The news that children are having to be taught how to be happy made me unutterably depressed. Apparently 20 schools across the country are already giving happiness lessons – to help pupils banish pessimistic thoughts and cope with whatever life throws at them.

I know the weather’s rubbish, the economy is in a mess and the holidays are over – but surely things aren’t so dire that children need happiness lessons? At the risk of sounding like Pollyanna, the little girl who melted the heart of her embittered old aunt by finding a silver lining in every cloud, I’ve come up with a list of things that have lifted my heart in recent weeks:

The conundrum of whether women should carry on working or stay at home to look after their children has been hotly debated for years. And today the argument is raging again – following the publication of Cambridge University research that claims the “shine of the supermum” is wearing thin. More people, it declares, believe the family suffers if mothers work full-time.

It’s an infuriating generalisation. Most of my friends with children don’t have a choice about working or not working. They go out to work because they need to pay the mortgage and make ends meet. One has retrained as a teacher, another is a doctor and lots are journalists. Most of them find their jobs interesting and stimulating but even if they didn’t, they’d still be doing them.

My theory is that when it comes to work women do the absolute opposite of their own mothers. My grandmother worked all hours in a wallpaper and paint shop in Lancashire. It was hard graft for not much money and my mother was frequently a latchkey kid, arriving home from school to an empty house. When my mum launched her hugely successful career she asked her aunt to come and live with us – so there would always be someone at home to look after her children.

My mum adored her career and became the most influential columnist of her generation but later on she often said she wished she’d been at home more when we were growing up. So when I had children I decided to try and have the best of both worlds by leaving my newspaper job and working from home as a freelance. It meant I could collect L and N from school, go to plays, concerts and parents’ evenings and take time off during the summer holidays.

All good – except that now 16-year-old L is thinking about her future she’s horrified by the idea of being self-employed. She hates the precariousness of freelancing – you’re either twiddling your thumbs or snowed under with work – and yearns to work in a busy office environment, with the buzz of working alongside other people, proper lunch breaks and a monthly salary cheque.

The debate will rage on, I know. But judging by L’s example, I reckon the next generation won’t be swayed by academic research. They’ll make their own minds up...

Headteacher Anthony Seldon has hit the headlines again after declaring that schools should introduce army-style PT training in a bid to improve children’s discipline.

I was thrilled to see majestic, moody Pendle Hill listed in Christopher Somerville’s new book about the most breathtaking wild places in Britain and Ireland.

Maybe I’m biased but Pendle, whether it’s shrouded in mist or bathed in sunshine (a rare occurrence) is simply stunning. It towers over the north Lancashire countryside and on a clear day (again, rare) you can see as far afield as the Lake District.

I spent two years living in an isolated farmhouse on the side of the 1,800-ft hill and still count Pendle as one of my favourite places. Our house had no central heating, the nearest neighbour was half a mile away and we regularly got snowed in. When N was a baby we ran out of food after three days of snowstorms and had to be rescued by a kind-hearted friend who parked her car at the bottom of our pot-holed mile long drive. I trudged down the track to freedom carrying N in a backpack and pulling three-year-old L on a sledge.

Even on the hottest summer days a howling gale whistled round the gables of the farmhouse. The sheep in the next field were so desperate to get their teeth into our very un-lush lawn that they used to shin up the five-foot garden wall, trot along the top and jump down to munch on our grass.

Just thinking about Pendle is making me nostalgic. It’s high time I went back...

My mother, who died in October 2004, never ever complained when people made nasty comments about her. As a newspaper columnist, she reckoned that if she criticised other people then she had to accept it when they made disparaging remarks about her.

But twice recently, journalists have denounced her for comments she made about the late Mo Mowlam (writing in The Guardian, Peter Wilby described her behaviour as “inexcusable”).

The trouble is that reports like this simply don’t tell the whole story. It’s true that my mother criticised Mo’s appearance, only to discover afterwards that the politician was being treated for cancer and was on a course of steroids. But they don’t mention that fact that my mum was devastated when she learned the truth about Mo’s illness. She apologised immediately and Mo generously accepted her apology.

