I have some events coming up soon. Here’s hoping I will see you there!

There’s the main, big ticket event: Aye Write Festival in Glasgow. On March 6th 6.30pm at the Mitchell Library, you can meet me and the lovely Jill Mansell on our Girls Night Out.

Dress up (I know I’m going to… well I don’t get out much!), bring your friends (I will too) and we’ll all swap favourite books, worst ever changing room/ outfit disaster stories and have a laugh. Book the tickets and the babysitter now! Here’s the link www.ticketweb.co.uk/INFO/AYEWRITE/ or www.ayewrite.com for information (although they had the time wrong, last I looked. It’s definitely 6.30pm).

I’m also going to be in:

Hemel Hempsted at the Astley Cooper School on March 1st at 12.30pm. (With a book signing open to the public from 1.30pm.)

Burntwood School in London SW17 on March 2nd

Guildford, St Catherine’s School on March 3rd

Waterstone’s evening event, Guildford High Street, Guildford, also on March 3rd.

Come along if you can! It is always fantastic to meet readers.

Spring

The first hit of bright Spring sunshine has arrived and suddenly the windows look filthy, the house seems covered in clutter and dust, plus everything in my wardrobe is now hideously drab, black and grey.

I am craving fresh air and colour. I even tidied up a bit of the garden and I pretty much hate gardening and kill everything I plant, so clearly I must have Spring Fever. (Plant pretty flowery thing, watch it die, weed it out, plant new pretty flowery thing… that’s how it is in my garden. Yes, plus slash and burn undergrowth control). Ivy seems to grow brilliantly in my garden. Ivy and snails.

I’ve put out a pink bedspread in the room with yellow walls. I have a total thing for yellow and pink at the moment. I’m not convinced I’m going to wear it. In fact, much as I love pink, I’ve not yet discovered a shade that really suits me. But it must be out there somewhere.

Following a good old clear through the wardrobe, I can honestly say that there is very little Spring/ summer wear in there – an incredible amount of tights and hold-ups though. Unbelievable. I could open my own little concession. Winter clothes, I have piles of: jumpers, dark jeans, cardigans, a wide selection of Uniqlo thermal tops, woolly everything, scarves, tick. (Oh GOD! I lost my purple gloves. For Christmas I got these fabulous purple leather driving gloves with a knitted stripy lining; Noa Noa, I think, from my Mum. I was so in love with them, so ultra careful with them… I hardly even dared to wear them anywhere. Now they are gone. Disappeared. Completely lost. I am only just coming to terms with this. There is no way I can tell her. No way. She will never give me anything as nice again.)

Anyway, I’m definitely going Spring shopping. I am going to buy pale green and bright blue and heck, even white, maybe even a hit of yellow and orange. Then I will just have to trust that the weather improves and I get a chance to wear it all.

For my St Jude’s fans.

There is an eating problem in the new book and I wanted talk about that a little.

Just like lots of my school friends, I under-ate when I was a teenager. I remember lasting a whole day on a handful of strawberries. Yes, the result was I was thin, but I didn’t have much energy to do anything and I often fainted. I gave up doing any kind of sport at about 15. So then I was unfit as well as unenergetic.

It probably took a full 10 years before I saw the light and got really healthy. At 25-ish, I joined a gym, started eating really well and finally gave up the dreaded cigarettes. Eating well and exercising are the only way to go. Please put all the faddy diet books down right now.

Nowadays, I’m pretty Californian about my health! It’s 3 square meals with lots of fruit and vegetables, hardly any junk and some vigorous exercise every day: tennis, the gym, the treadmill, long dog walks, even running up and down the stairs. Usually I’m full of energy and although I’m not underweight like I was, I’m not overweight either.

It’s a good guideline to know your recommended BMI: body mass index (you can look up tables on-line) and try to keep well within in. Don’t get too underweight, don’t get too over weight.

If sport is uninspiring at school, I really urge you to join something with your friends: a gym, a dance class, a netball or athletics club. It’s always much more fun and motivating to go together with pals and the people running sports and athletics clubs are usually great. They always want to help more people into the sport. Yes, even if you are a beginner or rubbish!

My favourite eating tip: if you are craving something unhealthy, eat a good thing first. So before you tackle that packet of biscuits, have a big banana first. Or a crunchy apple before the crisps. It will concentrate your mind on what you are putting into your precious body.

