January, January… what’s to like about this month? I hope no one’s mad enough to even think about detox-ing. Quite frankly if you are denied booze, mugs of tea, chocolate, toasted cheese sandwiches and sticky toffee pudding during January there is a danger that you may not survive. It is freezing cold, damp and dark, everyone’s broke… do not attempt and make it through this month without any toxins!

My new year’s resolution (apart from to write more web posts, my apologies, it drives me nuts too when I go on favourite websites/ blogs and find there’s nothing new!) was to do something about my neglected hair…

It was so long and so dry and so bleach- and weather-beaten. Plus, the amount of time involved in washing, conditioning and blow drying the mane. No, I decided it really had to go.

I went to my charming hairdresser (if I went there more often, I daresay the hair would not have got so out-of-hand in the first place) with lots of pictures of short, short haircuts. He made me tea, he looked at the photos, he listened intently, then he cut me a cute little bob. If I was sure I wanted short hair, I could have it next time, he told me! Whereas if I deeply regretted the bob, it would only take a few months to grow back down to my shoulders. He is a hair genius, obviously.

The bob is nice, much, much nicer than the bouffant mane. But now I can’t decide… go shorter or stick with the bob? Sometimes, accessorised with coats and leather gloves, I think the bob is a bit terrifyingly grown up. Long hair is hippie-chic, short hair is cool, bobs are… hmmm… just a little bit sensible. No?

Here is the before and after… the after reminding me that I need new make up. My last bottle fell out of the stupid little plastic bag they make you put liquids in at the airport. It smashed on the floor, splattering glass and beige goo everywhere and sending the security guards, not to mention everyone in the queue behind me, into panic-mode. Clinique attack! Everybody down!

I’m not posting anything about the house. I’m beginning to think it’s bad luck. As soon as I even suggest something is ‘finished’, something else goes wrong. So I’m not saying another thing for a while… not until I can convince myself that the big stuff really is finally over!

I was emailed a Q and A by a friend. I do like a Q and A. I like filling them in and I like reading all my friends’ answers too, very revealing.

So cut and paste away, or make up your own and email it to everyone you’d like to know a little better. Also, questions like this are great starting points for writing. Especially for all those people who wonder ‘where do you get the ideas from?’ Almost every one of these answers has a much longer story behind it.

Q: Are you diamonds or pearls?

A: You know not really either. I have a chip of diamond sunk into my engagement band which I love so much it also became my wedding ring and I have a long string of teeny pearls all the way from Hawaii but otherwise, I like really chunky, rustic jewellery. Turquoise lumps, beaten silver, hunks of blown glass, shells, amber beads that kind of thing. I don’t think I’m ever going to be wearing bling rings.

Q: What’s your best bargain?

A: Ah… now that I’m an eBay-er, so many! The almost brand new, still in their lilac box Jimmy Choo boots, bought for a fifth of what they’d have cost originally, maybe, but I still love a D&G black woollen long sleeved, scoop necked top I bought for buttons in Century 21 in New York about 18 years ago now. It’s really warm and foxy, what more could a Scottish girl ask for?!

Q: What’s the last book you read?

A: I’ve just finished Candace Bushnell’s Lipstick Jungle and oh my, it was good. As Bret Easton Ellis once said: ‘she writes the big, bad truth.’ I’ve just started a biography of Dorothy Parker: the Candace Bushnell of her day really.

Q: Where’s your favourite holiday destination?

A: I do like France and Italy. Heat and wonderful food are hard to beat.

Q: Where in the world would you still like to go to?

A: I have this idea in my head… I don’t know yet whether it’s feasible, but California for a whole month in July. I’ve never been there before and I think it would be incredible.

Q: What are the luxuries in your life?

Too many! Aveda conditioner. I have big, big, big hair and this does help. Eve Lom cleanser, yes I know it’s about as expensive as caviar but you only use it once a day and it lasts for ever and is practically a miracle in a jar. Palmer’s cocoa butter, this would probably be the one thing I’d have to take to a desert island.

Q: What is your favourite smell?

A: Always the warm, sweet smell of my children’s necks. Also cakes in the oven, dinner cooking and pretty much everything by Chanel and Diptyque. I also have a thing about the smell of barns: engine oil mixed with earth.

Q: What’s your favourite food?

Chocolate and anything made with it: chocolate cake, chocolate mousse… I do also find it hard to resist a caramel anything (blame Willy Wonka). Also, my husband’s shepherd’s pie and a great, rare steaming hunk of my Dad’s home grown rib roast. Quite strange to think I was once a vegetarian.

Q: Which film star do you find most sexy?

A: Oh boy… so many men, so little time to admire them all. The young Sean Connery and the middle-aged Russell Crowe obviously… I mean is anyone immune to those charms? I also have a strange attraction to Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall. Should I admit to that? I think Annie Valentine’s Ed is a little bit related to Hugh. He’s messy-haired and tweedy and a bit intellectual, but earthy. No, I’m not sure I should be admitting to this at all…

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.

This week I have not just one, but two new books out. For a start, this has meant answering the door to the florist burdened with an enormous bunch of flowers from my publishers, not just once, daaaahlings, but twice!

Two bouquets on different days! How diva-ish is that?! I feel as if I should be reclining in a pink ball gown eating chocolates to do my flowers full justice.

But as always, real life gets in the way and I actually spent one publication morning rushing to the doctor’s with Sam because he’s had a strangely sore tummy for several days. Although the word appendicitis was flashing in my mind, our very nice GP assured us that it almost certainly wasn’t and now in my handbag I have a plastic sample bottle with a little plastic spoon attached to the lid. I think all the Mummies reading this know what that’s going to involve. Oh joy.

No, in fact there was some lounging on a velvet sofa in a pink dress for a photo shoot with The Sunday Times Scotland. We did the pictures in this highly glamorous boutique called Cruise and it just seemed rude not to try their beautiful clothes on.

So before you could say Prada, I was on the couch in a clingy Vivienne Westwood frock and fantasy shoes: the only pair that could be found in my size were Dior, gold, six inch, python, peep toes. Fortunately the photo doesn’t show the hideously un-pedicured state of my feet nor the rhino hide I seem to have developed on my knees. Phew!

Anyway, it is very exciting to see piles of Late Night Shopping in so many places… Woolworths, Waterstones, Borders. I just hope YOU, my lovely, lovely readers, like it. A lot of people grew very fond of Annie as they read The Personal Shopper and I really hope you’re going to enjoy her second book of adventures just as much.

Now get out there and buy a copy or two… or three!

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.