In fact, after my mother’s death, Mo paid a wonderful tribute to her. “An excellent journalist who was sometimes misunderstood,” wrote Mo. “She’d done me over a couple of times but was a friend by the end. She was a wonderful writer whom I very much respected.”

Writer Jane Owen has been a friend of mine for years - ever since the days when I sat next to her at the Sunday newspaper where we both worked. She, incidentally, was the paper's highly-regarded royal correspondent, while I was the greenest reporter on the block.

Jane's now a very successful gardening writer who regularly works with the likes of Diarmuid Gavin. I often bump into her around Oxford, where she lives, and she always talks good sense. She's just written a piece for The Times expressing her horror at the Chelsea Flower Show being turned into a glorified extension of the Kings Road, selling Manolo Blahnik shoes, Jo Malone candles and designer outfits. She appeared on the Today programme at dawn to talk about her views and I could sense Radio Four listeners up and down the country crunching on their cornflakes and agreeing with every word she said.

PS: Loads of congratulations to the lovely Adam Frost, who's just won a coveted Gold Medal at Chelsea for his stunning urban garden. Adam and his hard-working team worked wonders on our small, scruffy garden last summer - and if they can do that they're pretty top-notch in my book...

Getting my husband and children all assembled in the same place at the same time is a bit like spinning plates. I’ve no sooner got one of them nailed down than another says “oh by the way, I won’t be there. I’ll be mountain-boarding/meeting my friends at Starbucks/doing loop-the-loop that day.”

And so it proved when I wrote a newspaper piece about my mad decision to buy a tumbledown French farmhouse.

“We’d like a picture of you all together,” would seem the simplest of requests for most families. Not in our case. A is away most weeks, my teenage son N was off surfing in Cornwall and L’s social life is always frenetic. The only person who was around all the time, as usual, was me.

In the end the picture desk got so desperate that they agreed to come and photograph us a couple of weeks later and 200 miles away from home - in the Lake District.

As we shivered in sub-zero temperatures and tried to look as though we were all basking in the Provencal sun, N hissed at me.

“This is weird,” he said.

“Why?” I whispered.

“I can’t remember the four of us ever having our photograph taken together before.”

Hacks are seething at Coleen McLoughlin daring to give her occupation as “journalist” when her wedding banns were posted at Crewe register office. “How many doorsteps has she been on?” asked seasoned newspaper commentator Roy Greenslade, who also pointed out that Coleen's main journalistic claim to fame is a column in Closer magazine called Welcome to My World.

I’m currently helping a friend update her book on the art of interviewing and we’ve both come to the conclusion that it's an awful lot harder than it looks. One of my favourite interviewing stories comes from John Sergeant, ITN’s former political editor. He once revealed that his pet hate was clever-clogs newsreaders who ask reporters on the spot completely unanswerable questions.

“What’s in the mind of Mikhail Gorbachev?” was one query that drove him bonkers.

Like the consummate professional, Sergeant did his very best to answer the question. But wouldn’t it be satisfying if once in a while the TV reporter snapped back: “You stupid twit. How the bloody hell should I know?”

Looking back, I’m not totally sure why we left London in the first place. I think the main reason was that my husband felt hemmed in by the tower blocks, south London traffic and 24-hour noise and longed to see wide open spaces when he woke up. The tiny, litter-strewn park where we took baby L for walks at weekends depressed him and the final straw came when a car was set on fire in the scruffy mews behind our house. Within a few months we’d upped and left the city for the wilds of the Lancashire moors.

But now L and N are teenagers talking about what they’re going to do when they leave home I’m making plans too. I can’t believe I’m writing this but I’ve got a secret yearning for my old London life. The theatre, exhibitions at Tate Modern and catching up with my more sensible friends who stayed put in the capital. I dream of life in a minimalist top-floor flat – with L and N popping in whenever they can. Am I completely mad?

Quite a few friends have swapped careers in recent years – some to fit in with the ridiculously-long school holidays, others because they were bored to tears with their jobs and longed to try something else. One ditched work at a travel company to train as a primary school teacher, another swapped nursing to work in IT and a third left journalism to start an interiors business.

