Review: The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds

Not knowing anything about this book before I bought it, I'm afraid my shallow tendencies got the better of me and I allowed myself to be completely befuddled by the marketing.

By which I mean the mention of some award or other on the cover and, indeed, the cover itself. When it comes to books, I am an absolute sucker for embossing, gilding and general frue-frue. While a battered old paperback edition of a well-thumbed favourite has a certain charm, if I can fill my shelves with pretty, tricksy, olde worlde keepsakes, then fill them I will.

So it was the rubber that got me. Before your mind starts delving into the filthiest sewers you can conjure, let me clarify what I just said. The edition I picked up boasted a strange plasticine quality to its cover; it was literally grabby. So I bought it and attempted to read it.

It is always a warning sign when you have to 'attempt' to read anything. If you find yourself willingly distracted by other books after the first couple of chapters; if you glance at your bedside table three months later and find yourself thinking, 'oh yeah, I'd better finish that I suppose', then the book has failed to do its job.

The Quickening Maze does have some good qualities. It's short, for a start. Okay, so that's a bit unfair. It's well written, well researched and boasts plenty of descriptive flair. But Jesus Christ, it's boring. It's so boring that it has even had a knock-on effect for an internationally renowned poet (more on that later).

The central focus of the story is on the 19th century poet John Clare, who as a young man found occasion to be incarcerated in a private mental institution run by a twice-bankrupt chancer who is still pursuing his fortune. When Alfred Tennyson's brother checks in with a severe case of 'madder than a box of frogs'-ism, the unscrupulous proprietor thinks he has secured his meal ticket.

This is the most interesting part of the whole story, sadly it is also the least featured. For the rest of this mercifully brief novel, we have to endure the asylum owner's unattractive daughter's attempts to get laid and the increasingly tedious woodland ramblings of schizoid Clare. I got so bored that, when I spotted a volume of poems by the unfortunate Clare in a bookshop today, I thought, 'no thanks pal, your lyrical tidbits can go untasted in this household'.

Which is completely unfair on poor old Clare, so I suggest his ghost comes back and haunts Foulds to within an inch of his life. Don't get me wrong, the guy is a talented writer who clearly knows how to string a sentence together. But a gripping story seems to have eluded him on this occasion. Maybe he should have thrown in a car chase. Or two.

Review: Great Apes by Will Self

I find Will Self to be an enviably gifted and creative writer, but to date I have only experienced his work in small doses.

I have now read three of his novels and one collection of short stories, but what I mean by 'small doses' is that, unlike some writers, I have not read one of his books and then been immediately compelled to run out and buy more. The reason for this is not because I didn't enjoy the experience, but because Self's mind is a place where one can only spend a limited amount of time before one starts wondering just which way is up.

Self is somebody who deals in Big Ideas - or High Concepts, as the film industry would call them - and, generally speaking, his stories do not play out at the bus stop, in the office or down the park. Or at least they do, but in wildly different and mind-bendingly surreal versions of the world in which those locations are usually found.

In The Butt, he sent a hapless tourist on a lengthy pilgrimage of atonement after illegally dropping a fag butt in a bizarre distortion of, I think, Australia. In his story collection, Liver, he spent a lot of time painting a drearily mundane and realistic picture of washed-up winos inhabiting a grotty London wine bar, only to introduce alien visitation into the murky cocktail. And in The Book of Dave, Christ only knows what was going on.

I don't know if Self was simply born with a brain capable of tremendous leaps of imagination and distortion, or whether he created this ability through his well-publicised adventures with illegal substances. Perhaps it was a combination of the two. But with Great Apes he finds yet another way to turn reality on its head by imagining a Planet of the Apes-style nightmare.

Druggie artist Simon Dykes is on the brink of opening a new exhibition and seems to have found some sort of sex-fuelled happiness with a girlfriend, even though the loss of his ex-wife and young sons clearly still troubles him. The animal fornication he enjoys with the nubile Sarah becomes a little too literal when he wakes one morning to find that Sarah has turned into a chimpanzee. And she's not the only one.

Eschewing the predictable movie-style approach that other novelists might have chosen, such as throwing Simon straight into chimp society with comic results, Self presents a grindingly realistic take on what would probably happen in that situation - Simon goes absolutely ape-shit. Or human-shit, as his baffled monkey pals term his maddening distress. Carted off to a mental ward before being handed over to an eminent psychologist with dubious motives, Simon struggles to comprehend the profusion of short furry legs, exposed arses and copious public shagging.

Worst of all, no one around him can understand his confusion. To the chimps, Simon has always been one of them. All the same characters remain in his life, just in simian form. His exhibition is still going ahead, famous people are still famous and the history of civilisation is unchanged, except that it has all been transposed onto a different species of primate. Buildings, cars, cities - all is unchanged, apart from being just that tiny bit smaller.

The quest to find out which one of Simon's realities is the delusion and which is the truth provides plenty of opportunities for humour and questions about the nature of madness. I found Great Apes easier and quicker to read than his other books, probably partly fuelled by the desire to find out the answer myself. But if you're looking for a simple solution, you might just be disappointed...

Review: Dark Matter by Michelle Paver

As I am sadly no longer a child, I have not read any of Michelle Paver's other books, but apparently they are a big hit among the younger readership.

And on the evidence of her new adult novel, Dark Matter, I am not remotely surprised.

Because I don't think it would be too presumptuous to suggest that this book might become something of a modern classic. I absolutely loved it, for a number of reasons and I do hope that Paver continues to write for older readers alongside her other work.

Showing a superb understanding of how to build tension and horror without ladling out the incidents too generously, Paver has created a story that offers just the right balance of dread, menace and possible ambiguity, while giving only the tantalising glimpses of her monster that I find more satisfying than a gore-drenched big reveal.

She presents a story that also has the right mix of research and a creative new setting that is more immediately gripping than your standard haunted house, but also keeps things very simple in a narrative sense, which is no mean feat for a writer to achieve.

Frustrated scientist Jack Miller is offered the chance to escape his boring office job in 1930s London by joining a meteorological expedition to the Arctic. Initially irritated by his upper class team mates, he begins to warm to one of them and the adventure starts to look like the life-changing opportunity Miller has been looking for.

But a series of accidents and problems begins to shrink the team before they even arrive at their destination, ending up with Miller being forced to spend several weeks alone at the isolated cabin while his two remaining colleagues go back to civilisation for medical treatment. By this time, the sun has set for the last time on the Arctic winter and Miller faces four months of darkness before it will rise again - worse still, the failing of the light seems to have roused another resident of the frozen landscape.

No ghost story is complete without the possible suspicion over the narrator's sanity and Dark Matter messes with the reader's mind just as effectively as the ghostly apparition messes with Miller's. There is also a really nice subtext to it which is brave and unusual, giving this apparently simple tale a bit of depth that really lifts it above the norm.

Paver is clearly not a one-trick pony who has mastered the art of pleasing children. She is a genuinely talented all-rounder and I very much look forward to her next literary outing.

Review: The Small Hand by Susan Hill

The Woman in Black is one of my favourite books and it appears to be universally popular, spawning not only a long-running stage production but also a new film, due to star Harry Potter poppet, Daniel Radcliffe.

I suppose the trouble with having a massively successful and respected hit is that you are always going to spend the rest of your life trying to repeat it. Hill is a hugely gifted writer and all of her books that I have read have entertained me greatly, so I do not suggest for a moment that they are not good reads in their own right. But the ghost story is a genre in which it is notoriously hard to hit the right buttons and when you have pulled off a near perfect execution once, it might not be easy to remember the combination a second time.

Two of Hill's other books, The Man in the Picture and The Mist in the Mirror, are decent enough ghost stories but I found they completely lacked the chill factor that The Woman in Black brings in bucketloads. So I came to The Small Hand with only middling expectations.

Beautifully bound in an embossed jacket, this book is a very attractive addition to any collection and I am a sucker for a book that looks and feels divine. Funnily enough though, the lovely cover does add something not only to the reading experience, but to the story itself. This very short novel follows the adventure of Adam Snow, a dealer in antiquarian books and the luxurious feel of the cover and the stylish font seem to add credence to his world, as if the reader might have picked up one of Snow's own treasures.

Stumbling across a derelict house in deepest Sussex one day, Snow explores the overgrown garden and is considerably alarmed when he feels the unmistakeable sensation of a small child's hand softly gripping his own. The experience haunts him and understandably makes him want to find out more about the garden's ghostly resident. But as time goes on, the small hand becomes less gentle and appears to reveal a malevolent intent.

Set in the present day, The Small Hand nevertheless manages to convey the sense of timelessness and 'other worldliness' at which Hill excels. I suppose not all ghost stories have to be terrifying to succeed and there is certainly a disconcerting atmosphere to the book. But unfortunately I just didn't find it scary. It just didn't touch those magic buttons that leave you unsettled, creeped out or revisited by certain images when you are alone at night.

For me, the mark of a great ghost story is that at some point in the future, you kind of wish you hadn't read it. And sadly The Small Hand leaves me untroubled.

Review: Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters

Anyone who has ever read any of my other reviews of Sarah Waters' books will have already heard about - and been immeasurably bored by - my enduring admiration for her work.

They will also be familiar with my mixed relationship with said work, so I won't rehash it again. Suffice to say, Waters' debut novel was the last one I came to and it has stirred up rather heated debate in the little book group in my heart.

It is no surprise that critics and readers alike were gripped and excited by this new writer, who showed a brilliant ability to characterise, to create a sense of place and time, to sprawl her characters' stories across many settings and situations, just as real life itself tends to spew all over the place, rather than just chunter along nicely on a pre-set, pre-destined course.

