I had a lovely holiday. Now that rain is lashing down from a leaden sky, it’s feeling like summer was months and months ago. Sniff! I have stuck a few holiday snaps up on the fridge, but it’s not the same!

We went to the Limousin in France which is gorgeously luscious, unspoiled and green. Because I am a sort of bug magnet, maybe even a bug buffet, I got bitten by everything going: one tick, many, many horseflies (ouch!) and then finally a hornet. Now that was one big sting. The beast got me on the side of the knee and I kid you not – a football-sized swelling followed and took days to clear up!

I spent lots of time at my computer writing about New York, which was weird because we really couldn’t have been further from the hustle, bustle and general adrenaline rush that is NYC. But somehow it worked quite well for me.

When we were in New York last year, I didn’t write one single word, because there was too much to do, too much to see and experience.

Now… book news:  The Celebrity Shopper paperback is out next month in a glittery, purple, gorgeous new cover.

New York Valentine comes in January next year. So not tooooo long to wait.

There is now a Carmen Reid page on Facebook, so you can join it and get regular updates. Also, coming very soon, I promise… Annie Valentine’s very own fashion blog. Exciting!

Loads of things going on this month as the third Annie Valentine is released: How Not To Shop comes with the chance to win an Egyptian holiday (and if like me you’ve spent much of the summer in Glasgow – you might be needing something like that).

Rush to your nearest branch of Faith and they will give you a special edition of The Personal Shopper for free if you spend over £30 (easily done, I have been on their website and checked those shoes out… and they do big sizes. Gone are the days when you went to any shoe shop, asked for a size 8 and the shop assistant’s eyes popped from her head in astonishment – I’m still slightly scarred though.)

The lovely people at ultra-stylish Scottish Woman magazine have put me on their shortlist for witty Scottish Woman of the Year. I still can’t believe that… anyway, you can find out more if you follow this link. Hey, you can even vote and yes I will understand if you think Ronni Ancona is much more worthy!

Also, give this link a whirl if you’d like to read an interview with me from the Sunday Herald magazine. It’s incredibly nice, Susan Swarbrick was totally charming and no, I don’t have anything on her, she wrote this all of her own accord, honest! ‘Poster girl for yummy mummy chic’ oooh how my husband fell about laughing at that. He knows the grim reading glasses and ratty jeans reality!

Now, which photos can I use to enliven the August blog… I’m still missing New York, so here are another two from the holiday. The big plastic roach key-ring which was the gag of the fortnight: it ended up in everyone’s shoes, everyone’s bed, even Sam’s salad and my birthday presents. Eeek!

Then there are the family birthday cards… obviously cute dogs feature highly as we were all totally missing Jimmy by then!

Secrets at St Jude’s: Jealous Girl went on sale this month. I hope all the New Girl fans rushed to get a copy! Marie Goodwin from E. Sussex gets a signed copy as she was the very first person to send me an email about Jealous Girl. Surprise, Marie!

For the first two weeks in July, I was on holiday. As a big birthday treat, I went to New York with my family and had a truly brilliant time. It was hot, it was hectic, it was very exciting.

We did lots of touristy things, of course: Statue of Liberty check, Empire State Building, check, Natural history Museum, the Met, MoMA, the Bronx Zoo, the Central Library… all fantastic. All totally worth visiting.

Our apartment was weirdly Glasgow-ish: a Victorian sitting room, a little bit brown and shabby-chic, turned into a one-bedroom plus kitchenette kind of thing. It was on 16^th street between 5^th and 6^th and I can’t recommend that slice of town enough. We were right beside 5th Avenue… within spitting distance of Anthropologie, Coach, Banana Republic, J Crew (eek, all shopping accidents waiting to happen) Also the unbelievable farmer’s market in Union square.

When we weren’t eating out, we cooked in  – which Manhattanites don’t –  maybe because cooking attracted the biggest, brownest insect I’ve ever seen. Too big to be a roach, apparently he was a water beetle.

Yes, there were some shopping adventures: I bought my son button-down shirts and his first tie in the slightly fusty, wood-panelled Brooks Brothers (thus fulfilling a Woody Allen inspired fantasy… )

I took Claudie to American Girl Place where our jaws dropped. Not only could you buy a dolly to look like you, clothes and every dolly accessory ever invented (dolly kayak for instance), there was even a dolly hair salon where real, live stylists plaited your dolly’s hair.

I mainly bought shoes, none expensive and all quite devastatingly practical… OK apart from the Park Avenue Princess pumps in furry leopard skin with patent leather trim!