When L and N were little I nearly joined them. I tried my hand at teaching for a few months but soon realised I was utterly useless and scuttled straight back to journalism in double quick time. I’ve been working flat out as a journalist ever since, writing and editing for a string of different publications and can’t imagine how I ever countenanced doing anything else.

But with doom and gloom about readers deserting newspapers and turning to the internet instead, journalism is an increasingly precarious business to be in. I’ve just read a report saying regional newspaper company Archant plans to axe some of its sub-editors and replace them with non-journalists. In future a group of workers called “advertising designers” – who’ll be paid £7,500 less than the highly-trained subs – will design the newspaper pages. Meanwhile news reporters will have to write their own headlines – never traditionally part of their job.

Getting rid of the subs sounds a terrible idea. Subs in my experience are a wise and clever lot – who’ve saved reporters like me from many a catastrophic blunder over the years and newspapers would be all the poorer without them.

The only thing that I am envious of in Archant’s new regime though is the chance to write my own headlines. I now have to create punchy headlines for some of the publications I edit and it’s my favourite part of the job. It may look easy but summing up your story in a few succinct, sassy words is an awful lot harder than it looks... Long live the subs!

The response to TV psychologist Dr Tanya Byron’s report on child internet safety has been overwhelmingly positive. I’m not surprised. Her calls for a national strategy involving better self-regulation and education and improved classification of video games exude good sense.

When I interviewed her a couple of years back I was struck by her wisdom. She admitted that bringing up children and preparing them for life in the modern world is tough. She also told me that she lets her own two children watch TV, use the internet and eat sweets – but, and this is the crucial bit, in moderation and under strict supervision.

“You can’t do parenting by numbers,” she said. “Parenting is about finding what works for you and your child. Routine is important but you’ve got to be flexible too. I really worry about the amount of time parents have for kids. It’s so important to relax and spend time with them.”

A particular bugbear of mine is the way lots of parenting experts drone on about the wonders of putting stars and smiley stickers on charts to reward children’s good behaviour. When I told Tanya how L and N refused pointblank to go along with this idea when they were little she was honest enough to admit they aren't necessarily the answer.

“The big error in parenting is that we give too much attention to the behaviour we don’t want and not enough to the behaviour we do,” she said. “Sticker charts are very good for getting parents to focus on specific activities for specific periods of time. But to be honest I don’t think I’ve ever done sticker charts with my kids. They once did a grumpy Mummy, nice Mummy sticker chart for me though – only I stole the stickers and stuck all the smiley ones on.”

Phew - that made me feel an awful lot better...

A London teacher says parental discipline is so lacking these days that some children are "unteachable." She was left with cuts and bruises after a pupil assaulted her in class and now she's scared to confront misbehaviour in case she gets attacked again.

With newspapers reporting that some school corridors have become virtual no-go zones while others have brought in their police officers, CCTV and even airport-style scanners to make sure pupils aren't carrying knives, I reckon teachers should get far more appreciation for the tough job they do. When I tried teaching at an FE college one of the first things I learned was what to do if students were drunk, abusive or even pulled a knife in my lesson. And no, the answer wasn't "run for it."

I quickly found that teaching isn’t half as easy as it looks. You can’t just stand at the front and lecture (“chalk and talk,” as teachers call it) – or you’ll bore your students to tears. You have to devise interesting lessons, keep the students’ attention and ensure they actually learn something along the way. Looking back, I’m not sure I taught my lot much at all. One student fell asleep virtually every lesson, others attempted to chat and text when I wasn’t looking and as for handing their work on time – sorry, it rarely happened.

But then again, I never got attacked for my efforts. The trickiest thing that happened was a student who whizzed a skateboard up and down the classroom floor. Very tame – but pretty irritating all the same.

Some people turn their noses up at literary festivals but I love them. My favourite is the King’s Sutton Literary Festival, held every spring in a pretty Oxfordshire village. It’s organised by volunteers, takes place in the super-smart village hall and all the proceeds go to the church restoration fund.