Drink loads of water every day. Loads…. glasses and glasses of the stuff. Tea, coffee and fizzy drinks do nothing for you or your skin. Water is the thing. I drink it from the tap, I’m not fussy.

If you think you have an under- or over- weight problem, you need to speak to your doctor and get really good advice. The only diet book I’d ever recommend is French Women Don’t Get Fat which is packed with truly sensible advice from a woman you will think of as your surrogate French Maman. Plus Mirelle is so cool. She’s a champagne ambassador and splits her life between New York and Provence. Just how jealous-making is that?

The Good…

NEW BOOKS!!

The third Secrets at St Jude’s : Drama Girl hits the shelves this month! The official publication date is Feb 4, but you will be able to get your hands on a copy from the last weekend in January. You can order direct from the publishers here and if you’d like signed book-plates to stick in the front, then just drop me an email – carmen@carmenreid.com.

Just a little bit longer to wait for the new Annie – Celebrity Shopper is out on March 4th!

This is Jimmy’s new winter scarf, knitted specially for him by the totally lovely, top St Jude’s fan, Zarah Ahmed. Is it not soooooo cute?! Jimmy has been enjoying the snow. But when the temperature goes below minus 5, his feet freeze, he stars limping and has to be carried home – which he hates as he may be tiny, but he is definitely no lapdog.

There has been so much snow for weeks that we have almost got bored of sledging! In the Botanical Gardens there is this steep hill peppered with trees. Claudie has no control over her sledge and it is terrifying to watch, but how can I not let her go without being a huge spoilsport?

When I was about 10, my Dad built this mile long downhill ‘cresta run’ which he used his tractor armed with a leaking water butt to ice over. We used to hurtle down it on an antique sledge which had metal runners rubbed with candle wax! I remember shooting clean through the wires of a fence. Now I hear myself suggesting to my children that they wear bicycle helmets…

The Bad…

Bleeeeeuuuuurrrrrrghhhhh!

I always have a lovely time over Christmas and New Year and tell myself that this year, I’m going to be positive and surely January won’t be that bad? Then it comes round and slaps me in the face all over again.

Jan 2nd, it is freeeeeeezing despite all the heating roaring at full blast and wearing three layers at all times. Jan 3rd horrible icky sticky sinusitis sets in, despite the fact that I have been saintly over the holidays, eating well and hardly drinking at all. My New Year’s resolution btw is to change from being a ‘regular’ drinker into a ‘very occasional’ drinker. Jan 4th my pipes burst and suddenly we have an indoor water feature. More like waterfall.

For an hour, it is a hideous drama. Water gushing from kitchen ceiling, light sockets (yikes!) door arches, children holding buckets and crying, parents rushing about trying to find more buckets, the plumber’s number and shrieking about where is the stopcock? And how does it work? And why the bloody hell don’t we know this?

(Just take a moment now my darlings to locate the stopcock, that’s the large tap that turns off all the water in your house, and work out how to turn it off. If your pipes burst, you will thank me. One friend already has!)

However, once the water has been mopped up and everything moved about and dried off. Things don’t look quite so bad. In fact, apart from some repainting and a new kitchen ceiling, we may not have to get anything else replaced. Obviously a lot more insulation will have to go up into the draughty attic space, where the pipes froze in the first place. But we have had days and days at minus 5 and nights of minus 10.

I am a terrible person to have around in a crisis. I did a lot of running about, panic sweating and shouting. ‘Just be calm, stay calm’ I shouted a lot, in a voice which didn’t sound calm at all. Generally I ran about like a great flapping chicken. But I did hug the children a lot afterwards and tell them how well they’d done. They stood under a doorway with buckets, catching water. I remember Claudie rushing down from her bedroom with a tiny sand bucket and her towel.

We couldn’t cook in the soaking kitchen that night, so we went to Macdonalds. See how I am cleverly linking images of family disaster with fast food in their impressionable minds.

The Ugly…

I was back at my desk (box of tissues on one side, used crumpled pile of tissues on the other, red, flaky nose doused in Nivea, sheepskin slippers, thermal vest, two jumpers) feeling totally depressed about the ceiling leak and the frozen pipes. The pipes re-froze twice after the burst! Cue much panic, heaters in attic, hairdryers, kettles etc. Me convinced everyone was going to be electrocuted.

But as my dear friend Annie Valentine would tell me: no good comes of huddling about in 15 layers of wool and nose cream. The January spiral will set in. Before I know it I’ll be too cold to leave the house. Too cold to leave the bedroom. Too cold to move from the electric blanket! Then that big grey, snotty blanket of bleakness will move in on me.

