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!

 To celebrate the publication of How Not to Shop, Transworld Publishers and Faith Shoes are offering you the chance to win a fabulous holiday for you and a friend to Egypt!

The fantastic prize, courtesy of Libra Holidays, will include return flights and 4* accommodation at the Hilton Sharks Bay Resort. Enjoy seven all-inclusive days, relaxing by the pool, sipping a cocktail at one of the hotel bars, discovering the underwater delights of the Red Sea or partying into the early hours and enjoying the lively nightlife in Sharm el Sheikh!

To enter visit the Faith website from 10th August.

The closing date is 24th August 2009. See www.faith.co.uk for terms and condtitions.

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.

From 10th August, selected Faith stores will be giving away free copies of The Personal Shopper to customers who spend over £30 (while stocks last).

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…

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!

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!

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?!)