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Good news! After writing about my travails sorting out the summer holidays this year, things are finally falling into place. Our relatives have a window in July which we are shimmying into, after which we are going camping (yes, really! Me! I’m shocked too. I’m borrowing a tent from a lovely friend. She assures me the burnt and/or mouldy bits round the edges of the tent don’t impinge on a good night’s sleep at all and I so totally believe her) .

I’m sure it will all be lovely – but it does feel the tiniest bit cobbled together. Well, family holidays, in my experience, always are a bit ramshackle, and that’s definitely part of their charm. The rainy weekend peering out onto the seafront in a rented cottage, the cultural weekend when all the museums are shut …..

And that got me thinking. There must be a better way.

Well, it turns out there is. All you have to do is win this competition from the lovely Radisson Blu
Hotels and you’ll get 365 hotel nights to spend at over 200+ Radisson Blu  hotels over a 5 year period! Just tell Radisson why you deserve to win the greatest holiday in the world. If you’re of a tecchie turn of mind, you can even upload any pictures or videos to help support your claim. Visitors to the Radisson site vote for entries, and the most entries by July 24^th will win the grand prize. Simples! You must be either an EU citizen, or a citizen of Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein or Switzerland to participate to enter this competition, but anyone can vote.

Even if you don’t win the uber-swanky main prize, you may be in line for a Creativity Award. Every week the Radisson Blu Team will select up to 10 winners among the latest entries. Winners are selected based on humour, creativity and originality used to present their stories.

Creativity Award winners get a special badge for their candidate page and a special prize from Radisson Blu. See this week’s awards at http://www.greatestholiday.radissonblu.com/weekly-prizes.

Oh, and just one more thing – if you win, don’t forget to send me a postcard!

I was lucky enough to go to a huge event yesterday with TL –  absolutely huge if you’re a scientist. It was the Convocation of the Royal Society. The Royal Society has been concentrating on sciencey stuff since 1660 and every big boffin worth their mad hairdo, from Newton on, has been a member. Every 50 years, they throw a big party, and this one coincided with the 350th anniversary as well so it was extra special. The Queen was there, as well as the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince William, Princess Anne and the Duke of Kent.

One of my more intriguing hats, or I suppose I should say tiaras, is being a UK Royal commentator for the Flemish TV station VTM. I worked on the Daily Express for six years and did tons of stuff on the Royal family so there’s actually not much I don’t know about the subject. I’ve been able to surprise people quite a lot in pub quizzes over the years. But, despite having met Princess Diana, chatted with Fergie, hung out with those in the know and all the rest of it, I’ve very rarely seen the Queen in the flesh. Yesterday really was very special for that reason.

The arguments over Royals-vs-President make me sleepy, but I do admire dedication to duty, stoicism and dignity and, of course, no one does these better than our Queen.

She walked in at the end of a specially commissioned fanfare performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra – enough to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end – and sat throughout the speeches, her face shaded by a rather pretty blue hat.

Was she amused, entertained, entralled, or even bored? It was impossible to tell. She is a cipher, a symbol. She has been careful not to let us know too much of what she is thinking or feeling over the past 57 years since she was crowned. In these days when we seem to know every sorry thought limping through the howling wastes between the ears of celebrities like Jordan, I love the Queen’s sphinx-like air of mystery. 

She is a real woman, doing a real job (though we could argue until the cows come home over that job) into her eighties, and for that reason alone I think she is inspiring.

And, of course, I got to wear my purple satin slingbacks and my new frock, which everyone said was too posh ever to leave my wardrobe!  Thank you, Ma’am.

Calling all real women – whatever your size, shape, height, or age essentials magazine needs you!  If you would like to appear in a glossy women’s lifestyle magazine this is your chance to shine!  Simply visit www.goodtoknow.co.uk/essentials for further details on how to enter, and follow the campaign on our Facebook and Twitter pages…they can’t wait to hear from you.

I’ve been having a bit of crisis of conscience lately. As you’ll know if you’ve popped in before, I don’t often do sponsored posts, mostly because I think they’re a bit boring for you. If they’re run over a number of other blogs as well, you can find yourself visiting quite a few cyberchums, only to find they’re all yammering on about the same old stuff. Not great.

On the other hand, a little job that I’ve been doing for a couple of days a week has just run out of steam. The company doesn’t have the budget to keep paying me – even the (let’s speak frankly) pittance I’ve been earning is out of the question.