I know Annie’s advice would be to dress up a bit and face the world. So… I washed my face, applied lipgloss, put on my leopard skin hat instead of my woolly one and dug my black fake fur coat out of the back of the wardrobe. Yes, definitely more glamorous than the duvet coat.

Then I walked the school run, even though it’s nearly a five mile round trip. When I got to the playground, it’s funny, but other Mums I know approached to stroke the coat!! Then we were all swapping winter tales of woe. Someone’s child’s front teeth got knocked out sledging. People are buying bottled water at the supermarket because even their cold water has frozen solid. Someone else went up into the attic to inspect their insulation and found dust!

It was good to get out there, get some perspective and realise I’m not the only one with some minor problems!

The children and I walked home from school in minus 8. It was freezing yes, but magically cold. We saw someone skating on a pond. This winter will be a very special childhood memory for them.

Christmas shopping, mince pies, advent calendars… what’s not to love about December?

Mainly I am very into Christmas, except when it turns into one of those working-parent frenzies. I think you know what I mean: sprinting to get to the Nativity play in time (only to get the last seat behind the Dad with flu wearing a huge furry collar and blocking out entire view of stage), realising on December 23rd that there are no cranberries to be had in the entire western hemisphere, weeping because it’s 2.30am on Xmas Eve, you’ve still got 27 presents left to wrap and the Sellotape has just run out.

I blame the Sunday supplements.

Really, did anyone think it was necessary to have colour-coded ‘charger’ plates, napkin rings, centre-pieces and candleholders before the explosion of interior design spreads in the Sunday supplements? Now it is possible to blow your entire Xmas budget just on wreaths, banister garlands, card-display holders, Christmas-scented candles and all related attic fodder that retailers are arm-wrestling us to buy.

Try to have a calm, relaxing and fun Christmas. Life may in fact be too short to stuff a turkey, never mind a mushroom. It is not possible to get or to give everything on everybody’s wish list. So there.

The only must-haves under our Xmas tree this year are (apparently) one microscope and one Sylvanian family. It will be a toy microscope and a recessionista Sylvanian family – they’re coming with a caravan, not a house: does that make the little bunnies trailer trash?!

Now that my buddies are 11 and 7, one is a confirmed Santa cynic (but is keeping it quiet) the other seems to have figured out that Santa is a story but is also keeping quiet in case this leads to less presents.

I think I may go the route of a friend with grown-up children who confided: ‘What do you mean when did I tell them? Santa still brings their present every year. That way they can’t complain to me!’

Meanwhile, I am averting my eyes from the clothes-shop window displays. No, I do not need a new Christmas outfit! Even though I find a sequin very hard to resist. I already have one sequinned skirt and a sequinned dress from previous Christmases and two sequin-studded outfits is probably enough!

Please, please, please go into a bookshop and buy some gorgeous books as Christmas presents. I always love getting and giving books for Christmas. Getting a book means someone has really taken time to think about you and what you would enjoy.

These titles are already hidden in my wardrobe for this Christmas:

For the serious readers

Margaret Atwood – The Year of the Flood

John Banville – Infinities

For the comedy seeker

PG Wodehouse – The Inimitable Jeeves (lovely hardback edition)

For the babies

Helen Cooper – Pumpkin Soup

John and Janet Ahldberg – Each Peach Pear Plum

Lauren Child’s latest!

For the older boys

John Connolley – The Gates

Robert Muchamore – Eagle Day

For the glamour puss

Axel Madsen – Chanel (this is a great biog, loved it!)

And one title I really have to recommend when the whole Christmas spendathon gets way too much: Love Is Not Enough – A Smart Woman’s Guide To Money by Merryn Somerset Webb. This girl is genius. She will explain all that complicated financial jargon and change the way you budget forever. (I may have to staple Annie to a chair and make her read it!)

A very, very happy Christmas when you finally get there!

Here is a sneak preview of the amazing covers for the two new books, out in early 2010.

Drama Girl is out on January 28th 2010. LOVING the tiara!

Celebrity Shopper – Annie’s latest adventures – comes out on March 4th. Not too long to wait!

Is this not a beautiful piece of jewellery? It’s the silver cuff I was given by the lovely people at Scottish Woman magazine.