And for that reason, I liked Tipping the Velvet very much. Not having seen the TV adaptation, the storyline had not already been spoiled for me and I enjoyed the way in which the central character Nancy makes her way from naive starstruck oyster girl, to rent boy and decadent 'tom', as she tries to find her true identity in Victorian London.

Everybody knows that Tipping the Velvet is absolutely bursting with girl-on-girl action and I can confirm that the adaptation was no exaggeration of the book. The central section in particular is so full of heaving bosoms, damp 'spendings' and choice terms for a lady's private parts that I became convinced a crusty copy of this book must be tucked under the mattress of every teenage boy in the land. It's so full-on that it actually becomes boring and loses its titillation factor, but I suspect even that is a purposeful and clever technique employed by the author.

At the beginning of her story, Nancy is young, inexperienced and frightened by her burgeoning feelings for her friend Kitty and the tentative, gentle sex reflects that. Later on, betrayed and jaded by the world, Nancy almost loses herself in the abandon of sex as a way of life, indeed, a way of earning a living. If the reader is bored with the constant depravity, then Nancy most certainly is and this pulls the role of physical gratification back into perspective for both character and reader.

All in all, a highly entertaining read, just don't give it to your gran for Christmas.

Review: Stone in a Landslide by Maria Barbal

The phrase ‘in a nutshell’ could have been invented to describe Maria Barbal’s short and occasionally sweet story.

Although the book is now in its 50th edition, this is the first time Stone in a Landslide has been translated into English. Described as the quintessential Catalan modern classic, the very short novel is an extraordinary exercise in brevity.

Filling just over 100 pages, Barbal proves that an economic use of the right words can tell a story just as well as an essay 10 times as
long. Divided into crisp chapters – many of which are no more than a few paragraphs – the book takes readers on a whistle-stop tour through a poor Spanish woman’s life, but a tour which feels as comprehensive as any epic novel.

When she is 13 years old, Conxa leaves her large family and is sent to work for her childless aunt and uncle. Although her youth is comprised of hardship and relentless work, she begins to feel happy in her new home and eventually meets Jaume, a charming young man who makes her heart sing. But the intervention of the Spanish Civil War will have far-reaching consequences for Conxa and her family.

With just a few lines, I was transported from a child’s birth to her teenage years, yet I was left with a fully rounded picture of the young woman she has become. With the turning of a few pages, I saw a feisty matriarch become a ‘shrivelled sparrow’ as age catches up with her and I felt like I hadn’t missed a moment of her long life.

Conxa’s story is not always a happy one and as the years pass, the reader can’t help pondering some of life’s sadder truths. But this is a wonderful achievement and a must-read for anyone with an interest in the potential of language.

Review: The Anatomy of Ghosts by Andrew Taylor

Set in the claustrophobic and rather grimy atmosphere of 18th
century Cambridge, this book is deceptively entertaining.

With many historical novels, the sheer weight of background research can bog down
the story, as the author heaps their hard-won period detail onto the page. Determined to show that no stone has gone unturned, they can allow authentic ambience to suffocate the characters and alienate the readers. Andrew Taylor’s murder mystery, however, does not fall into that trap.

There can be no denying that the book heaves with atmosphere – one can practically
smell the stench as characters make their way through dingy back alleys or deal with overflowing chamber pots. For all the delicate niceties of college life and
etiquette, the book does not shy away from the more stomach-churning elements of life in Georgian England. Pretty saucy in places too, The Anatomy of Ghosts takes the reader on a rather fun journey into a disturbing and, possibly, supernatural mystery.

Having lost his son to the River Thames, John Holdsworth is disgusted to see how a
medium gains control over his distraught wife. In response, he writes The Anatomy of Ghosts, a book which aims to destroy the idea that spectres exist.

Unable to get over her grief, his wife is driven to suicide and the formerly prosperous bookseller faces a grim future. So when he receives a proposition to catalogue a dead Bishop’s library in Cambridge, it looks like his fortunes are taking a turn for the better. But Holdsworth soon finds that the Bishop’s
widow has an alternative mission for him.

After declaring that he has seen the ghost of a friend’s dead wife, her son Frank has been taken to a mental hospital. The mother is desperate for Holdsworth to
disprove the existence of the ‘ghost’ and return her son to health. Holdsworth’s investigations lead him into Jerusalem College’s murky world of politics and privileged young men, resulting in a brush with the brutal Holy Ghost Club and the enigmatic Elinor Carbury.

Sizzling with sexual tension, The Anatomy of Ghosts is a real page-turner with a difference. It feels worthy and intelligent without being dull and, based on my first encounter with his work, I will be heading straight to the bookshop to pick up more of Taylor’s novels.

Review: Affinity by Sarah Waters

Although I was aware of Sarah Waters' existence for many years before reading her work for the first time, I had never really been tempted to pick up her books because I was mainly familiar with the TV adaptations of her stories. I say 'familiar' but I hadn't actually watched them. Obviously, the screening of Tipping the Velvet several years ago could only have failed to enter your consciousness if you were living on the moon - lesbian Victorian action? Come on!!! - but I'm afraid I didn't tune in.

Until fairly recently, I probably had Waters pegged as a Catherine Cookson-style author, a peddler of bodice-busting potboilers and that genre holds absolutely nothing of interest for me as a reader. It was only when I picked up Waters' latest work, The Little Stranger, that I realised my mistake. It immediately became one of my all-time favourite novels and I vowed to read the rest of her canon as a matter of urgency. After reading The Night Watch, I was utterly converted and I am pleased to say I now have her complete five books on my shelf (in alphabetical order, natch).

Since then I have read her books in, I believe, reverse chronological order. And funnily enough, I think my affection for them diminishes slightly in accordance with that. Don't get me wrong, no matter what aspects of her stories I might find unsuited to my personal taste, there can be no denying that Waters is a superb storyteller who keeps you hooked until the very last page. But I enjoyed Fingersmith slightly less than The Night Watch and Affinity is probably on a similar level for me.

Compared with the complex narrative weaving Waters employs in The Night Watch - which, despite my enormous regard for The Little Stranger, I think is probably her finest work to date - Affinity is a simple enough tale. A troubled middle class woman tries to atone for a past mistake by becoming a Lady Visitor at London's forbidding Millbank Prison, where she attempts to brighten the grim days of the female prisoners within.

It is only a matter of time before her attention is captured by the enigmatic Selina Dawes, a well-known medium who was imprisoned after a young woman suffered injuries during a seance. Whether or not Dawes' talents are genuine remains to be seen, but she certainly weaves an unshakeable spell over our heroine.

Dawes' story is revealed in flashback, even as her present day relationship with her enraptured visitor advances towards its nerve-shredding climax. This is a highly effective device, as nothing is more guaranteed to keep pages turning than the promise of a secret soon to be revealed.

I liked this story better than Fingersmith, as the intentions of the main character appear purer than either of the female leads in the latter book. There was also a notable absence of sex, with Waters focusing more on the electricity between two women forbidden to touch, not just by society but by prison rules. The heroine is sympathetic and this unsatisfied longing worked better, I found, than more explicit scenes described in Waters' other books.

Although to date I have preferred Waters' post-war stories, Affinity is still a gripping and infinitely readable tale with a decent twist.

Review: Harbour by John Ajvide Lindqvist

Anyone who is a fan of vampires will be familiar with Let The Right
One In, Lindqvist’s chilling tale of a young girl who is not as she seems.

The masterful thriller was adapted into a highly acclaimed Swedish film, which has in turn undergone the obligatory Hollywood
remake. That novel was possibly the definitionof ‘dark’, yet the quality of the characters shone through and I was gripped from start to
finish. So I approached Harbour with a high level of anticipation and my expectations were met in some respects, not in others.

In terms of inventiveness, Lindqvist is not afraid to expect a certain amount of intelligence from his readers. Or at least, the ability
to pay attention. By inventing a whole new mythology, he asks readers to take a few sizeable leaps of faith and the jury is still out on whether he
has provided a soft landing. Starting with a compelling premise, he immediately captures the attention and presents a mystery which has readers’ minds working from the earliest pages.

When a young couple, Anders and Cecilia, take their daughter across the frozen harbour to visit an old lighthouse, the child inexplicably disappears into the barren landscape. Two years later, the grief-stricken couple have parted but Anders is unable to move on with his life. Battling a drink problem, he returns to the island of their torment and finds himself being slowly sucked into a terrifying mystery that tests the boundaries of human understanding.

Lindqvist regularly blends the magical into the mundane, something which achieves varying degrees of success. Although a bizarre sub-plot involving a retired magician and his intriguing pet is handled delicately, the book’s tone seems to veer from a low-key, creepy ghost story to a fully blown horror tale with
huge doses of fantasy thrown in. Personally, I preferred the quieter, dreadfilled
scenes that revealed mere glimpses of terror and I was slightly disappointed when
the story seemed to be grasping at epic solutions that didn’t really make sense. But I would always rather read novels that aim high and fall short, instead of those written to formula by authors who are afraid to explore new territory.

Whether or not you love Harbour will depend on your taste in supernatural
thrillers, but Lindqvist is definitely one of our most interesting contemporary
writers.

Two New Things I've Heard That Won't Get Out Of My Head

1 = A quote from Sir Philip Sidney:

"Who shoots at the mid-day sun, though he be sure he shall never hit the mark, yet as sure he is he shall shoot higher than who aims but at a bush."

2 = An elderly gentleman's only piece of advice to my sister on her recent hen weekend:

"If you marry your best friend, you can't go wrong."

Review: The Woman in Black at the Fortune Theatre

As my birthday treat, I was lucky enough to receive tickets for The Woman in Black in London's Covent Garden. So yesterday, I headed off into the capital with a feeling of almost unbearable anticipation.