That leaves me in a bit of a quandary. So I thought I’d experiment. There are things we all need. There are things we all use. And there are things we all probably think are a good idea. So I’ve decided that, if I’m lucky enough to be asked to write about stuff that is up these three streets, then from time to time I’ll say yes.

Now loo paper is a case in point. Prepare for an overshare:  if, like me, you’ve had two episiotomies, then the quality of loo paper is important.  If you have to ask what an episiotomy is, then you’re either very lucky – or a man.

This is a long-winded way of saying, hurrah for Andrex. They’ve got a competition going, as part of their Soft, Strong and Long campaign and this time you don’t actually even have to buy any loo paper to have a go. Just look at the Andrex puppy’s Facebook page (I know, I know, please don’t tell my cat Mme Bovary – she’s already terribly jealous of US feline star @sockington and is demanding her own iPaw) and have a go. 

Have a pull on the Pup-o-matic for a chance to win one of thirty top prizes every day for 21 days with a total value of over £20,000.

There are loads of prizes, from a Sony Cybershot Digital camera to gift vouchers for all your favourite stores (all chosen by the Facebook fans), as well as many smaller things like money-off coupons and Andrex Puppy goodies.

Have a go – I hope you win something nice!

The very lovely people at essentials magazine have asked me to write about the most important woman in my life. They’re looking for real people to grace their magazine, which I think is a great idea.  I think we’re all pretty fed up with looking at stick-thin, air-brushed women, who are meant to inspire us, but whose lives, experiences and shapes are very far removed from our own.  Quite a lot of bloggers touch on this phenomenon.  The lovely Metropolitan Mum runs her ‘malnourished Mondays,’  featuring some of the cruel tricks the fashion industry plays on women. Notes from Lapland wrote this week about how horrified she was by women’s magazines, having been out of the UK for a while. And English Mum put her money where her mouth is with Figleaves, when she challenged their use of professional models in a range for women with ‘figure problems’ and ended up in a bikini. 

I worry about this particularly, as my impressionable daughters absolutely hoover up every word in mags like Closer and Now.  I love these mags myself every now and then, but I can see the ridiculous contradictions between the endless articles on celebrities who are too thin followed by pages on celebrities who are too fat, interspersed with yards of crash diets, then creamy full-fat recipes.  The subliminal message is – ‘woman, whatever you are doing, you are it wrong, life is a balancing act which you cannot pull off and what’s more it’s all your own fault.’  That’s not what I want my girls to pick up.  So I’m happy to get behind essentials on this.

The woman who has been a great inspiration to me is someone I now see rarely, as we live in different countries. We met in Brussels, when our children were small. I’m quiet, and happy to observe. My lovely friend L is a centre-stage, 24/7, traffic-stopping peroxide gal. When she describes her style, she says simply, ‘bright and tight’ – and that’s an understatement.

(This is not a picture of me and L by the way, but some ladies sent over to grace my post by the
ever-resourceful essentials)

The lovely L erupted into our lives and showed me how to throw the grey clouds away and wear the silver lining as a belt around an incredibly skimpy frock. When we shopped together in Belgian supermarkets, she would liberate the live lobsters from their glass tanks (yes, they really do have them) and let them crawl around the floor ‘for a bit of exercise’, or chase the girls up and down the aisles with the confused crustaceans, making snapping noises as she ran. On a trip to the country, she showed the children how to get a herd of cows to lick your hand (they like the salt, apparently). With L, rules are for breaking, walls are for climbing over, chances are to be taken and fun MUST be had. 

Though she’s a designer clothes freak, I’ve seen her mop up a child’s tears on her finest Max Mara cashmere. When my girls were getting squeamish about eating lamb, she told them the meat was ox. ‘No-one cares about oxen,’ she said to me in an aside, and so it has proved. The girls used to ask for ox specially after that. She’s had her tough times. Her own divorce made mine look like a vicar’s tea party. And she once shocked me by saying she’d read a book called Feel the Fear – and Do It Anyway. I thought that was pretty much her modus operandi as it stood.

Everyone should have an L in their lives. She is a force of nature, whose spirit I endlessly admire. Thank you, L, for being you.