We spent lots of time hanging with the nannies and ‘Hudson Juniors’ in the Central Park playgrounds. Boating on the pond was the best and there were turtles. I found that surprising… what do they do with them in the winter? Fly them to Florida?

I turned 40 (!) and I got a truly spectacular cake. We went out and ate pizzas, played in the Washington Square fountain, walked home up Fifth Avenue admiring the lights on the Empire State building. I counted my many blessings, especially the three I was with, and thought 40 felt pretty good actually.

On the book front: the next instalment of Secrets at St Jude’s: Jealous Girl is out on 2nd July for everyone who loved New Girl and can’t wait to find out what happens next…

Make a little room in your summer holiday suitcase for the new Annie Valentine, as How Not To Shop comes out on 13th August.

At the AK Bell Theatre in Perth, I served my first ever time on a discussion panel this month.  Is The Love Story Dead? Discuss. It was a really interesting and enjoyable evening. Great to meet writers Ewan Morrison and Sharon Blackie as well as the incredibly well-read Dorothy Macmillan, Stuart Kelly and Ajay Close. Just as soon as I’d sipped down my second Buck’s Fizz to quell those public speaking nerves, I had a great time!

I’m going on a library tour in September… more details to follow next month. Hope I can catch up with lots of readers.

The rest of June has been all about two of the Very Important Males in my life: my son and my Dad.

On the same day that my son went off on his first week-long school trip to an outward bound adventure centre thingy, my Dad went into hospital to have his hip replaced.

Oh what a lovely amount of fretting and stressing I did! Will Sam have enough socks? Eat enough fibre? Survive the abseiling lesson? Will Dad have enough books to read? Eat any hospital food? Survive the operation?!!

Good grief it was stressful. My Mum and I got through much more wine and cake than usual, I can tell you.

However, the week ended. Sam came off the bus looking tall, brown, grubby and ridiculously chirpy. He was absolutely fine – apart from a neck rash brought on by a combination of ‘slurping on midge repellent like gravy’ (his words) and not washing properly (well, he is newly 11!) And apparently abseiling – which he’d been slightly worried about – was the best fun ever.

Dad came out of hospital the following day and went home to the farm along with crutches, a raised loo-seat and various other gadgets.

He has always been the fittest, healthiest person I know. Up until two years ago he was still running (he doesn’t jog, he RUNS!) and he looks after a herd of 80 cattle, so the ever-increasing hip problem has taken some time for him to adjust to.

I have no idea how Mum is going to keep him resting for six weeks. There is already talk of how soon can he get back on his bike (his new hobby now that he can’t run!) and my Dad’s usual competitive streak  means he will want to make the fastest recovery from the operation ever!

More news next month when I get back from New York! Yes, I’ll just say that once again… when I get back from New York!!

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…

Right… so, it’s August, and that means summer holidays! Despite my misgivings that our British hols would be two weeks of drizzle and lots of cursing that we didn’t get on a plane to sunnier climes, we lucked out on the weather. So ten of our 14 days in Cornwall were stunningly sunny!

It was beautiful down there: dazzlingly blue and turquoise seas, big waves, long, sandy, deserted beaches. It really is a very special place.

Being brave or foolhardy, I’m not sure which, we booked in for a family surfing lesson. First of all, this involved wetsuits, for everyone. The four of us looked like – remember that kids’ film about the family of superheroes, The Incredibles? Yes that was us, except we were armed with a huge yellow surfboard or giant banana.

It turns out that surfing is quite scary (to begin with, especially if you’re convinced your 6 yr old is about to drown) not to mention exhausting. Muscles I’d never felt before were left aching, but we all worked very hard for our gorgeous surf instructor, yes him of the sea-bleached, tousled hair, a mahogany sea-tan, rippling surfer muscles… I’m sorry, I noticed, I’m only human.

When he referred to my not quite so rippling husband as ‘The Big Fella’ I had to giggle, but I wasn’t laughing quite so hard when he referred to me as: ‘Mum’ !!!! Oh. My. God. That is crossing a line. I’ve clearly got to the age where handsome young men start thinking of me as ‘Mum’. This is deeply, deeply tragic. And I have to say, I didn’t think I was wearing my wetsuit so badly. All that treadmill running had paid off slightly.

I didn’t manage to stand up on my board, but I did do a lot of body boarding which was brilliant. On the beach there were loads of properly old ladies (ie older than me) in suits with board, just grinning from ear to ear. Because it is brilliant fun. This is clearly the secret to a British seaside summer, you’ve got to get in and get wet. Never mind the weather!