Susan Hill's source novel is one of my favourite books and holds a warm place in my heart. I have listened to it on audio book countless times and have finally ordered a hard copy, which sounds ridiculous, but sometimes you just need to have something in your collection. Even if you never crease the spine, just knowing it is there is somehow satisfying. It is a rather silly habit of mine, to 'back up' audio books with hard copies in the way you might burn a downloaded album to CD, even though you only intend to listen to it on your iPod. But I don't suppose it is a habit I shall break any time soon.

That is why one of these electronic reader things doesn't appeal to me in the least. Aside from some of the practical issues of carting it everywhere, I feel the same way about books that some people feel about music. Some people are horrified by the iPod, because they love the sensation of CDs or vinyl in their hands and being able to see their collection laid out in shelves or racks. Personally, that doesn't trouble me as the convenience of the iPod is indisputable. But with books, things are different. For while I am an avid audio book fan, I also want to see them, touch them, smell them, turn the pages. Looking at the crisp, untouched pages of a new book fills me with excitement and anticipation of the world I might find within, in the way that a megabyte of new downloaded material could never do.

Anyway, I digress. The reason I love The Woman in Black is because it is scary. Pure and simple. It is also beautifully written and has a simplicity and brevity to it that many authors should take notes from. But it is a ghost story that actually frightens its readers and that is something surprisingly few tales in the genre seem to achieve.

The writers of yesteryear seemed to have the knack - Edgar Allen Poe, MR James, Henry James, Charles Dickens - yet with the passing of the austere Victorian era, something else seemed to die. Imagination, creativity, a sense of the gothic. Perhaps as society became more open-minded and lashings of gore became not only permitted but expected, the delicate art of restraint was lost.

Maybe that is why it is so hard to find good ghost stories written in the latter half of the 20th century. And maybe that is why Susan Hill's much-loved story is such a triumph. Because although it is undeniably frightening, it is also written with a light touch and a real sense of menace that does not rely on big shocks and jumps.

I can't give too much away about the stage production, except to say that it does lean rather more towards shocks and jumps than the book does. It is a little brasher in its treatment of the ghost, but that is not a bad thing from the perspective of the theatregoer. We wanted to be scared and we bloody well were. I can imagine it would be very hard to transmit the book's quiet, creeping sense of dread to the stage, but they have done a very good job nonetheless.

The book was kind enough to provide some very useful events and devices to the theatrical version, plus there was some inspired use of simple special effects that had the audience on the edge of its seat.

I can say that the format of the theatre show takes a bit of getting used to. Instead of a straightforward retelling of Arthur Kipps' ghostly experiences, as in the book, the show sees Kipps approach an actor for help in presenting his harrowing tale to a small audience of friends and family, in order to unburden his soul once and for all.

He is soon caught up in the actor's enthusiasm to give an out and out performance and Kipps finds himself taking on the roles of the other characters in the tale, while the actor plays the main man himself, taking his cues from Kipps' lengthy manuscript.

Although this is a clever idea that turns the story into a neat two-hander with smart use of simple props, it took a while to get off the ground and I found myself glancing at my watch early on, wondering how they were going to get through the story in two hours if they didn't get a move on. Throughout the play, I did get the occasional feeling that the story was being rushed along and felt that if I hadn't already read the book, a few incidents might not have made perfect sense to me. But my companion, who did not already know the story, assured me that it was all completely understandable for a newcomer.

My fears soon proved unfounded anyway, for although the twist wasn't exactly difficult to spot, the show was an enormously entertaining and creepy experience that I would recommend to any fans of ghost stories (if not those with a heart condition) and I was very, very glad to have seen it.

It was a shame that the two women sitting in front of me found the need to confer almost constantly throughout much of the show. I couldn't really hear their whispers, but their constant leaning in and muttering really got on my nerves, to the point where I really wanted to bash their heads together. What can people possibly find to talk about so incessantly? This is an open request to all theatregoers - just watch the bloody show and compare notes afterwards. I find it incredibly rude when audiences can't just keep their mouths shut for a couple of hours and appreciate whatever spectacle is being presented for them.

Although The Woman in Black's audience was on this occasion generally a respectful one, it still astonishes me when people are incapable of just piping down and watching. During one scene, there was a rather prolonged period of silence which was evidently put there for a good reason. Yet there came the inevitable mutters and comments from the audience, spoiling the atmosphere of tension and reviving my lifelong desire to have compulsory Arsehole Detectors installed on the door of every theatre, cinema and concert hall in the land.

Anyway, that was not the show's fault and the tiny Fortune Theatre certainly delivered a healthy punch with this gloriously scary play, now in its 21st year. I recommend that all and sundry go to see it. But if you are of a nervous disposition, take a spare pair of trousers.

Hair Today, Money Gone Tomorrow

Tonight I dragged myself down to a local salon and paid nearly £30 to get my hair chopped. And to be perfectly honest, I begrudged every penny.

Actually, I didn't begrudge the first £20 worth of it. Alright, I'd stretch to £22. But the rest of it feels like blood being sucked out of my body through the pores. Because I think the price of women's hairdressing these days is just obscene and it annoys the bejesus out of me.

What's even worse about tonight's expenditure, was that the final cost was minus a 50 per cent online discount. So the guy who basically gave me a significant trim usually charges £56 for the privilege. I wouldn't mind if I was having hugely complicated cuts done, with fringes and feathering and colours and highlights and Brazilian blowdrys and god knows what else. But I'm not. I'm essentially just having the ends cut off, for god's sake, so I think it's just extortionate.

In my late teens and early 20s, I was reasonably adventurous and got my hair chopped and changed every few months. But nowadays, because I know roughly the sort of style I want - low maintenance, no colouring, no reason for it to cost more than £20 to be maintained, if that - and because I'm fed up with the spiralling cost of getting some slack-jawed bimbo or himbo to do it, I've started to neglect my hair rather shamefully.

Which means that although I might look reasonably neat for a couple of weeks after the cut, for the remaining four or five months until my next appointment, I look like I've stuck my finger in a handy light socket while sucking on a damp flannel. So I really do need to start prioritising it, but I just refuse to be fleeced, both literally and metaphorically.

For the last couple of years, I've shuffled around the various salons in my home town, just choosing whichever company happens to have a discount voucher in the paper that week and never using the same one more than once. The annoying thing is that my lack of love for any one salon does not just come down to the eye-popping prices. I have also failed to find a single place that makes me feel remotely comfortable in the big black chair.

These cavernous places are always achingly cool and the moment the uber-trendy stylist approaches me, I feel roughly 68 years old and about as well groomed as Stig of the Dump. Nine times out of ten, they have absolutely nothing to say to me and seem to be entirely lacking in the warm social skills for which hairdressers always used to be renowned. And that is another damn good reason why I just don't enjoy getting the mop chopped anymore. Sadly, it doesn't look like tonight's experience will bring my eternal hunt for a satisfactory salon to an end.

Don't get me wrong, it wasn't terrible. But it didn't start off that well. As I swung in through the big glass doors, my heart sank - huge white box with pointless pictures on the wall? Check. Young, boho chic, absurdly coiffeured, slightly vacant assistants? Check. Me wanting to just put up with crap hair for the rest of my life rather than submit to an hour of humiliation at the hands of the Stepford Wives? Check.

To be fair, the assistant who washed my hair was nice enough and chatted to me a bit, even if her vigorous technique left me feeling like a crusty Labrador getting its yearly bath. It was just a shame that I couldn't make out what she was saying, due to that appalling Hollyoaks drawl that all 'youngsters' seem to adopt these days. But soon I didn't have to worry about not being able to understand her, as I could no longer hear her, thanks to the perforated eardrum I suffered when she turned on the hose. Still, at least that proved a distraction from the steady stream of lukewarm water that was soon gushing under my collar and pooling in my bra.

When I was finally plonked back in the stylist's chair and suffering that uncomfortable feeling of vulnerability I always get in that situation - having to stare at myself with my wet hair twisted up in a slipping turban and make-up running all over the place, feeling about as alluring as an Auschwitz shower cubicle - I saw my stylist looming up in the mirror behind me and thought for a moment he'd accidentally strayed away from a nearby graffiti workshop for juvenile delinquents. Either that, or I was on the set of Wackaday. Boasting 80s throw-back neon trainers, a baseball cap at a dubious angle and a little shoulder bag that was more redundant than Gordon Brown, he made an arresting sight.

To be quite fair, he was actually alright. Though clearly at the back of the queue when senses of humour were being handed out, he chatted amiably and agreed that silent, intimidating salons were really rather horrid. When he'd finished nibbling away with his scissors, I was pleased with the result. Or at least, no more disappointed than usual that a long-awaited trip to the hairdresser had once again failed to transform me into Angelina Jolie.

By skillfully averting my eyes from the amount while keying in my card pin number, I managed to forget - briefly - about how much I was paying this chap for delivering one of Life's more mediocre experiences. I even managed to avoid touching the hair I could feel wisping around my face as I stood there, even though both he and I knew that as soon as I was around the corner, I would be furiously running my hand through my hair to get rid of the self-conscious mannequin feeling and thus undoing all his good work.

But just as I was about to make my getaway, he asked me if I'd like to book my next appointment now, thereby saving 10 per cent on my next cut. With a cold chill I remembered that this was the £56 guy, so even with that generous discount, I'd still be expected to shell out half a ton to have about an ounce of hair removed. An amount that I was never going to pay, not in a million years. And yet, as our eyes met, I knew I couldn't refuse. It was like being asked for a second date by someone you think is okay and would be decent enough company at the cinema, say or a day trip to the zoo, but the thought of doing the horizontal tango with them makes you feel a trifle unwell.