Calling all real women – whatever your size, shape, height, or age essentials magazine needs you!  If you would like to appear in a glossy womens lifestyle magazine this is your chance to shine!  Simply visit www.goodtoknow.co.uk/essentials for further details on how to enter, and follow the campaign on our Facebook and Twitter pages…we can’t wait to hear from you.
 

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Hello my dears, I thought you all deserved a lovely treat, after all my shocking boasting over the last few days (in case you’ve managed to escape it, my book is coming out today!! Click here to have a peek: http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/search-handle-url?_encoding=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books-de&field-author=Alice%20Castle).

How about seeing a preview of the new Warner Brothers film Sandra Bullock has just won an Oscar for? It’s called Blind Side, and it doesn’t come out until 26th March – but you can have two free tickets to see it on the 16th, next Tuesday, thanks to Warner and the lovely folk at See Film First.

The film story goes like this: 

Teenager Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron) is surviving on his own, virtually homeless, when he is spotted on the street by Leigh Anne Tuohy (Sandra Bullock). Learning that the young man is one of her daughter’s classmates, Leigh Anne insists that Michael—wearing shorts and a t-shirt in the dead of winter—come out of the cold. Without a moment’s hesitation, she invites him to stay at the Tuohy home for the night. What starts out as a gesture of kindness turns into something more as Michael becomes part of the Tuohy family despite the differences in their backgrounds.  

His new environment gives him a different set of challenges to overcome – and the Tuohy family is forced to question its own beliefs too.  

Sounds like it’s got it all – a bit of drama, a bit of sport, a bit of touchy-feely changing for the better and, of course, an Oscar-worthy performance from Sandra B.

The film is on at the following locations:

Colchester 

Brighton 

Beckenham 

Manchester Printworks

Derby

Exeter

Guildford

Lincoln

Richmond

Worcester

Maidstone

Kettering

Kingston upon Thames

Norwich

Streatham

Epsom

Muswell Hill

Swansea

Camden Town

Edinburgh Wester Hailes

Greenwich

London

Hatfield Galleria

Huddersfield

South Woodford

Southend on Sea

Surrey Quays

Bristol

I’m definitely going, and I’ve printed off my tickets already, so I can tell you it’s easy-peasy. All you have to do is cut and paste this little code: 560634. Then go to the Film First website, enter the code, register, choose a cinema, print out your ticket, which admits two, and then just count out your loose change for popcorn. Simples!

Hope you enjoy it. Oh, and don’t forget to order my book  too!! How cheeky am I?

Of course, John Lewis stands out as an oasis of calm in the midst of this festive lunacy, and I was there only last week exchanging my broken phone – easy peasy and it took only a few minutes as I timed my visit to get there as the doors opened and was out by 10.30.

So, when the lovely John Lewis PR folk asked me along for a special Christmas shopping tour yesterday, starting at the late hour of 11am, I was a little tentative  -  was it really safe? But curiosity, of course, got the better of me. I couldn’t resist finding out more about one of my favourite shops. And I was dying to meet some fellow bloggers.

Uber mummyblogger Sally from Who’s The Mummy brought her beautifully behaved daughter, Flea, Metropolitan Mum came with her baby who wore the most adorable ickle-bitty Uggs, we nearly lost glamorous 40 not out in the shoe department and I discovered a near-neighbour in Sparx from Notes from Inside My Head.

We toured the store from top to bottom, taking in toys, the Christmas shop with this year’s white scottie dog theme, the lingerie department, where staff will discreetly come to the aid of dithering men, and the cheese room in the basement. This, particularly, was a revelation to me – for some reason I hadn’t noticed John Lewis had sprouted food and the cheese was fantastic. We sampled one which tasted like mince pies – extraordinary.

In the midst of all this, fascinating John Lewis facts came thick and fast – did you know that a cashmere jumper is sold every ten minutes in the Oxford Street branch? Though I’m not surprised as they are £40ish and the colours are great. Did you also know that Uggs are made in China, but Emus, which I thought were from New Zealand, are actually made in Australia? Or that John Lewis does wish lists for teenagers, so baffled relatives don’t have to make the dreadful faux pas of buying JLS instead of Jay-Z?

Meanwhile, the store was getting busier and, as we jammed up the aisles to talk, one of us did get a swift kick from an outraged shopper. It was definitely time to leave. I got home in one piece, and with only one regret. I had been in John Lewis for over two hours, and yet I had somehow managed to leave without buying even a single cashmere jumper.

I may just have to go back.