This year’s festival was a triumph, with an eclectic mix of speakers, packed audiences, homemade cakes and a fantastic second-hand book sale. Admittedly 13-year-old N was a bit sceptical when I told him I’d booked us both tickets to hear a Daily Telegraph foreign correspondent talk about Africa and an octogenarian writer give his views on everything from practising at the Bar to his sneaking fondness for Cherie Blair – but he’s a kind boy and he agreed to keep me company.

N turned out to be enthralled by Tim Butcher, who spoke about his riveting new book, Blood River, and then by John Mortimer, who began by talking about his latest Rumpole yarn and then veered off to recount tales of Harold Wilson’s jollity, his memories of Laurence Olivier playing his dad in A Voyage Round My Father and the fact that QCs keep their silk stockings up by wearing suspender belts designed for outsized hospital matrons. There were one or two more risqué jokes along the way too – and yes, I know I’m probably fooling myself when I reckon N didn’t get the gist...

My lovely 16-year-old daughter L has always been way ahead of her time. She tipped her friends off about the Arctic Monkeys months before anyone else had heard of them and now she’s intensely fed up that the rest of the world has finally caught up with Lightspeed Champion.

She was a surprisingly tricky baby – refusing point-blank to ever have a nap during the day, insisting on being carried upright so she could always see what was going on around her and wide awake and ready to party most nights. Bleary-eyed and exhausted at keeping up with her, I eventually came to the conclusion that she simply found being a baby boring. The minute she started walking and talking she was as happy as Larry.

The same thing is happening now she’s in her mid-teens. She’s set up our computer network, designed my website, frequently acts as a maths consultant to her cousin’s homework queries and can cook supper for four without batting an eyelid. She’s fiercely independent in other words and longing for the day when she goes off to university. The only problem is that there are the dreaded GCSEs and A levels to get through first...

At 13 N’s had more than enough time to get used to the notion of school – but he’s still not that keen on the idea. He’d far rather be whizzing about on his mountain-board or splashing through puddles on his bike than learning about the Tudors and Stuarts and poring over algebra problems.

A report published today reveals that children in England start academic lessons earlier and sit more tests than their European counterparts – but still perform no better as a result.

A primary school teacher friend has been saying this for years. She reckons school is especially difficult for boys between four and six. They hate sitting still for long stretches, loathe colouring in worksheets and would far rather be in the playground. She always makes sure her lot get plenty of time outdoors. Even on rainy days she sticks on her coat at the small Lancashire primary where she teaches and everyone goes outside for 20 minutes to run off steam.

N would simply love it!

It’s a freezing cold January day – the sort of day when you want to light the wood-burning stove and lie on the sofa reading the papers and drinking endless cups of tea.

Except that’s not what happened at all. N and I were up at the crack of dawn to drive 40 miles to the other side of the M1, where I spent the day running up and down a muddy river bank and he spent the day rowing up and down the water with his teenage pals.

The event was the rowing club’s annual head of the river (why they have it in January, I don’t know!)

N, I’m proud to say, rowed his socks off. He’s now got aching limbs, blistered hands and a silver tankard for his efforts. For my part, I can say that all that running, yelling, hauling boats in and out of the water, handing over sustaining ham and tomato rolls, buying energy drinks etc was completely worthwhile.

Hooray for Jack Holsgrove, the unwavering 86-year-old who refuses to give into the property developers and sell the home he loves.

The pensioner bought his 1930s beachside house in sought-after Sandbanks more than 30 years ago for the princely sum of £60,000. Just along the coast from Bournemouth, it’s got stunning views across Poole Bay and to the Purbeck Hills beyond.

In recent years he’s been offered more than £10 million for it – but refuses pointblank to budge.

“Why should I ever want to sell and move somewhere else?” says Jack. “No amount of money could buy that view again.”

If I had a house at Sandbanks I wouldn’t move either. We lived there for six months when I was 11 and it was completely glorious. Our garden backed straight on to the beach and me and my sister spent hours building sandcastles on the shore, skimming stones and leaping into the waves. We could see the sea from our bedroom and watch dinghies tack back and forth as we did our homework.