So I booked. And of course I'm going to cancel. But that now means that I can't ever go back there to see a cheaper stylist. It would be like dating an ex's friend in their favourite pub. It would just be awkward, us glaring at each other through the multi-reflected mirrors like baleful ghosts.

So my brief encounter with that salon will have to remain just that. C'est la vie.

Review: Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada

The old saying "never judge a book by its cover" is a bit of a redundant one sometimes, I think. I realise it is supposed to apply more to people than books in the literal sense, but cover design is still pretty crucial in the publishing world. Only the classics can afford to be stacked on the shelf with just a plain cover, Penguin-style, when the title says it all.

So I can honestly say that it was the cover of Alone in Berlin that captured my attention. I had never heard of it before I spotted it in the book shop one day and I didn't buy it straightaway, but it stayed on my mind and I decided to purchase it a few weeks later.

The cover was atmospheric - a lone man almost lost in a whirl of snow amid crumbling monuments - and the font was strange. It compelled me. And the blurb on the back, promising a story about one man risking his life by daring to defy Hitler, was intriguing.

As I didn't actually bother to read the jacket notes before starting the book, I had no idea that this was not a contemporary novel. It was written in 1946, but the style and language led me to believe it might have been a 21st century creation. Learning halfway through that the story came from an author who had lived through the Second World War, rather than a modern writer who filled out the human suffering with research rather than experience, made it even more of a poignant read.

The action centres on Otto Quangel, a silent and reserved factory foreman living in 40s Berlin who has refused to join the Nazi Party, but otherwise harbours no extreme feelings towards the rise of the Third Reich. But the loss of his only son to the war and the subsequent reaction of his wife, Anna, releases something in Otto. Suddenly, this placid, self-contained man is inexpressibly angry.

His response is to start writing postcards that basically slag the Fuhrer and all he stands for, dropping them anonymously around the city. In an era when I could insult God's mother on this blog if I wanted and have the whole world see it, that might seem like a pathetic crime. But the point is that in wartime Germany, it was a crime and a capital one at that. So when Otto embarks on his quiet, gentle campaign, he is taking his life in his hands.

His aim is to start a silent revolution, envisaging his postcards being passed from hand to hand and stirring up anti-Nazi feeling that might ultimately stop the war. But the reality is very different and Otto soons finds himself the object of a slow, patient investigation by the Gestapo's creepy Inspector Esherich.

The book blurb paints Alone in Berlin as a 'cat and mouse' game between rebel and police, but although there are certainly gripping moments as Otto risks discovery, the story isn't really about that. Indeed, the novel takes some very unexpected turns and even seems to ponder on whether resistance really is futile. But particularly in the last act, Fallada manages to combine the cold realities of Nazism with a clearly unshakeable belief in the dignity and power of the individual.

The climate of fear in Germany under the Nazis is brought to life in chilling, painful detail and the reader is really made to care for these characters, making you feel a heart-stopping concern for their fate. Set against a backdrop of horrifically real fact, this fiction is an emotional yet ultimately uplifting read.

At the back of the book, there is some fascinating background detail about Hans Fallada, who by the time he was 20 had already been involved in a suicide pact. Rather obviously, he failed to die but his friend didn't and so already Fallada's life was off to a dodgy start. Although Alone in Berlin drips with venom towards the Nazis, it is interesting to read about his precarious relationship with the Third Reich as he continued to live and work in Berlin during the war and the way he explored this in his fiction.

Information Overload

It might sound like a strange criticism, but if there's one thing that annoys me about me (well, there are many things but we'll go with this one for now) it's the fact that I am just interested in too many things.

I blame my relatively late start in journalism on wanting to try out all these different career options. Although in a way I regret not going to university, I've no idea how I would have picked one subject to study. These days I could probably choose - history, since you ask - but at 18, the choices were just too mind-boggling to cope with.

I've had mad ideas about being a scientist, a horticulturalist, a zoo keeper, an administrator, and so on. And that was just as an adult. While at school, my serious career ambitions included vet, author, film director and teacher. At 15 I was dead set on being an archaeologist - by the time I actually left school just months later, I was heading for a career in TV production. I seriously flirted with applying for the police force before landing a job in animal care. Basically, I'm an annoying, flighty twat.

Anyway, all this is a very long-winded way of saying that I find an awful lot of diverse things fascinating. And normally I struggle to indulge them. Because I have been denied the chance to study my areas of interest in any formal way (though I have an Open University history course on the shelf to study at my leisure, just as soon as I finish writing that book - see, more twattery in action) I often find it difficult to even remember all the things I wanted to find out more about, let alone actually do it.

But for the last couple of weeks, I have had an opportunity. Being alone in the house has presented me with a rather unexpected source of joy and excitement. The television.

Usually, I have a mixed relationship with the television. Not only does it literally belong to my husband (I thought the one we had already was perfectly fine, but he wanted to splash out loads of money on a new one, creating an eternal rift between me and the hardware, like a fancy new dog and it's owner's partner who have never successfully bonded due to residual jealousy on both sides) but 99 per cent of the time, it is also under his minute control. The remote buttons reside in his hand and his hand alone, even when he is asleep.

Like a spoilt child presenting endless shit paintings to its doting dad, the TV throws out hour after hour, day after day of absolute crap and he swallows it whole. Dreadful American sitcoms, tedious police camera compilations, Identikit glossy US crime dramas, even high volume children's television that just makes me want to gnaw my own face off. And I increasingly walk away.

Maybe once or twice a week, I wrestle control of the remote and insist on watching an hour or two of telly, a show that I have specifically ear-marked as being of interest. But on the rare occasions when even his tolerance for utter televisual bilge has been exhausted and I am handed the remote, there is usually absolutely nothing on and I give up anyway. But on those occasions, when I am sharing sofa space with the male of the household, there is one category on the TV guide which very rarely gets a look-in unless things are desperate or I can argue a case for one particular programme - the documentaries.

For my other half has a natural disinclination towards the factual. Unless it involves real footage of a drunk clubber getting his head torn off by a police dog or gruesome images of bowel surgery, documentaries generally get the thumbs down.

But over the last fortnight, I have made a discovery. If you just turn the telly on and stick it on the History Channel all night, or National Geographic, you can have a jolly fine time. You learn stuff. You learn stuff about things you've heard of and were previously interested in. You learn stuff about things you've never heard of in your life. You learn stuff about things you'd heard of and would have considered eye-shreddingly boring, only to discover they're really rather compelling.

Just this last week, I have finally found out what became of Henry VIII's six wives. (If you've not heard, I won't spoil the surprise, but suffice to say he wasn't the catch you might imagine.) I've learned about the methods and attitude of Britain's former head executioner, Albert Pierrepoint and how long it took him from hand shake to neck break.

I've found out the theories behind the Bermuda Triangle conundrum. One of which is utter bollocks, but you'd be disappointed if a documentary about a famous mystery didn't include at least one delusional crack pot. I've learned the possible location of Hitler's bunker and heard about the moral dilemmas of his bodyguards.

I've learned about the origins and downfall of the legendary Knights Templar; I've chuntered at some smug fat git who's bagged himself 24 wives and 121 kids, all in the name of religion; I've heard about the lost pyramids of China and all the poor bastards who had to build them.

Still on the planner of recorded shows, I have two documentaries that I'm too scared to watch on my own - one about the Witch Finder's Bible and one about weird occult happenings in Mexico and Greece. Right now, I'm watching something impenetrable about Tudor tennis.

Basically what I'm saying is, when given free rein to really watch what appeals to me, I've found the telly to be far more than the steaming pile of plastic turning out stinky turds than I used to think it was.

But I fear it will not last. In a few days time, it will be back to Neighbours and Police Camera Action and CSI: Miami. Sigh. But at least me and the telly will always know that we finally bonded in secret. When the cat was away, the ultra square mice well and truly played - in educational style.

Back to the Future

Modern life is brilliant.

The internet lets you do anything at the touch of a button, from cancelling your milk order to demanding that a major celebrity loses their job because you don't like hearing the word 'fuck' on television.

Women can do what they want, even if what they want is to become Prime Minister or run a football club or get their knockers out in a shoddy tabloid - no one bats an eyelid. She can even try and be president if she wants. She can't visit a pub on her own or walk down a dark street without giving off the unspoken but apparently clarion call that she urgently wants sex and any sweaty ape will do, but if she wants to run a business empire or go into space, let the bird get on with it.

Murderers tend to get caught a bit more often these days, since the police worked out how to pick up the bits they leave behind, bits that are smaller than bloodied handkerchiefs and smoking guns.

Oppression and violence against minorities is, in theory at least, less of a problem than it was a hundred years ago, because at least the folks in charge have been persuaded to publicly say it's wrong, instead of resting their feet on their little dark man servant while delivering their speeches to Parliament.

There's loads of stuff about life in the 21st century which is really rather good.

But modern life is also, in the words of Blur, rubbish. And the reasons why it's rubbish would fill a gazillion blogs on God's own PC and even then he'd have to nip down Maplins for an extra memory stick, so let's just take it all as read.

Think of your favourite reason why modern life sucks and why it would be all so much better to live in the 40s. Got it? Right, bear that in mind while you read the next few paragraphs.

While watching a documentary the other night called Time Warp Wives, I quickly realised that I was supposed to be laughing at these women. I was supposed to find them delusional idiots and snigger at their expense. For these ladies simply did their very best to operate as if it was still 1945. One of them was a bit more with it, preferring to convince herself that she was living firmly in the 50s, but you get the gist.

I was supposed to point at their beautifully groomed hair, their vibrant make-up, their elegant and dainty clothes, their adorable kitchens - I was supposed to point and giggle and probably mutter 'sad cows' under my breath.

As they bounced primly along in the passenger seats of their Riley Elfs, polka dot cake tins in their laps and Bryl-creamed husbands at their side, I was supposed to pity or condemn them. I was supposed to feel superior, because I was capable of getting by in the real world, in a world that one of them freely admitted was 'frightening'.

