Gatiss's History of Horror documentaries that he made for BBC4 and I suddenly realised there was more to it than a bit of fake blood and a scary soundtrack.

My zombie-obsessed husband suggested we start the Sunday-Night Scare - and watch a different horror film each week. I wasn't keen at first, but he's quite persuasive my old man, and so I agreed. I do have a tactic - I always check how long the film is, so I know how much we've got left. It's the only way I can sit through them!

But, man, oh, man, am I converted? Horror films are BRILLIANT! We've watched some classic, some sci-fi, slasher flicks, supernatural adventures and zombie romps. Only one has given me nightmares (weirdly, it was Drag Me to Hell, which is more funny than scary) and the only one I've had to stop watching half-way through was The Hills Have Eyes, which was horrible, gratuitous torture porn.

I've thought long and hard about my favourites and I just can't choose one. So, in honour of Halloween, here's my top-five horror flicks (so far - we've got LOADS still to watch).

Best story-telling

The Shining.
Stephen King is a genius and The Shining is all the proof you need. It's got everything - an isolated (creepy) hotel, a volatile anti-hero, a cute kid, a scary maze... Absolutely brilliant.



Most thoughtful

The Exorcist
Shocking and horrifying it may be, but The Exorcist is also beautifully shot. Its plot is well thought-out and the performances are amazing. It's just much bigger than your average horror movie.


Most poignant

Let the Right One In
A tragic Swedish film about Eli, a lonely little girl who just happens to be a vampire. The story of her friendship with bullied Oscar stayed with me for a long time.


Best slasher flick

Halloween
It's a classic for a reason. Watching this was like watching the beginning of modern horror - the babysitter, the strange phone calls, the he's-dead-oh-shit-no-he's-not moment - it all started right here.


Most scary

Paranormal Activity
For a film where actually nothing happens this was abso-bloody-lutely terrifying. Who knew a bit of hair being blown by an invisible breath, or a swinging light fixture, could scare the bejeesus out of me?



My favourite film of all time is still Dirty Dancing, but (thanks to my husband) now I can see there's a place for zombies, too. And if they're dancing the merengue, then so much the better!

Help needed for a desperate dieter

Yesterday when I got home from work I had two letters waiting for me. The first was from WeightWatchers, inviting me to go back. The second was from Slimming World, inviting me to go back. And that pretty much sums up my life.

Tomorrow I turn 38. That means I've pretty much been on a diet for 24 years. And of course I'm fatter now than I've ever been (apart from when I've been pregnant, of course). Things are really bad at the moment. I can barely fit in any of my clothes and I can't afford to buy new, fat clothes. And because I look so awful I'm shunning social events and avoiding my friends. I have a big, glitzy work do looming and I'm terrified. I'm spending a lot of time (possibly too much time) planning how to get out of it.

I think, perhaps, I've got a mild eating disorder. I was virtually anorexic as a teenager and I can't quite shake the feeling that as an adult I'm a 'failed anorexic'. Which is, of course, ridiculous. A successful anorexic, presumably, is one who's starving themselves to an early grave and I certainly don't want that. I punish myself with food. I reward myself with food. I eat because I'm tired, fed up, bored, depressed. Sometimes, I even eat because I'm hungry.

I've lost weight before. Tons of it. I'm an expert dieter. I've written for loads of health and fitness magazines. There's nothing you can tell me about weightloss and fitness that I don't already know. And yet. Yet. This time, I can't do it. I can't get myself out of this chasm of self-destruction.

I have a million excuses. I don't like Slimming World, but I was a big fan of WeightWatchers - until they changed it. Now I don't get along with it at all. I know I should just eat less and move more, but I'm too tired. I want to join the gym but can I really justify the massive £70 a month membership fee? Get the picture? I'm even annoying myself here.

I feel like I've finally hit diet rock bottom and the thought of just losing weight and gaining it for the rest of my life leaves me cold. But the thought of staying how I am - or even bigger - also leaves me cold. And, though he'd never say it, I can't imagine it thrills my husband either.

I need to take action and I need to take it fast. But where do I start? I have absolutely no idea. So I'm throwing this open to cyberspace. Does anyone out there have any helpful hints/tips/advice about how to lose weight for good? Anyone...?

One Day women's fiction will be equal to men's...

I have just finished reading One Day by David Nicholls (like pretty much every other commuter on my train in the morning!). I thought it was a lovely book. It's funny, thoughtful and sad.

For those of you who haven't read it, it follows two people - Emma and Dexter. We meet them every year on July 15th from 1988, when they're watching dawn break over Edinburgh after a post-graduation one-night-stand, to 2007. It's a brilliant concept for a novel and glimpsing a snapshot of them each year is like catching up with old friends. We follow them through career highs and lows, travels abroad and at home, deaths, weddings and babies. The ending manages to be heartbreaking and life-affirming. David Nicholls is a natural, easy writer with a gift for capturing a character.