Meanwhile, while I was eating pasties and ice cream on Sennen beach near Land’s End, my glamorous sister-in-law was on holiday in New York. Yes, she’s newly single, she’s still child-free, so she decided to book herself a glam singleton holiday to NYC.

Obviously, with the dollar on the skids, everything seemed incredibly good value and she had a very nice little shopping time to herself. Discount shoes, an adorable little Coach handbag and so on.

However, she did report back on a really quite terrifying trend. Every one in NYC carries a beautiful bag, OK, we expected that. In fact, we’d have been shocked if they didn’t, but, here is the but… despite the 35 degree heat, despite the bags and the manicured hands and the incredible designer clothes (smart, smart Prada skirts, nipped in blouses, groomed hair) guess what lots and lots of women were wearing on their feet? High Jimmys or Manolos, I hear you answer and I know, I’d have guessed the same. But no, apparently the coloured, patterned, mid-height Wellington seems to be the footwear of choice!!!! Bizarre!! Is it comfortable to walk about NY in mid-July in calf height wellies? Is it a status statement: I have a really big garden/ allotment/ home in the countryside. Well, whatever the reason… they’re definitely not wearing calf-length wellies for style.

I asked if she at least had a pic for me to post, but she said every time she saw one of these wellie-wearers walk past, she was so shocked, so stopped in her tracks by the sight that she never got it together to take a snap.

Being stared at in disapproval for your fashion faux pas reminds me of being in Paris, aged 19, inter-railing. I was probably wearing a t-shirt, grubby shorts and possibly even hiking boots. This chic Parisisan woman, walked towards me, in the typical Paris outfit of slick, skinny black, smooth hair, sunglasses, and just gave me this look. Her eyes travelled right up and down me and then her face registered this pinched look of horror – making me feel about two inches high.

The last time I was in the south of France, I thought the French women looked a bit frumpy to be honest. All that striped blue and white top business. I mean, it’s quite cute when you’re under ten as holiday wear, but come on!

Yes, I know we’re all Sex And The Citied out. We’ve seen the girls on every cover of every magazine, we’ve read enough interviews with SJP to be able to write her biography off by heart (‘I keep fit by running up and down the stairs of my house… I can’t even blow dry my own hair,’ Oh please!)

But still the film was fabulous, was it not? I’ve seen it twice and I went to a SATC party, so I think that makes me a groupie.

I’ve loved SATC since series one when Miranda wore Gap, Carrie wore second hand and they did those random street polls about finding love in New York.

At the time (1998) I’d just had my first baby so I was shopping in Mothercare and SATC was pure escapism. Could it have been less like my life? No. I was in. I was married. I was stone cold sober, and not getting a lot of action in the small hours, apart from nappy changing.

But that was the fun of it. I still believe the most devoted SATC fans are happily married, tracksuit-wearing mums, who just want a weekly dose of how the other half lives. To remind us why we’re just fine where we are, thanks.

The best things about the series:

* The friendships. You believe that these women are there for the thick and thin, more like family than friends. Everyone needs friends like this.

* The clothes, of course. According to SATC, when you’re a grown up you deserve to spend a little bit more on yourself. Although the great big Prada hairy handbags may have been a shopping spree too far…

* The sex info, thank you very much. Everything I know about sex I’ve learned from Samantha.

* The girl power! Are the foursome not proof that women in their 40s and 50s are interesting, witty and sexy with a host of opportunities and choices open to them? And we can buy our own diamonds and apartments, thank you very much. I never liked that whole Mr Big: ‘I’ve got it covered, baby.’

* The fun! Let’s face it, for previous generations of women, life didn’t look so good after the wedding day. From then on, you were consigned to childcare, housework, elasticated waistbands and frumpy shoes. In SATC, there is no settling! These girls want the best shoes, the best clothes and the best men. And they’re not going to let their waistlines or bikini lines go either. It’s impossible not to want to cheer them on from the sidelines!

Obviously, like Carrie Bradshaw, I’m a ‘writerrrr’ but to my husband’s distress, I do not sit at my laptop in evening gowns or lingerie. I’ve promised him I will do that, just as soon as he drives around town in his own personal chauffeur driven limousine.

Some of my SATC inspired purchases over the years: the corset top, pointy red boots, fake flower and impressive sparkly ring.

Everyone I know left the film lusting after something, for me it was the teensy diamond studs in Carrie’s ears (thank you Claire’s Accessories).

I did love that Carrie looked truly rubbish after the break-up and did Bad Things to her Hair. (Been there, done that!) Plus she wore a few duff outfits as well, to prove that fashionistas take risks and can’t always get it right: I mean, grey thermals under a silk nightie… what was that about?!!