But I didn't feel that way at all. I envied them. And suddenly I wanted to be a Time Warp Wife too.

And it wasn't just about the life style and the fashions and the sweet little accoutrements of 40s living. I'll be honest, although I don't fancy the war much, I'd love to have been a young woman in the 40s. All those tailored jackets and pillbox hats and frightfully nice young men in uniform. All those face compacts and silk stockings and steam trains and one pound notes and perfumed love letters.

If I could step into Brief Encounter, I probably would. So when one of the girls described her life as being like an old-time movie, I sympathised entirely. When she had to leave the past behind and go into poxy Morrisons, I didn't empathise with the gormless chavs staring at her funny clothes and laughing at this attractive, poised, dignified woman. I found myself entirely in her shoes, seeing the modern world for what it is - ugly, in every single sense.

However you look at it, these women have made a cocoon for themselves. One of the girls was only 20 and she confessed her obsession with the 40s started following the divorce of her parents, when Life seemed entirely out of her control and that speaks volumes.

A few years ago I had the great pleasure of visiting a lady who lived in a wartime warp, when she agreed to be interviewed on her obsession with the past. Sitting in her colourful kitchen and eating cake made with the powdered egg that her local Tesco ordered in specially for her, she spoke of how frightening and cold she found the 21st century. Ironically, a time when people had been bombing the arse off each other somehow seemed warmer, safer and more appealing than the world she encountered outside the safety of her sandbagged front door.

And you know what? Maybe this makes me a delusional idiot, but I completely understand. And I want to be a Time Warp Wife too.

Review: Don't Look Now & Other Stories by Daphne du Maurier

Daphne Du Maurier is widely considered to be one of our most gifted female writers. In fact, scratch that because it sounds patronising, as if women need to be sectioned off in their own area. She is widely considered to be one of our finest writers full-stop, so I have always meant to read more of her work.

The only book I’ve read until now was Rebecca, a novel which constantly makes it onto all-time greatest lists whenever masterpieces are being discussed. I was a kid when I read it, plucking the dated TV tie-in paperback from my parents’ wicker bookcase, a youthful and bewildered Joanna David gazing out from the cover. In fact, a guilty glance over my shoulder to my own bookcases has just revealed that yes, I never put it back...

Rebecca is a really great book. I was probably only about 10 or 12 when I read it and if a story about old-fashioned love and adult jealousy can enchant someone who still watches Grange Hill, it’s got something going for it.

However, I was not immediately gripped by the idea that I should seek out more of her work. And I think it is because Rebecca, however thrilling and occasionally dark, still resonates a gentility which doesn’t quite match my literary tastes. The titles of Du Maurier’s other novels – Jamaica Inn, Frenchman’s Creek – just seemed to nudge towards the twee, so she wasn’t really at the top of my must-read list.

While browsing about in the bookshop the other day, I suddenly spotted a copy of Don’t Look Now and Other Stories and knew immediately that I must have it. Never having seen the film – another highly celebrated work – all the way through, I only had a vague idea of the storyline. But with my love of paranormal fiction, I knew at once that it was a must-read.

And I wasn’t wrong. Although Don’t Look Now is the big-name striker in the team, all the other players on the pitch quietly make their own mark. From the sublimely odd and unexpected turns of the title story, to the equally bizarre A Border-Line Case, Du Maurier shows an awe-inspiring grasp of character and place.

Somehow she manages to take strange, fanciful notions and place them right into the middle of ordinary life in the most believable way. I felt a little frustration with A Border-Line Case, simply because the language and action felt almost dream-like and as if Du Maurier had become a little self-indulgent. But on the whole, these five stories were intriguing and bold, in most cases seeming to introduce ideas and characters merely to let us know they existed, with no conclusion or even real comment on them at all.

Although Don’t Look Now is her most satisfying tale, as it does at least have an ending, The Way of the Cross might be the most accomplished. In just 67 pages she paints an astonishingly vivid picture of a group of disparate tourists in Jerusalem, all suffering a series of minor calamities and for what purpose? Just as we get a grip on them all, we leave them. And that is where Du Maurier’s consummate skill and assurance really makes itself known.

The final story, The Breakthrough, left me positively gripped and desperate to know more about the psychic energy experiments of an eccentric scientist. But I guess I will never know what might have been if the story was allowed to progress, the plug pulled on that particular intrigue.

This copy of Don’t Look Now is part of the Penguin Decades series, a really beautifully presented collection with covers by Zandra Rhodes, which makes it something of a keepsake and I'd recommend seeking out these attractive editions.

I Can't Read and I Can't Write, But Don't Really Ma'er...

...cos I come from the Westcountry and I can drive a tra'or.

Yup, I hail from Devon. And although I moved away from that corner of the Earth some years ago, most of my family remain down on the homestead. Therefore, I must visit on a reasonably regular basis and this weekend was one of those occasions.

Well, I say the family remains on the homestead but that's not strictly true. I wish they did. I grew up in the middle of nowhere, an absolutely stunning, secluded spot on Dartmoor which I loved with a passion throughout my childhood. When my parents' marriage faltered, I lost the place I thought would always be there for me and my life is the poorer for it.

So I never go to Dartmoor. I simply go to Torquay where my mother and sister live and by jove, it's a mixed bag. I love seeing my family, I really do. But cripes, I loathe going to Devon, simply because I hate the journey down. People cringe at the mention of the M25 but it's a teddy bears' picnic in comparison to the A303, which can be the most soul-sapping experience any motorist could ever hope to face.

I suppose putting a six-lane expressway straight through some of our country's most beautiful rural landscapes might be counter-productive, but Christ, the A303 just takes the piss. It is the only road in the country which appears to be sponsored by Saga. Every day is a Sunday on the A303 and because it insists on remaining single carriageway for long stretches, the journey from London to Torquay can just feel like one big tail-back in the summer - the motoring equivalent of trying to crawl from John O'Groats to Lands End through a four-inch drainpipe.

It is scarcely better on the way back. By the time I edge the car back into the south east, I have the glow of little red lights permanently tattooed on my retinas and am ready to physically bludgeon to death the next person who needlessly touches their brakes. If ever I go over the edge into proper insanity, it will be on a Sunday evening on the A303, so watch out grockles.

Amid a wide selection of arsehole single lane stretches, traffic-crippling police cameras and eccentric speed restrictions, Stonehenge is the stand-out bastard. I got over Stonehenge a long time ago. Sure, it's a load of big rocks that got there years back and no one really knows how or why. Okay, it's a head-scratcher. But slowing down to 10mph every time you pass and gawping as if you expect a caveman to fall out of a crevice is not going to solve the mystery. It might, however. get your brains scattered by a Haribo-crazed female who can't stand the sight of her own eyes in the rear view mirror anymore and finally succumbs to a Falling Down-style head fuck.

Fortunately, I know a canny short cut around this particularly arse-aching section, but it's a drop in the ocean really. For the rest of the way, you just have to resign yourself to switching off your brain and becoming intimately acquainted with the features of the car in front. Better grow to love the anagrams you can make from its registration number, as for the next four hours, you two are gonna be good, good friends...

Eng-er-bloody-bollocks-land...

Most of the time, I'm happy to be English.

Some toff once said that to be born English, was to win first prize in the lottery of life. Not sure I'd go that far. I'd prefer a more interesting climate and a more flamboyant national temperament. Christ, show me what second prize was and, if it's a speed boat or a fortnight in Cancun, I might even be tempted to swap. I don't mind being Slovakian in exchange for a villa in Tuscany, just as long as I'm allowed to wax the mono-brow.

But generally, I think being born in this country isn't a bad hand to be dealt when you sit in on the game of Life. Our days of empire-building might be behind us, but we enjoy a standard of living, a freedom and a general level of sanity which is frankly lacking in other parts of the globe. And one mention of the Battle of Britain has me choked faster than a goldfish trying to eat a Big Mac.

However, every four years, I find myself wishing I'd been born on top of a slurry heap in the hoariest slums of Rio de Janeiro. I find myself wishing we had a touch of fascism in our glorious history or that a bit of Italian blood flowed in these slovenly veins.

Because every four years, we absolutely suck. Whilst thousands of people per annum might literally bust a gut trying to get here, none of them wants to support our football team. And today, we went out of the World Cup yet again. At the hands of the old enemy.

I know we're not supposed to say that. Not because it's factually incorrect (I think blowing each other's heads off at 100 paces pretty much encapsulates the idea of hostile behaviour) but because it doesn't fit into a spirit of unity, of forward-thinking, of forgetting the past. But that's silly. Because I'm not talking about the two World Wars. I'm talking about the last God knows how many World Cups and European Cups. I'm talking about 1990. And about every other bastard time we've come across the Germans for any match that mattered.

Because there was just no way England was ever going to beat Germany, not today. And I blame Winston Churchill. Because while the law of karma states that what goes around, comes around, the brave and morally correct deeds perpetrated by our countrymen in the past have somehow been lost in translation. Somewhere in the karma machine, the actions of our forebears to protect the world from Nazism have got mangled - sausages have come out as mince. And we've been cursed with, not a crap football team, but a terminally ill-fated one.

Germany, on the other hand, still to this day carries a terrible burden. The knowledge that their ancestors were behind some pretty rum deeds in the past (and probably, in the vast majority of cases, unwillingly) must be an awful bucket to hoist. I totally condemn the idea of holding the Germany of today to ransom over the wars; of clinging onto the past and preventing an entire nation from taking its rightful place in the world, because of events that transpired in a completely different world, 70 years ago.

