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.

We were at the carpet laying stage…

The new bathroom is lovely. The new bedroom, same. I’d had my Carrie moment. My Mr Big had built my new wardrobe (shame there were only worn jeans and Converse sneakers to put in it…. And I don’t recall Carrie being involved with hauling the very heavy flat-pack boxes up the stairs… but no matter).

The house and I had almost put our bad relationship behind us. We were all set for that brand new start.

And then. Then. It goes and lets me down AGAIN!!

We were about to lay the sitting room to rest, finally. It was all plastered and painted, complete with the new boxed in cupboards and skirting boards. The paint, by the way, on one wall is an amazing blue. Almost exactly the colour of both my husband’s and daughter’s astonishingly blue eyes.

Anyway, the carpet, no to be precise, sisal man arrived. He looked at the wooden floorboards, which are messy and un-sandable, then, to my horror, he took out a chisel, bent down, gouged out a piece of floorboard here and there, shook his head and declared he couldn’t possibly put down anything here because this whole floor was rotten and infested with woodworm and would have to be sorted out first.

Then he left. Before my mouth could close again.

Never heard from him since. What he’s done with the 25 square metres of sisal is anyone’s guess.

Since then… we’ve had countless joiners etc in and out ummmming, ahing, scratching their heads.

The one we booked arrived today, removed about four square metres of floorboards from the sitting room and the hall and declared it was all hopeless, he really felt for us and he couldn’t do this, he would have to go now. Leaving the four metre square hole by the way!

I actually had to sit down and laugh at that point.

I mean that is a first. In all the work we’ve had done. No one yet has come in, started, then packed up in horror and run away. That is truly a first. Luckily, my mother had been to visit and there was a substantial amount of homemade chocolate cake in the fridge. Otherwise, I really might have cracked up.

I can seriously recommend refrigerated chocolate cake as lunch on a bad day. There must be a lot of bankers chomping through it at the moment. I mean, what is going on there guys?! My mortgage company is just about to be ‘rescued’ by Lloyds. The bank I have my businesses account with is teetering… it really is very scary.

I’ve had loads of messages about Secrets at St Jude’s: New Girl from my new teenage fans, which is very exciting. I’m really, really thrilled that you’re loving it, girls. And yes, there is another book to come next summer. I’m just putting the finishing touches to Jealous Girl right now.

Does it reveal how incredibly old and pernickety I’m getting if I add that most of those fan messages are spelled so badly it takes quite some time to work them out?!!!

On the building front, we are now into week three without a bathroom… hmmmmm… that is a bit of a challenge, to say the least. OK, we have a toilet (without a seat) and we have a teeny weeny cloakroom sink which is just about big enough to brush your teeth in, but altogether the experience is not very happy.

Every member of the family has been affected by this disruption in different ways. I’m in the worst mood all the time. Like PMT all month long. My husband has grown wild: bearded, wearing his anorak indoors, acting like a UN peace envoy between angry wife and builders. My daughter is upset about her dusty hair, dusty clothes and dusty shoes (which we have to polish every morning). My son has developed an acute anxiety about Jimmy, our dog, running away because the builders keep leaving the door open.

Time for me to take calming breaths and repeat once again, it will be over, very, very soon.

Bad day at the office? Bet it wasn’t as bad as mine… my ceiling fell down! Oh yeah, ornate Victorian cornicing and all.

Just three days before, my desk was underneath! I moved the desk to let the decorators in. They took down all the layers of paint and woodchip on the ceiling and several hours later: CRASH!! Obviously the woodchip had been holding the very water stained plaster together.

Right now, my house is like a bad relationship. I keep working away at it, hoping it will get better, but it just keeps on letting me down… I think we’re now at the couple counselling stage, just a few more rotten joists and it will be irretrievable breakdown, I tell you.

Nevertheless… a huge thanks to every single, wonderful reader who rushed out and bought Late Night Shopping to find out what Annie Valentine gets up to next.

The book has spent week after week in the bestseller charts and I really am incredibly grateful. Thank you!

And good news for all those very nice people who emailed to say: ‘There will be more from Annie won’t there?!’

Yes, there will! The next instalment of Annie’s adventures is due out in summer 2009. If that seems too long to wait, then I’d suggest taking a peek at ‘Did The Earth Move?’ my second book (if you haven’t already), because I can’t help feeling that the heroine, Eve, is a bit of a prototype Annie and I think you’d probably like her a lot.

Most of April has been very noisy… at least inside the house. For many days there were piles of earth in my living room. There were men digging and shaking their heads quietly, you know, the way men do when something is bad… very bad.

Many, many noisy days later, after much banging and sawing and drilling, much coming in and out of the front door – piles of rotten wood going out and piles of nice clean new wood coming in – many, many days later and we finally have a lovely, glossy, dark, varnished floor. And now that we’ve recovered from the coughing fits induced by the stain and varnish fumes, we can of course smile and say ‘oh, it was so worth it’!