But all that aside, I have been pondering the nature of One Day. It's not, by any stretch of the imagination, literary fiction. It's rip-roaring, unashamed commercial fiction of the highest quality. It's a beach read, a tube read, a garden read. It won't ever be discussed by bored sixth-formers or pulled apart by eager undergraduates. And that's fine. Brilliant in fact. I LOVE commercial fiction. Love it. My own (almost, almost finished) novel is unashamedly commercial. My highest hope for it is to be given away free with a summer issue of Cosmo.

The beef I have with One Day is that because it's written by a man, it's deemed worthy. I have seen - gasp -MEN reading it on the train. It's got a kind of arty cover. Its inside pages are covered in quotes from The Guardian and other worthy publications. If it had been written by a woman, it would have a pair of shoes on the cover and be dismissed as chick lit, a term I despise. Marian Keyes writes 'chick lit'. Her novels deal with such lightweight issues as miscarriage, alcoholism, drug abuse, rape and bereavement. They often have pictures of shoes on the cover. Or butterflies.

It is a sad fact that in monetary terms at least, women's fiction is not equal to men's. Everyone knows women read books by men and women, while men only read those by men. I think one of the cleverest things JK Rowling did was to write under her initials instead of her full name. My dad and I share a passion for crime fiction. One of our favourite authors is James Lee Burke. Last week I read a brilliant novel by his daughter, Alafair Burke (Long Gone, for those of you who are interested). I offered it to my dad. He wrinkled up his nose and shook his head. His loss.

So I urge anyone in search of a good book to read One Day. It's wonderful. But please don't dismiss fiction by women. And please don't call it chick lit. You never know, you just might enjoy it...

Riots? I blame Cheryl Cole.

It's taken me a few days to decide what I think about the riots and looting in London and elsewhere. As a Londoner, it was horrible to watch places that were so familiar, burning. I worked in Croydon for years and got the bus home every day from outside Reeves, but I didn't realise quite how fond of it I was. No such worries with the area round Clapham Junction; I knew exactly how fond of it I was and it was terrible to see it being broken and looted.

So over the last few days I've been reading newspapers and listening to Radio Four and thinking about what's gone on. And I've decided that it's all Cheryl Cole's fault. That sounds a bit glib, but I do honestly feel something's gone wrong in our society and the X Factor and its ilk are a good illustration.

I am often shocked by the attitudes of my younger colleagues towards money and stuff. They measure success in things and are always noticing how big so-and-so's engagement ring is, or whinging about how they only have one designer handbag. I had a bit of a disagreement with one colleague recently about engagement rings. She said a big rock was an investment and I said if we'd had £6000 to spare when we got engaged, I'd rather have spent £1000 on a ring and the rest on a kitchen. Or a new car. Or our bathroom. You get the picture. Not only did she not agree, she didn't speak to me for THREE hours, so disgusted was she with my attitude.

Anyway, while pondering this approach to life, it struck me that we are surrounded by pictures of people who are rewarded for having no discernible talent. So lazy is Cheryl Cole that she can't even be bothered to listen to Elton John's greatest hits before Elton John week on the X Factor. But she's rich. Footballers are indeed talented but millions of pounds worth of talent? I don't think so. Coleen Rooney has been on holiday ten times this year. TEN TIMES. She does nothing. Katie Price is a horrible person. Loaded, though. People are plucked from obscurity and given wealth and adoration - for a while at least. And now everyone expects something for nothing.

I don't even think this sense of entitlement ends with young people. I think Tracey Emin's complaints about the 50% rate of tax (http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/oct/04/tracey-emin-tax-protest-france) were vile. I think MPs fiddling their expenses just because everyone else was doing it is unforgiveable. I hate rich people playing the system and paying less tax than their cleaner. The amount of mums I've heard saying they pay their nanny cash in hand is shocking. We're all at it.

While I do think the rioters need to be punished, I am worried that David Cameron, Boris Johnson and the rest of them will think sending a few people to prison will end this. I fear the cancer in society goes much deeper than just the actions of some idiots on Monday night and I'm not sure what the answer is. But I've got an inkling it might start with the X Factor...

A monumental day

Thing Two is learning how to talk. He is learning very differently from his big brother, whose first words were 'ball', 'duck', 'banana', 'Mummy', you know the kind of thing.

Thing Two says 'Batman'. He says 'Gaga' (meaning Lady Gaga, of course) and sings a passable rendition of Bad Romance. He roars like a dinosaur. He says "Oh man" if something goes wrong. He says 'cheers' and clinks his Tommy Tippee beaker against my mug. He even says "sit down" quite sternly to himself when he's balancing on top of something, like his high chair, or the back of the sofa, or the high slide in the park. He also says 'Daddy' and 'Grandad'. But he won't say 'Mummy'.

Until this morning. When I was changing his nappy he looked up at me and said, beautifully, clearly, 'Mama'.

HOORAY! My work here is done.

Guilty!

Like most working mums I feel guilty. All. The. Time.

I work four days a week on a TV mag. My job is not hard. It does not pay brilliantly, but the little money I make is needed and I am grateful.