Our house was an ordinary-looking white-washed bungalow called Flintshore – it hit the headlines last year when it went on the market for a cool £4 million – but sadly it was only a winter let while we looked for a house to buy.

When Easter came and the summer rental season burst forth,  our short, blissful sojourn at Flintshore was over.

The only event that’s enlivened the week so far has been the New Hampshire primary – the pollsters who got the result so spectacularly wrong, the snowy scenes that 13-year-old N yearns for, the enigmatic Hillary Clinton and the question of did she or didn’t she cry? I’m really bothered about her name too. Why, when she used to be called Hillary Rodham, did she ditch the name she was born with?

I’ve had loads of trouble with my own name over the years but it’s mine and, for better or worse, I’ve stuck with it. I’m mystified by why so many women take their husband’s names when they get married. Maybe it’s just me but it seems weird to think of waking up one morning and finding that you’ve turned into someone else.

I’ve always been rubbish at New Year’s resolutions – so rubbish that I’ve usually forgotten what they even are by Twelfth Night, let alone come close to keeping any of them.

But a Christmas letter from a friend has put me to complete shame. Approaching 50 this year, she’s decided to mark the event by lining up 50 inspiring projects. They have to be “specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timed” – and range from learning how to make marshmallows and parallel park to seeing the Bayeux Tapestry and visiting Argentina.

I've failed to come up with 50 projects to get cracking on but inspired by Miranda’s example, I’ve assembled ten. And at least my blog will help me remember what they actually are for a change. L and N are doubtful I’ll manage to keep even one of them but I’m determined to prove them wrong – so here goes.

1.    Give up alcohol for January – read more about my battle on www.easylivingmagazine.co.uk/blog

2.    Make at least two rooms of my tumbledown farmhouse in the South of France habitable – could be tricky when the place has only got half a roof.

3.    Don’t just talk about writing my new novel – actually do it.

4.    Don’t shout at 16-year-old L when she won’t get out of bed in the morning.

5.    Don’t shout at 13-year-old N when he leaves his bedroom in a complete tip.

6.    Learn how the wireless network works.

7.    Go for a long country walk at least once a week.

8.    Use every vegetable in my weekly organic box – I’m always stumped by the beetroot and chard.

9.    Declutter, declutter, declutter.

10.  Don’t leave next year’s tax return till January 2009.

The tree is up (at an unintentionally jaunty angle), the cards have all been sent (I think!) and I’m still trying to find the Christmas presents I’ve been hiding for weeks from eagle-eyed teenagers L and N.

There’s sure to be something I’ve forgotten to do but by Christmas Eve it’s too late to worry – so at this stage all I can do is to thank you for reading my blog in 2007 and wish everyone a happy Christmas and wonderful New Year. See you bright and early in 2008...

Schools Secretary Ed Balls’ declaration that the newly-reunited Spice Girls are an inspiration to young girls is utterly mystifying. And depressing.

Apart from Mel C, who can actually sing and seems to have more common sense than the other four put together, they seem vacuous, bland and obsessed with all the things in life that don’t matter. I couldn’t believe what I was reading when Posh said she was thrilled by her most dedicated fans bursting into tears or fainting at the sight of her.

There are thousands of fantastic role models for young girls – and the Spice Girls aren’t among them. Take businesswomen like Martha Lane Fox and SpaceNK founder Nicky Kinnaird, for instance, or writers like JK Rowling and Jacqueline Wilson. Even the stunning supermodel Sophie Dahl isn’t just a pretty face – her first full-length novel Playing with the Grown-Ups is enchanting.

My lovely teenager, L, is 16 in two days time and even though she remembers the Spice Girls from the first time round, there’s no way she and her friends would cite them as role models. Kate Nash, maybe, or Kianna Alarid from Tilly and the Wall – but Posh and her gang? No way.

Impressive, but bonkers. That was the general verdict  on the news that A and his two pals had completed their 50-mile walk through the Oxfordshire countryside in a mind-boggling 20 hours.