It comes from Edinburgh jewellers Hamilton and Inches and I have to say their presentation style is gorgeous. Are you not loving the bag, the mock lizard purple box and the two tone ribbon? Totally beautiful. H&I is a wonderful shop with working silversmiths upstairs. You might just like to know that they have a website with an online shop www.hamiltonandinches.com

Christmas is coming after all…

Me collecting my award. OK, I’m not loving the pic, but it does capture my shock! Mainly I’m feeling ginormous by comparison to the ultra-dainty TV stars behind me and I’m wondering whether the wet-look leggings under my Mum’s lace dress – instead of the black petticoat – was a good decision. But thank you so much to everyone who voted for me!

Now, a little update to say I was totally thrilled (not to mention stunned!) to win Scottish Woman magazine’s Woman of the Year Award in the Wit category. Many, many thanks to everyone who took the trouble to vote for me; there are so many fantastically witty women in Scotland that I really am honoured to be counted among you.

The award ceremony was an amazing fashion show and dinner in Edinburgh, fundraising for the very worthy Macmillan Cancer Support. It was a brilliant event and no one warned me about winning, so I had a jolly old time and was pretty much gobsmacked to be suddenly called to the podium. I don’t really recommend having to address hundreds of people while clutching a surprise award. It’s pretty nerve-wracking… the stuff of nightmares rather than dreams, if you ask me! However, the award came in the shape of this beautiful silver cuff from Edinburgh jewellers, Hamilton and Inches.

The best thing was going into the jewellery shop the next day to have it fitted. The shop is gorgeous (were money no object, I would do all my shopping there!) but even better, I got taken upstairs to the workshop. I do love a peek behind the scenes and this was excellent… ancient old leather and wooden tools, pots of bitumen, little Georgian shutters, someone hammering flamingos onto a solid silver platter for a sultan of Oman! I could have poked about all morning.

As soon as the cuff returns, I’ll post a pic!

I went to Blackpool – fantastic to meet readers and writers there. I did one reading with Jane Costello then read her very funny The Nearly-Weds on the train home. I highly recommend.


Tragically, I don’t have any photos of the brilliant Girls Nights In at Portlethen or Fort William (if anyone wants to send me one, please do!)

Portlethen was a family event as I took my daughter and my Dad. Dad was giving me a lift and I’d forgotten all about his punctuality issues and the fact that the Land Rover can only go at a certain speed, so we arrived just 15 minutes before kick-off, but everyone was incredibly calm! Claudie was all dressed up and looking lovely as she worked her way steadily through the many snacks provided. Can I just say how incredibly glamorous everyone looked: sparkly pink shoes, pink tops and jazzy scarves, it was very fashion-forward. We talked lots about writing. I think they are a very keenly creative lot up there. Thank you for inviting me along!

Fort William… is a long way away! I took the train from Glasgow and it took almost four hours. However the weather was beautiful and the scenery was picture postcard Scotland. Seriously, there were stags leaping from the tracks, then posing in front of blue lochs, velvety brown mountains and Rowan trees full of berries. I was trying to work on the train, but the views were so amazing I kept getting totally distracted.

I got an unforgettably warm Highland welcome from the library and so many people came along! No wonder, there was a chocolate fountain (!) food, drinkies, two makeover ladies. We all had an absolute hoot. I have been told to spread the word, if any writer is even thinking about making the trek to FW, it is totally worth it, I promise.

Thank you to Perth Library for organising such a fantastic event! Here is a snap of me with some of the brilliant people who made it all happen.

We had half an hour of mingling, chatting, hand pampering and hair-styling tips, then we all went through to the theatre where I read to my biggest audience ever. But you know, I didn’t feel nervous, I felt amongst friends. It was great to see that some readers had come with their Mums and their daughters.

Brilliant: multi-generational fans! We had lots of chat about reading, writing and all sorts of interesting things. A fantastic night. Thank you so much to everyone and to photographer Fraser Band who did the pics.

You can see more at www.fraserband.co.uk

Fort William here I come!

The Girls Night In Tour continues… more write ups and photos to come!

I had a brilliant time in Portlethen. I’m in Perth and Fort William libraries this week (to tempt you: there will be hairstyling tips, beauticians and goody bags as well as the latest Annie Valentine and St Jude’s news).

I’m in Blackpool on October 7th at 12.30 in Blueberries at 101-103 Topping Street. Then you can also come and chat to the author Jane Costello and me at 3.10pm at FYC, 154-8 Church St. It all sounds very exciting. Look forward to seeing you there!