Yet I don't think they've got the completely mucky end of the stick. Somewhere, it seems they have done a deal with God. He's said to them, as a nation, "okay, so for the foreseeable future, you're going to get a bunch of dickheads making Hitler salutes at you and shouting 'Achtung!' after they've had a couple at the Hamburg Festival. You will be unable to be blonde and German and NOT be accused of being a Nazi by some uneducated no-mark from Daventry every time you are unfortunate enough to host a stag party from the British shores. This is irrefutable fact. So, to ease your burden and redress the balance a little, you are ALWAYS going to kick their pasty arses at football."

I gave up watching football more than 10 years ago when, after allowing myself to get well and truly dragged into it, the full horror and grind of being an England fan was finally revealed to me. Every four years, I allow myself to be tugged back in, just a little, and every time I remember why I walked away. It's just not worth the heart attacks.

A Nightmare Vision of the Past

As it's the last series, I thought I may as well tune into Big Brother tonight. See what's going on, what the characters are like this final year and so on.

I lasted eight minutes.

Once I'd listened to two different housemates discussing whether it is possible to die of flatulence, in two separate conversations, I'd had enough. It wasn't so much the banality of the topic that irritated me, but the pseudo-naive voice and manner adopted by the conversationalists, evidently under the impression that such gormless ramblings would somehow endear them to a reality-hardened public.

Nowhere is the theory that reality television has completely lost touch with its core concept better illustrated than on Big Brother. They might be significantly cheaper and more pliable/desperate than the average actor, and they might spout gems of dickheadedness on a half-hourly basis without the need for pricey scriptwriters, but the contestants on Big Brother are the Robert de Niros and Meryl Streeps of Stockton-on-Tees.

For the last 10 years, these people have been studying the changing face of the reality show winner with a dedication that might have been better spent elsewhere, such as on developing a sense of self-respect. Now that the final ever series of Big Brother has brought no-marks swarming out of the woodwork, all desperate to get that last stab at overnight fame for doing nothing, the cast of this year's show are more plastic than the contents of Madame Tussaud's bathroom bin.

Of course people have wanted to get on telly ever since the medium first elbowed its way into sitting rooms across the globe, but Big Brother was the true mothership which spawned a billion scouts, feeling their way further and further into the population with every passing hour. Hordes of wannabe Wags and boy band gonks ran screaming towards the alien crafts each year, begging to be taken aboard and their faces beamed across the globe to the blanket adoration of all those who espied them. The fact that the public reaction was more generally, at best, utter indifference and at worst, outright hostility that persisted throughout living memory just because someone once did something unwise with a wine bottle, has done nothing to deter these attention-seeking dimwits.

It might sound cruel to tar them all with the same brush and make out they are all weirdos who are simply desperate to jump on the celebrity bandwagon and become famous just for being famous. Some claim to just want 'the experience' and never mind the media possibilities that inevitably follow the more successful housemates, even though these periods of press interest tend to be shorter than an episode of Emmerdale.

But come on - this is hardly the behaviour of a sane individual, is it? To give up all your privacy, dignity and anonymity (not for long, granted) in exchange for a pop at winning £100,000 just doesn't seem remotely justifiable to the average person possessing a modicum of self-respect. An excruciating half-hour trying to outwit fellow smartypants on some daytime quiz show would be just about the level most people would consider, if the potential reward was big enough to make being ineptly insulted by Anne Robinson worth the embarrassment.

It is no coincidence that while most of the contestants on things like Going For Gold were swivel-eyed goons who looked ecstatic to win £50 and a button, the people appearing on Who Wants To Be a Millionaire generally look like they could tie their own shoelaces. Because the potential prize on offer was infinitely worth briefly, and in a respectable environment, giving up their anonymity - which, for most people, is one of their most precious assets.

Although we might all sigh and envy the Hollywood stars on MTV Cribs, we don't really want to be them. We might like to attain a high level of respect and acclaim in our chosen field, but we don't want to get papped outside the Co-op and have our cellulite thighs splashed across the Daily Star every other week. What we want is financial freedom, something which only shedloads of cash can bring and unfortunately, having a famous arse can often seem a quicker route to riches than building a business empire or winning a Nobel Prize.

But most ordinary people wouldn't go down that route. They would rather accept that they will never be able to quit work or own their own personal island, than give up their right to poo in private. And this is where Big Brother contestants and their ilk differ in a bone-chilling way. When humankind has spent hundreds of thousands of years establishing an etiquette and a code of basic civil rights, most people refuse to retreat to caveman conditions just for the sake of cash. If someone came up to me and offered me £100,000 to pose spread-eagled across the centre pages of Playboy (you never know, it could happen), I'd say no. That's not to cast aspersions on women who do choose to do that, but it goes against my personal moral code. So there's no way I'd give millions of viewers a flash of my lady garden for free.

But even this is missing the point, because the Big Brother hopefuls aren't playing for money. They are playing for fame, for attention, for a shot at a free ride. And just as £100,000 doesn't buy you very much these days, neither does your pride.

So I won't be shedding any tears for the demise of Big Brother. Once a nightmarish vision of the future, it is now a tedious and worn out part of our televisual past. And long may it stay there.

No More Bad Days For Bauer

So, after eight incredibly bad days, Jack Bauer has finally hung up his terrorist-kicking boots. This is a shame.

I say it's 'a shame' rather than 'a tragedy' for a number of reasons. First of all, watched on a weekly basis as it was intended, 24 took nearly six months to play out. Traditionally, it started in January and before you knew it, it was June and the final hour was looming, along with the realisation that Jack and his cohorts had done more with their lives in one day than you had in the last 24 weeks.

Secondly, I truly can't stand Chloe, Jack's righthand berk. She has the most slappable face in history. Starting out as an irritable little analyst who constantly reminded me of a toddler having a tantrum after being refused the last Jaffa Cake, she inexplicably rose to acting head of the Counter Terrorism Unit in the final series. To say this relentless advance was unconvincing was an understatement. You could have pinned the badge on Roland Rat and I would have more readily accepted him as the leader of US anti-terrorist forces.

Thirdly, it isn't really the end for Jack, both on a personal level and in terms of 24's screen career. For one thing, I have only seen about four and a half series out of the eight on offer, having watched the first two series aeons ago when they were shown on terrestrial telly, but being frozen out when Sky snapped up the rights to the gravelly avenger. As I firmly resisted calls for Sky's introduction to our household for several years - on the grounds that paying out more money for the privilege of letting my arse expand yet further into the sofa was unacceptable - I eventually caved a couple of years ago and Jack bounded back into our lives like a faithful puppy, ready to show us his latest pile of mess.

Just before season seven was aired, Sky decided to make another bid for my soul by showing the entire sixth series over a 24-hour period, on a Saturday. And although it's madder and more overblown than a Semtex balloon, 24 is nothing if not addictive. I dipped in and out of it all day and was firmly re-hooked in time for the next brain drain to start.

But I still have the interim adventures to catch up on so, as a box set-tastic future beckons, I was not too devastated to see Jack waddle off into the sunset.

The other thing is that as I understand it, the show was only cancelled partway through filming the eighth series, which suggests the writers were not building towards a much-anticipated final climax, like Lost and Ashes to Ashes. I imagine there was some pretty frantic rewriting going on at 24 Towers when that news was broken, but as the possibility of a film version has been strongly mooted - a move which would completely desert the dynamic gimmick which made the TV show such a success - it leads one to believe that the show's creators were not quite ready to bid farewell to their hero just yet.

Number one on the agenda must surely be a girlfriend who is allowed to live beyond 9am. At the end of the first series, Jack's pregnant wife copped it when his lover turned out to be a homocidal lunatic. Later on, his bright and intelligent soulmate kind of lost her appeal when a year's attentive imprisonment by the Chinese government left her thinking she was a hobgoblin who worked as Terry Wogan's char woman in her spare time.

The seventh series saw Jack getting the eye from a pretty redhead, who developed her own mental problems by the time Day Eight dawned, but did at least let Jack get his leg over before taking a bullet in the lung. God only knows how many female corpses are littered across series three to five, but I am rubbing my hands in anticipation of the carnage.

Whilst it cannot claim to be as profound, mysterious or have as strong an emotional grip on its audience as Lost, for example, 24 was a bit of a rarity on television these days. Not only did it produce a truly iconic character who has become a household name, even for those who never saw the show, it was also fun, exciting and utterly gripping in the uncomplicated way that only a dumb-as-shit thriller can be. I loved it and I suspect that when the final DVD of those lost series grinds to a halt, bringing my stormy relationship with him to a proper end, I will shed a tear or two for mumbly, grumbly, sexy Jack Bauer.

Review: Let The Right One In By John Ajvide Lindqvist

The screen adaptation of Lindqvist's vampire novel was widely hailed as a triumph. Indeed, some critics pronounced it to be among the best films of last year, which is no mean achievement for a horror film. Usually they are judged only against others in their genre and not taken seriously as stories, but Let The Right One In seemed to have overcome that obstacle.

I have not seen the film - I would quite like to, but I confess to being a little bit nervous about it. For although vampires do not scare me like ghosts do and I am not overly squeamish, I have heard that the film is pretty gruesome. Very intelligent and gripping, but gruesome nonetheless. And sometimes I find that non-stop wincing can really spoil my enjoyment of a movie.

But the book was recommended to me by a friend who knows my literary tastes pretty well, so I was curious to see if the source material was as captivating as the film is reported to be.

And the answer is - yes. I can't speak for the adaptation of course, but I can see how the novel could be converted into a thrilling and thought-provoking film. Because right from the first page, the characters leap out of the page and grab you by the throat, teeth bared and ready to bite.