He stumbled home at dawn, looking like death, unable to speak and unlikely to ever face eating a ham sandwich or Pret muesli bar, his staple foods on the trek, ever again.

The rest of us, by comparison, had it easy. While A trudged through boggy fields, howling winds and torrential rain, we were sitting happily at the National Theatre, utterly transfixed by the sensational War Horse. Thirteen-year-old N had arrived hotfoot and muddy from a school rugby match and was highly sceptical about the trip at first. But after two and a half hours of watching full-size equine puppets canter across the stage he was entranced. “Wow,” he said over and over again. “That was brilliant, wasn’t it?” When I didn’t say anything he glanced at me. “Why are you crying?” he demanded.

Oh dear.  I’d turned into the most embarrassing mother in the world yet again. But the relief at thoroughbred Joey being reunited with his young owner Albert at the end of the First World War had me in floods all the way back to the tube.

When L and I returned empty-handed from last year’s Secret exhibition at the Royal College of Art (see earlier blog) we vowed to return in 2007.

And that’s exactly what we did at the weekend – with 13-year-old N in tow too this time.

RCA Secret was launched back in 1994 and is now an annual event. Each year hundreds of artists, from penniless students to the likes of Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst, create a one-off work of art on a postcard. The public can then buy one of the 2,300 cards on display for £40. The catch is that you don’t know who painted your card till you’ve handed over your money.

Last year we queued for three and a half hours and failed to buy anything. So this time we set the alarm for the crack of dawn and arrived at 6.30am. Big mistake. By the time we got to Kensington Gore the queue was even longer than last year. Some intrepid art fans had pitched sub-arctic style tents on the pavement outside and rumours were flying around in the darkness that they’d been there for three days.

We thought we were well-equipped for the wait with coffee, croissants, iPods and lots of layers of clothing but our efforts paled into insignificance next to the other queuers, most of whom seemed to have sleeping bags, blankets, chairs and ski gear.

When the queue hadn’t moved an inch after 90 minutes N whispered in my ear. “Shall we not bother?” he said. Freezing cold and fed-up, I agreed with alacrity and turned to leave. But L wasn’t having any of it. “Don’t be so feeble,” she told us firmly.

It was an agonising five hours till we got to the front of the queue. By the time we got inside the RCA building we were so numb with cold we could barely speak, let alone make any sense. And just like last year, when we made it to the basement saleroom virtually all the cards we liked had gone. Electronic score boards flashed green for cards that were still available, red for ones that had sold.

Remembering last year’s debacle, when my final choice turned red as I stepped up to the sales desk, I gave up looking. L was made of sterner stuff. She gave us a running commentary as we inched closer and closer to the front. “There’s one of your choices and one of mine – but N’s have all gone,” she told us cheerily.

“Numbers 113 and 1898,” she told the saleswoman, when we finally made it to the front. And guess what? They were still there!

“You were right to make us wait,” I said as we wearily made our way out, clutching our postcards. “But I’m not coming again next year.”

“Nor am I,” said N.

“Well, I am,” said his big sister.

See http://dams.rca.ac.uk/res/sites/RCA_Secret/index.html

Mid-November shouldn’t be this cold. The grey, misty days feel more like February – apart from the fact that it’s dark when L and I leave for the school bus at 7am and even darker when I meet her off it at 5.20pm. Right now I’m sitting huddled at my office desk, wearing three jumpers and sipping a constant stream of Earl Grey to keep warm. The battered old heater I bought in a York hardware store as a student is blowing hot air at my feet but I still can’t get away from the fact that it’s blooming freezing.

The world outside my window looks drab and uninviting so it’s even more of a treat than usual to escape to Carluccio’s to meet Laurence, the daughter of a French friend, who’s doing a language course over here. As soon as we get through the door we’re thrust into a festive paradise, complete with long, stylish tables, smiling waiters and scarlet, blue and orange-wrapped presents dangling from the ceiling. After a glass of wine, a plate of pasta, two hours of catching up on Laurence’s news and even a bit of Carluccio’s Christmas shopping, I emerge into the chilly afternoon air with a spring in my step.

Bright and early every Monday morning a bright yellow van draws up outside our house.