I’m trying not to care too much that over the winter, while we shivered away in our Glasgow ‘project’, our plumber went to Las Vegas and Goa, our painter made a few trips to his house in Spain and I’m sure the flooring guy is thumbing through the holiday brochures right now after the cheque we’ve written him! Oh yes, it’s all so worth it!!

On the bright side, the living room is now floored, painted and ready to move into. I got so excited, I went to the Glasgow Art Fair and had to buy this by the Little Artists: a photo of Damien Hurst and his shark tank recreated in Lego. (015) Genius, no? Almost as funny as my treasured French postcard of a traditional recipe. Poor chicken!

After enduring two weeks of that unique radio channel only painters know about, is it Radio Decorator? All the non-stop, back-to-back hits you prayed you’d forgotten about from the 70s and 80s… (‘Gloria! Gloria!’, ‘I want to break free…’) Well, after two whole weeks of that, we are definitely entering the DIY phase. Most of the rest of the wallpaper stripping and painting will be done by us. There goes my manicure. (No, I’m only saying that to make my friends fall about laughing…)

I did once have a manicure, only to wreck it when I took out my purse to pay. Manicure pros apparently pay first… so why didn’t the beautician warn me?!

Anyway, Annie Valentine’s next instalment of adventures (think Italy, think handbag and shoe capital of Europe) is now on the final copy-editing stage and is due out in a very sparkly cover in June.

Purely in the interests of research, I decided I’d better get onto ebay and find out what it is all about… just for Annie’s sake. Oh boy! Is it not completely addictive? Slightly like drugs, horses and cigarettes all bundled up together.

There’s the thrill of finding gorgeous, gorgeous things you would never have had the nerve to pay full price for, floating about at the kind of prices Primark charge. Then there’s the haggle to buy them.

Bizarrely, I’ve found myself drawn to the shoe listings. Bizarre, because in real life, I’m not much of a one for shoes. I have size 8 feet and this used to be such a trauma to shop for, I think I was scarred for life. However, on ebay, you can just type in size 8 and hundreds and hundreds of shoes, all in your size, pop up.

Which is how I ended up with the green… snakeskin… wait for it… Prada shoes.

Oh yes! Eat your heart out, Carrie Bradshaw.

I’ve had to watch some old SATC episodes lately just to prepare myself for the film coming out in May. (Can the SATC film possibly be as good as we really, really hope it will be? Will Carrie marry Big? And would that be a good thing? I don’t like the idea of a married Carrie with matching silverware, a summer house in the Hamptons, a philandering husband – because you know he will – and a weekly column about hostessing.)

Other things I’m doing this month:

Making a trip to the flicks for The Other Boleyn Girl with my pals.

Checking out my friend Ronda’s glitzy blog

Still dragging myself to the gym (much more fun if your ipod’s on random… stomach crunches to Shirley Bassey, anyone?!)

March already!! What have I been doing?? Hibernating. No other word for it. It’s been dark, it’s been cold, it’s been a very wet and windy winter. So apart from dog walks, I’ve been indoors tucked up in a pair of knee-high sheepskin boots and a floor-length cardigan bashing away at the keyboard. (And people think being a writer is so glamorous!)

My desk always has three mugs of tea on it. The one I’m currently drinking, the one I finished some time ago and the one left here from yesterday. At least once every few hours I take a sip from the wrong one which is just not good.

Winter doesn’t end up here until April. No one ever believes me, but it’s true! Just this week we have had snow and vicious winds which blew the trampoline right over the fence and into the neighbour’s garden, so I’m not quite planning my summer wardrobe or Spring cleaning schedule just yet.

Not that there will be much Spring cleaning going on here as we are still somewhere in the middle of renovation… I’d like to say ‘hell’ but I shouldn’t. I definitely should not moan about the trial of redecorating because one day the house will be really beautiful and although living through the process is annoying, very grubby and let’s not even talk about expensive, it is still a nice problem to have.

The plaster may be falling off the walls, the joists dodgy, the guttering leaking, the windowsills rotten, but it is just such an amazing view! (Yes, that is the sound of my husband weeping in the background.)

What I’m doing this month:

Re-reading The Price of Water in Finistere by Bodil Malmsten, which I love.

Getting a sneak preview read of My Vintage Summer by Jane Elmor (it’s out in June)

Definitely making time to read The House at Midnight by Lucie Whitehouse (promise, Lucie!)

Eating too many Easter eggs. Yes, I know it’s not even Easter yet!

And because of the eggs… forcing myself to go back to the gym. It’s been so long, I didn’t recognise my trainers. Thought they were someone else’s.