The action centres on 13-year-old Oskar, a young boy who struggles to co-exist with his lonely mother and absentee father, while coping with bullying at school. Yet Oskar is not your typical victim. Even as he confesses to giving into the bullies' humiliating demands in the quest for a quiet life, he radiates a quiet dignity and sense of purpose which is way beyond his years.

Oskar's rather grey and pedestrian life in a Swedish suburb is turned upside down when he befriends Eli, the delicate little girl next door whose strange lifestyle soon raises his suspicions. With the innocence that only children can muster, he simply accepts Eli's stranger qualities and they form a touchingly powerful friendship.

But in the community around them, something is not right. In fact something is going very, very wrong and Oskar begins to realise that Eli might be at the epicentre of the storm.

Delicately balancing the drama of his high concept against the more mundane truths of human existence, the author creates a story that grips you from start to finish. Just as caught up in the mystery as Oskar, I was keen to find out what lay at the beating heart (or otherwise) of Eli and I was also intrigued by Lindqvist's refusal to paint any character in black and white. Though I was left feeling a little torn as to just how much freedom Eli deserved in the final reckoning.

Review: One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson

I have only read one of Kate Atkinson's books before, but I really enjoyed it and often thought that I must read more.

Well, I say I enjoyed it - I enjoyed the language, the insights, the wit. Behind the Scenes at the Museum is one of those books that doesn't really have a plot as such. It's just a story about life and some aspects of it were a bit depressing, in that they pinpointed some elements of human relationships with unromantic accuracy. But it was a good and memorable read, so when I spotted One Good Turn in the bookshop, I remembered Atkinson's previous work and snapped it up with great expectations.

And I enjoyed this one too, but in a very different way. One Good Turn definitely has a plot and quite a complex one at that, all about how one bizarre incident of road rage brings a number of diverse lives together in unlikely fashion. Before you start thinking it's just a rehash of Crash, it's not the same idea - this story links the witnesses to the attack, with the two feuding figures that open the action turning out to be the least interesting characters in the book.

There are elements of the murder mystery to it, though it is the investigations and adventures of the witnesses which take centre stage over the police procedures. In this way, One Good Turn seems more lightweight and unsubstantial that I had expected. The story takes its time introducing all the characters, by which time you begin to fear that threads picked up by the reader in the first few pages are already being dropped, but Atkinson soon picks up the pace and the story held my interest until the final page.

But I wouldn't say that I was gripped by it. Despite murder being at its heart, the story is more about the machinations of human emotions and the way life sometimes deals you a duff hand. For although the general tone is quite lighthearted, no one in the book is happy. Those who have become wealthy are living with loveless marriages, or no marriages at all; those who are fulfilled in their work have no home life; those who seem to have it all really have things which turn out to be charades. In this way, Atkinson continues to pick apart the human condition and although the story ends on an upbeat note for at least two of the characters, it left me feeling that the sweetness was tinged with a sour note.

I suppose that's just the reality of life and maybe I am too naive, wanting my literature to make that reality different. But isn't that the point of fiction, sometimes?

The Game Is Nearly Afoot

So, here we are. After our big demonstration of democracy in action, after all the hoohah about this election being so important and our vote really, REALLY counting, here we are. Standing impotently on the sidelines while the politicians decide amongst themselves who's going to be in charge.

Is it me or does it all feel a bit like being back in the playground, picking teams for elastics or that sadistic version of dodgeball they used to make us play at primary school? David Cameron stands on one side of the court, his swaggering pals resplendent in shiny new squash shorts, jeering and quaffing swan juice while he looks thoughtful and tries to make that nylon Ken hair move a bit when he turns his head.

On the other side, the Labour party languishes against the wall, expressions sullen, dirty socks bagging around their ankles. They are fat, spotty and on the losing side already. On the edge of the crowd, Gordon Brown dangles hopefully and tries to catch David Milliband's eye, before having an empty Dr Pepper can lobbed at his head with a cry of 'sod off Fatty, we missed that goal coz of you!'

Between the two factions, Nick Clegg and his hyperactive cohorts jog on the balls of their feet, yellow tabards glistening in the sun as they twist excitedly from one direction to the next, awaiting the shrill whistle blast that will signal the kick-off.

Because they might not be team captains, but they know they're going to be picked first. For them, there'll be no dawdling about, one leg twisted behind the other, almost dying of embarassment as the crowd thins around them and they are left wondering who will be chosen last - them, the Green Party or the I Eat Chickens In The Bath Party.

As poor old Brown (whom the sublime Charlie Brooker once described as 'a haunted elephant' and no other description can possibly surpass that) drags his sorry ass away from the match and roots about in the stinky Lost Property box for a decent pair of trainers to wear on the bus home, the fit kids get ready to play nicely and show just how co-operative and mature they can be. While secretly working out how to kick each other in the bollocks the moment Teacher's back is turned.

Frocking Around The Clock

Blimey, it's been a long day.

From 11am to 7.30pm, I have mostly been in a state of undress. Not in the street you understand - I haven't yet taken to roaming the town in just my undercrackers. But today has been the latest Mini Event in the series of Mini Events that build up to the Big Event of 2010. My Sister's Wedding.

Yes, today was the latest phase in The Hunt For The Bridesmaid's Dress and it was a knackering one. Having rootled through the limited retail offer of my own home town and my sister's home of Hicksville, UK, we decided that a trip into London was the next sensible move. Surely, we reasoned, we would find something suitable in the teeming metropolis that is our capital city. With six trillion shops, at least a third of which seem to be branches of Coast, something acceptable was sure to rear its chiffon-smothered head.

You'd think so, wouldn't you? But no. After eight hours of almost non-stop rack rifling, zipping up, zipping down, hoisting, wriggling and doing that thing of holding a dress up against yourself and trying to stare it into being longer, shorter, nicer or a better fit, this damn dress is still eluding us.

It was fun enough though, as I am never averse to a bit of dressing up, plus we tried on a few bits of ludicrous upper class headgear and spent a few thousand Dream Pounds between us in Christian Louboutin. Honestly, I can't say I've ever wanted to lick a pair of shoes before, but that shop could turn a girl's head. I really hope the Devil doesn't decide to tempt me one day when I'm out walking the moor with my other half - all he'd have to do is wave a pair of Louboutin's classic black pumps at me and I'd be claiming single person's council tax discount before the day's end.

The problem we had was two-fold - my sister's pickiness and my pickiness. My sister has chosen an incredibly expensive and proportionately beautiful wedding dress, but it is of a very singular appearance which cannot be accessorized by just any old frock. Her bridesmaid needs to be wearing a dress that is just as ruched, ruffled and frue-frued as hers, or at least boasting complementary features. Also, she set her heart on a particular colour scheme some time ago, but the two elements just refuse to make love and spawn the perfect dress.

Add to this the fact that I hate wearing above-the-knee garments and the field of possible candidates is narrowed even further. I should stress that this is not just me being contrary, this is a public health notice, as my knees should not be exposed under any circumstances. They look as if they've been borrowed from Big Bird, broken a few times and then stuffed with handfuls of boiled rice for good measure. Also, I am completely unable to pull off the short, puffy, cutesy dresses that are all the rage these days. You need to be tall, svelte and sylph-like to wear those things and unfortunately I tick none of those boxes.

I have an hourglass figure. It took me many years to accept that, as all I wanted was to be waif-like, straight up and down just like the models. I didn't want a bum and hips, I wanted a figure like Rachel from Friends. I wanted to disappear behind lampposts and slip down cattle grids. It took a very long time for me to accept that I was more a figure of eight than a number one, but I finally have accepted it. And what's more, I embrace it. Sadly I don't have big enough funbags to complete the look totally, but I know that dresses of a certain shape flatter me far more than floaty, puffy numbers. Being short and stumpy, I know that long, Grecian-style dresses swamp me, while prom dresses with massive skirts make me look like a sack of turnips wrapped in taffeta.

The best thing for my figure are tailored, fitted dresses that finish on the knee, or those slinky, fishtail gowns as worn by 30s starlets. And that's perfectly fine by me, as I love those looks and I'm very much hoping to land an outfit like that for the wedding. But sadly, it looks like my sister's dress - you know, the unimportant one - might scupper my hopes by refusing to go with it. So I fear I will end up shoehorned into some wafty maxi dress that makes me look like a bullfrog in a nightie.

But if so, I'm determined to make up for it by wearing a fabulous pair of shoes. Perhaps Louboutins. It only means I'll have to eat baked beans for, ooh, the rest of my life. Totally worth it.

Review: A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Although the book was recommended to me by a dear friend whose opinion I trust and respect, I confess that I approached A Clockwork Orange with not a little trepidation.

Both the novel and subsequent Stanley Kubrick film are notorious for their scenes of violence and rape, neither of which turn me on as a reader or a film fan, so it was something I had chosen to avoid on the assumption that it would take all value away from the story. But I have to admit that I was wrong and A Clockwork Orange turned out to be a highly intelligent and thought-provoking novel.

There are two things that hit you about the book straightaway. The first is the language, some sort of youth slang which appears almost impenetrable at first glance, but never underestimate the power and versatility of the human brain. Built for code-breaking, my little straining grey cells grasped it surprisingly quickly and although there were some words and phrases which I'm still not sure about, I was astonished at how easily I was able to follow the story.

The second thing is the violence. Within the first few pages, our lead character Alex and his cronies get up to some truly appalling antics, yet strangely enough it was not as nausea-inducing as I had assumed it would be. I put that firmly down to the use of this strange language, as it somehow muffles the horror, like watching the acts through obscured glass, or catching a conversation in French when you have only a beginner's grasp of the language and so can only pick up the general gist. Whether this was a deliberate ploy by Burgess to soften the blow of this revolting behaviour or not, I don't know, but it is somehow effective and leaves the reader feeling less soiled by the experience.