The driver deposits a cardboard box full of organic fruit and vegetables outside the front door, collects last week’s empty container and drives off in his bio-fuelled lorry – leaving me to untie the string, open the box and discover the delights in store this week. The contents are a treat – from aubergines and sweet potatoes to gorgeous clementines and pears – and if customers are stuck for inspiration on what to cook, a recipe sheet is tucked inside the box too.

My Abel and Cole order always gets the week off to a great start but up until now I didn’t know anything about the company’s inspiring co-founder. Keith Abel launched his organic food deliveries in 1991. He now employs 300 staff, supplies organic food to more than 20,000 homes in Greater London alone and has an annual turnover of nearly £20 million. But as a thrusting entrepreneur, he’s far from typical. A feature in The Times says he’s got a reputation for “fairness, passion, integrity and warmth.” Apparently he not only makes a point of sitting down for lunch with staff in the works canteen but encourages everyone to cook for each other using organic ingredients provided by the company.

He’s a great example of an entrepreneur who’s stayed true to his original principles and beliefs. Would-be tycoons – please take note.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!

The ear-piercing shriek from the top floor reverberated right through our tall, narrow house. It was 10pm and we’d just got back from L’s parents’ evening. Her teachers had said lovely things about her, we’d had a delicious family supper in Oxford and everyone was happily on their way to bed.

We rushed upstairs in panic, wondering what on earth had happened. When we burst into L’s room with a flourish my teenage daughter was jabbing at the air with her hand and pointing hysterically at her curtains.

“What on earth’s the matter?” I asked.

“There's a ladybird invasion,” stuttered L. I looked closer – and sure enough there was. The tiny spotted creatures were all over the place, clinging to the curtains in a neat army-like formation, crawling over the window and flying through the air with the greatest of ease.

“I’m not sleeping here,” said L firmly. She grabbed hold of her mattress, duvet and pillow and dragged them manfully down to the next floor.

Four days later nothing has changed. She’s still camping on the floor below and refusing to go back to her room. We’ve tried putting turmeric on the window frame (I spotted the suggestion on Google and it hasn’t made the slightest difference) and A’s sealed the window with an ugly sheet of polythene, convinced it will keep the annoying orange things out.

If anyone’s got any advice I’d love to hear it!

The news that the Guardian columnist Dina Rabinovitch died today at the age of 44 stopped me in my tracks.

It was only this time last week I was reading her brave piece about how it felt to be terminally ill with breast cancer and be the mother of young children, marvelling at her wisdom and lack of self-pity and entreating everyone to read it.

She wrote dryly of her irritation with doctors who told her to take each day as it comes. "In our forty-something world,” she wrote, “with kids who need packed lunches and walking to school (on days when I may not be able to get out of bed, my husband might have an 8am meeting, and all the older children have morning exams), not to mention the not yet extinct notion of a career, what exactly does that instruction mean, I ponder? Because, honestly, what works as a guideline for a Buddhist monk doesn't make tuna sandwiches on days when you can't face food.”

Dina wrote a book called Take Off Your Party Dress: When Life's Too Busy for Breast Cancer, based on her Guardian columns, and a blog, Take Off Your Running Shoes, to raise money to expand the cancer research team at London's Mount Vernon Cancer Centre. It now stands at an amazing £68,000 and is rising fast.

Why are we so addicted to surveys? The papers are full of them – and the crazier they sound the more column inches they get.

Today’s batch is as eclectic as ever. One says women control the purse strings, another claims most over-60s prefer to work rather than retire and a third reports that short people complain more about their health than lofty types. Oh, and if that wasn’t enough, most new mums reckon the first year of motherhood is the loneliest in their lives. Actually, that’s not all they’re moaning about. A third say they spend all day alone, a quarter say their relationship with their partner is rubbish and two-thirds whinge that they feel cut off from normal life.