I leave for work at 7.45 am and collect the boys from their (wonderful) childminder at 6.30pm; we all get home about 6.45pm, just in time for bed and bath at 7pm.

I feel bad for not being a good enough mum. And I feel bad for not being a good enough journalist. And I feel bad for not being a good enough working mum. I look at other working mums and wonder how they do it. How do they get to work without snot on their shoulders, with their hair looking nice? How are they not dropping with tiredness? How have they got enough holiday left to spend time with their husband, instead of just taking days here and there to cover childcare?

Here are all the things I feel guilty about...

*Sending the boys to a childminder. Every Monday Thing One cries and says he doesn't want to go. He loves it when he gets there, though. Which leads me neatly on to...

*Our childminder is too good. Seriously. She's brilliant. The school holidays only started two weeks ago and she's already taken her kids to museums, paddling pools, parks and they've even held the Olympic Torch. I can't compete! On my day off, Thing One complains that going to Tesco "just isn't exciting Mummy". He's got a point.

*Going to Tesco/cleaning/tidying/doing laundry/yawn on my precious day off.

*Not doing enough cleaning/tidying/laundry/yawn on my precious day off.

*Putting too much energy into my job and being reluctant to give it up.

*Not putting enough energy and effort into my job and not being successful enough.

Ooh and I could go on and on and on. There are also the things that come up as and when. Yesterday morning Thing One was being particularly stroppy and I spent a lot of time trying to calm him down before breakfast. When I eventually got on the train to work (missed my normal train, natch), I realised though I'd got Thing Two dressed, I'd barely interacted with him at all. Poor little mite.

Anyway, I don't want this to be a self-pitying rant. I just wanted to get it off my chest. And to appeal to all those other working mums out there - how do you do it? All tips gratefully received...

It was 20 years ago today...

Last week I heard an amazing story on Radio 4's Saturday Live. It was about a single, 30-something mum, Naomi Jacobs, who woke up one morning convinced she was 15. You can read more about her story here...

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/i-woke-up-in-the-wrong-life-2297036.html

Naomi was suffering transient global amnesia, which can be brought on by severe stress. She woke up having lost the best part of 20 years. She didn't know where she was, she didn't remember her son. She knew nothing of 9/11, or the war in Afghanistan. She was amazed by mobile phones and iPods.

But as I listened to her tell her story it was one thing that made me really think. Naomi's memory was restored - bit by bit - eight weeks later. But because of her experience she began to completely reassess her life. There were things she'd done that her teenage self would have been impressed with, and other things that she'd have scoffed at. Even physical things - Naomi was a smoker and said when she woke up as a 'teenager' her lungs were heavy and breathing was difficult - became a consideration.

Naomi's experience made me wonder what my 17-year-old self (she's in the photo at the top of the page - the one with blonde hair) would think of my life. I was quite a serious, earnest teenager with a thirst for fairness and justice. I was a member of youth CND and Amnesty International but I really, really wanted a boyfriend (boys, not surprisingly, weren't attracted by my DM boots and all-black wardrobe).

I think the 17-year-old me would have been thrilled and amazed to hear about my wonderful wedding to my gorgeous husband. She would be overjoyed to know about my two boys (although probably surprised to hear I have no girls - I never for one minute imagined having sons).

And then it gets trickier. At 17, I was recovering from anorexia and I was very thin. I think the skinny teenager I was would be appalled at my squidgy bits and the fact that after I'd given birth to Thing Two I weighed more than twice as much as I did back then.

She would be amazed that I make my living by writing. But I suspect the serious part of her would be a little disappointed that I write for a TV mag and not one of the 'proper' women's mags she devoured. My 17-year-old self wanted to be Caitlin Moran and, I must admit, my 37-year-old self still does (if you haven't read How to be a Woman, then you must read it immediately!).

Anyway, the point of this lengthy post is to say that I now feel I owe it to the 17-year-old I once was to change some bits of my life. So, I am back on the diet and exercising like mad (I had to take two Nurofen this morning to recover from two days on the 30-Day Shred DVD). And my job for this morning is to pitch some features ideas to 'proper' magazines and try to get my freelancing career up and running once more.

Wish me luck! I'm going to make the 17-year-old me proud of the woman she has become...

I'm back!

Ooh it's been a while!

I lost my blog for a while (er, I mean nearly a year) - completely forgot how to log in or,

indeed, what the web address was. But I've found it, and I am fired up with enthusiasm and determined to blog every day.

So what's been going on since last summer? My two boys are now 4 and 18 months old. Thing One starts school in September - eek! He's bright and chatty and lots of fun. But he still doesn't sleep through the night (and I wonder why I'm permanently knackered). Thing Two is the most beautiful toddler. He has white blond hair and dimples and a cheeky smile. Old ladies stop me in the street to tell me how wonderful he is. But he is SO naughty. He gets away with it, though, because he's so cute.

I went back to work in November and I HATE it. More on that later. So I am on a mission to change things. More on that later, too.

Anyway, I have lots of things to say and lots to learn about blogging. So I am off to work out how to put pictures on here, so I can attach some pics of my boys. Bye for now...