Their discontent makes irritating reading. Two weeks after L was born nearly 16 years ago my husband started a new job in Germany and was away from home every Monday to Friday for a year and a half. My mum and my sister worked full-time so they weren’t around and L was a very wide-awake baby who slept for five hours at night if I was lucky – and never in the daytime at all. Her sleeping was so dire that my South London GP referred us to a sleep clinic but that didn’t do any good either. It was years and years before L changed her mind and decided she liked sleeping. The irony is that these days she’d happily doze till lunchtime every weekend if she could.

But despite the solitude and profound lack of sleep I wouldn’t swap those days for anything. L laughs when I tell her about the endless nights of playing soporific Enya tracks to her and about the way I used to climb into her cot and lie beside her in a desperate attempt to get her to nod off. No, looking back, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Education secretary Ed Balls declares schools should be doing more to convince teenage girls to play sport.

The impending obesity crisis is so grave that he reckons schools should scrap embarrassing gym kits and offer exciting sporting alternatives like yoga and frisbee.

Great – except lots of teachers are doing it already. Five go-ahead schools in Norfolk began tackling the problem months ago by hiring a “well-being mentor.” The mentor spends time in each school talking to 14 to 16 year old girls who have lost interest in sport and devising strategies to get them running back to the gym.

Looking back on wintery afternoons shivering on the hockey pitch without the faintest clue how to hit the ball, I can quite understand why some girls loathe school games. But letting them wear jogging trousers instead of horrible short shorts, organising single-sex PE classes and putting on activities like dance, gymnastics, trampolining and Pilates has got to help.

It’s not rocket science, is it?

Teenagers get a very bad press but I love L and N being 15 and 13. They’re great company, keep me up to date with essentials like mountain-boarding and Kate Nash and don’t need that minute-by-minute attention of their toddler years.

Actually L’s in great demand for looking after toddlers herself – especially now she’s done a Red Cross babysitting course at school. In fact she knows far more about children than I ever did – she can put an arm in a sling, prepare a bottle and knows exactly what to do if her charges’ parents return home the worst for wear. The answer? Ring her mum and dad and get them to come and collect her.

L likes looking after children (and more to the point, they think she’s great too) and she’s pretty keen on earning some cash to spend on train fares and clothes.

It’s not quite so good being the babysitter’s mum though. Last week L was asked to babysit till one-thirty on a Sunday morning and jumped at the chance. I couldn’t bring myself to go to bed before she got home so I huddled under a blanket downstairs, counting the minutes till she got back. She breezed in right on time and as fresh as a daisy, thrilled at having got the chance to watch satellite TV. Meanwhile I could hardly summon the strength to get upstairs.

“I’m finding this babysitting lark very exhausting,” I told her as she skipped happily up to her room.

It’s supposed to be the It bag of the season. The Nancy bag is designed by Smythson’s creative director Samantha Cameron, wife of the Tory party leader. It’s hand-pleated, eye-catching and capacious and the large version costs a staggering £950. 

It may be selling faster than hot cakes but I was distinctly underwhelmed when I spotted one on sale in Selfridge’s at the weekend. Celebs like Madonna and Cat Deeley clearly love it but I reckon it looks a bit like a crinkled bath cap.

The name has got people talking too. Everyone says it’s called Nancy after two famous Nancys – the writer Nancy Mitford and the designer Nancy Lancaster, who once owned Colefax and Fowler. But I’m convinced that the wonderfully glamorous Nancy Astor was probably an influence as well. She was the first woman MP to take her seat in the House of Commons and was also the grandmother of Lord Astor, Samantha Cameron’s stepfather. Years ago I interviewed Samantha’s stylish mum, Lady Astor, at a country bolthole they owned close to the Scottish Borders and an exquisite array of Edwardian plates collected by Nancy Astor hung in pride of place in the entrance hall. They looked just perfect.

There are moments in your children’s lives when you feel about 103 – and last night was one of them.

It seems no time at all since L, clad in a yellow flower-sprigged pinafore and matching hairband, clung to me as I took her into nursery school for the first time. Now she’s a sophisticated teenager in jeans, Zara jacket and Converse trainers choosing which A levels she’s going to take.

The occasion was a special evening for students at L’s school to outline what happens in the sixth form. It seems a touch on the early side considering there’s still another year (and dreade