Alex, a 15-year-old delinquent who enjoys 'ultra violence', rape and classical music, is the stuff of nightmares. Yet he is also horribly real. Clearly an intelligent and articulate boy, you can't help feeling the same frustration with him as you would with a real-life promising child who goes the wrong way and, true to form, he dissolves into remorseless self pity the moment the tables are turned.

God knows when or where the book is set, but Burgess transports the reader there effortlessly. Without a word of background explanation as to what this dystopian future is like or how it got that way, the reader understands Alex's world very quickly. It sounds like a horrible place with little in the way of stimulation or warmth, which prompts the usual questions about whether nature or nurture is to blame for producing such a horrendous little arsehole.

I don't think I'm giving anything away when I say that fairly early in the book, Alex is caught and submitted to a radical new treatment in which he essentially has a conscience forced upon him in the only way he can understand. And this is really the crux of the story's message - ideas of conscience and whether it is possible, or indeed desirable, to take away someone's free will for the sake of the greater good. Also, it raises uncomfortable questions about the conscience and its purpose. Do the majority of us avoid doing atrocious things to other people simply because we do not wish them to be harmed, or because we know we'll feel terrible if we did? Is all generosity, consideration and altruism simply a mask we wear, a facade that is more designed to protect the person within than be of benefit to the people around us?

When Alex - initially devoid of this burden - is forced into caring, it sheds a rather unsettling light on the true nature of human understanding and motives. Even when an unexpected ray of kindness enters Alex's life, it turns out that this person has their own motivations and is not above a little cruelty if it serves their purpose.

Like all the best endings, A Clockwork Orange leaves you wondering just what has really happened and quietly debating the story's themes with yourself long after you have turned the final page.

Review: The Piano Teacher by Janice YK Lee

I'll be honest, I wasn't looking forward to reading this book. It really didn't look like it would be my kind of thing.

Last year I was buying birthday presents for a neighbour and wanted a couple of novels to go with her champagne and chocolates. My friend is a gentle, lovely, homely sort of person and I wanted some gentle, lovely, homely sort of books - so I chose The Return by Victoria Hislop and The Piano Teacher by Janice YK Lee.

I had read and enjoyed Hislop's first novel, The Island, so I knew it was the right sort of thing. The other, I'm afraid, was a real case of judging a book by its cover. I knew nothing about either the story or the author but it looked like it would be of a similar ilk.

When my friend offered to lend me The Piano Teacher a few weeks later, I politely accepted, but I'm afraid I wasn't enthusiastic. As a fan of Edgar Allen Poe and the like, chick lit makes me do a major swerve on sight. Anything with high heels on the cover or a blurb going on about women looking for husbands and I can't bung it back on the shelf fast enough.

With its pastel colours and whimsical picture of a woman in Oriental dress meandering across a beach, the cover wasn't floating my boat. And when I reacquainted myself with the synopsis - 'two beautiful women, one mysterious man', etc - my heart sank and it got chucked straight to the bottom of my To Read pile.

After several months had passed, I thought I'd really better get the thing read and returned before my friend forgot I'd ever borrowed it. And, against expectations, it was a jolly good read.

Set in Hong Kong, over two time periods - one at the outbreak of the Second World War and the other in the early 50s - The Piano Teacher took me on a highly unexpected journey. Yes, its focal point is love (or lack of it) but this is an engrossing and at times upsetting exploration of the impact of war.

When naive English newlywed Claire is brought to Hong Kong by her nice but dull husband, she finds herself both captivated and alienated by the exotic, complicated social etiquette. But a handsome older man soon begins to show her that she can be more than the English rose everyone expects. Yet Will, the dashing chauffeur, cannot let go of a past betrayal, something which will come between Claire and her exciting but distant lover.

The two stories are interspersed throughout the tale, with the darkness of the past creeping into the light of the present. From the very beginning, Lee shows a strong talent for characterisation, bringing the culture-shocked Claire into sharp focus almost immediately and making her the most sympathetic character in the story. Far from a bland tool to help shed light on the haunted Will, Claire's character is carefully sketched and her relationship with Will is far from idealised.

At the start I thought that Will was going to be a paint-by-numbers contrary cad, intriguing yet cold, but as his past experiences are drawn out into the light, his own inner conflicts give him greater depth and interest. Interestingly, it is with the book's most exotic character, Will's wartime lover Trudy, where Lee fails to fill in the blanks.

Whether this is deliberate or not is open to debate, particularly as Will himself is uncertain how to read Trudy's actions and attitudes. For much of the time it appears that she is a cardboard cutout, a character being sold as loveable purely on the basis of looks and charisma. At other points we are given a glimpse of something more illuminating, a contradiction which is reflected in Will's enduring confusion over his lost love.

But the story really gets into a different territory when war finally breaks into the champagne lifestyle of moneyed Hong Kong, taking dark and at times horrific turns as the mirage of Western privilege is rapidly dissolved by the realities of conflict.

There are some unanswered questions at the end, but life isn't always black and white, so that's no bad thing.

Review: Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

A real heavyweight among contemporary storytellers, Sarah Waters is one of my most admired authors. Her last three novels have each been nominated for the prestigious Man Booker Prize and the television adaptation of Tipping the Velvet, her debut tale of lesbianism in Victorian England, was an eye-opening experience for many viewers.

I have not yet read Tipping the Velvet but, after being gripped by her latest novel, The Little Stranger, I have decided to explore Waters' back catalogue. Set in the aftermath of the Second World War, when society has changed and formerly rich families are struggling to maintain their grip on the good life, The Little Stranger tells a slow and creeping story about the effects of decay, both physical and social. Brilliantly narrated by a character who keeps you guessing about his own motives and plays with your sympathies, it touches on the supernatural in an ambiguous way that I find rather thrilling.

So I went on to read The Nightwatch, again set in and around the Second World War, and I was not disappointed. With this novel, Waters seems to excel in telling stories that are kind of about nothing - nothing, that is, other than the complexities and absurdities of human life. Even though it often concerns itself with the minutiae of day to day life - affairs, failed romance, petty and not so petty crimes - the secrets you know are coming still grip and enthral the reader. Telling the story in reverse chronological order, Waters' grasp of structure is awe-inspiring and a useful lesson to all aspiring writers out there.

As a reader, Fingersmith was my first foray into Waters' Victorian period. And to be brutally honest, after the first few pages, my heart was starting to sink. Although it had clearly been intricately researched and was written with as much class as ever, I began to feel uneasy. For the dialogue was too twee, the research shovelled too heavily onto the page, as if the authenticity of its setting had been judged more important than the story or establishment of character. When a chap nicknamed 'Gentleman' turned up, I wondered if I had inadvertantly picked up a Catherine Cookson potboiler by mistake.

But I stuck out this inauspicious beginning and almost immediately, my faith began to pay off. When Waters allowed us to move beyond the grim atmosphere of a thieves' den in Victorian London, the story picked up apace and before long, I was hooked. The twist at the end of part one literally made my jaw drop and now, I cared - I wanted to know what happened to these characters and I had opinions on how their fates should pan out, which is surely the mark of a truly successful storyteller.

Of course there was a bit of lesbo action, but it was handled in a tender and not remotely titillating manner. Indeed, given the behaviour of the story's male population, getting busy with a fellow chick seemed an infinitely more favourable prospect. At one point, I was a little concerned that a subplot about sexual deviancy was going to poison the experience, but it was expertly handled. Without subjecting the reader to the ins and outs of it, so to speak, the deeply unsettling influence is made to pervade the atmosphere, just as it does the lives of Waters' fictional heroines.

Drawing characters that are all too human, Waters leaves you wondering if they deserved their fates; who was good, who was bad and just how far you have to go in order to earn redemption.

Across the Finish Line...For Now

Well, hang out the bunting and start up the horns. For Gormless Idiot has, for once, actually met a target she set herself and it is quite an achievement, though not for the reason you might think.

Avid readers of this blog (of which there are many) might recall that at the beginning of the week, I announced my intention to write an extra 30,000 words in my attempt at a novel and I wanted it done by the end of today. I say 'extra' - as I was starting with only a couple of thousand words anyway, I might as well have been starting at the beginning. Well, at about 7pm tonight, I nudged the total wordcount to about 32,800 which means I have more than met my target. And it's a great feeling.

I should point out that it's not really the feat itself that is the biggie for me. The thing that is making my heart sing is much more mundane. It is the fact that I promised myself and others I was going to do something and actually managed to see it through. For once. Okay, so I wasn't finding the cure for cancer or tapdancing along a tightrope strung between the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame, but for me, it's an achievement. Granted, when the book is actually completed, it's unlikely to see the light of day anyway, but that's not the point.

Because I am surely the Queen of Procrastination and my own biggest critic. Nothing brings on a black depression faster than the feeling that I've let myself down or failed to live up to others' expectations, regardless of whether those expectations are largely of my own creation. So to be able to say 'I did what I said I'd do' is a novel and satisfying sensation for me. I still have at least 60,000 words to go of course, but the feeling of having reached a milestone, however minor, is vital to any long distance push.

Though I must say that I didn't do it alone this time - it was the unerring support, encouragement and, yes, nagging, of certain people very close to my heart that pushed me to reach my goal when I'd had enough of the stupid story and just wanted to watch funny cat videos on the internet.

Being aware of this key part of my personality, I'm a bit of a div when it comes to these things, because I usually set myself unattainable targets and grossly underestimate how long it will take to achieve them, thus setting myself up for disaster. From now on I wil try to be more realistic and take more pleasure in the attainment of small but satisfying goals, rather than trying to empty the ocean with a thimble all the time.

Slice Me How You Like, I'm Red, Blue AND Yellow

For someone who has so far failed to be caught up in any sense of excitement, there are many drawbacks to the impending general election. Whether it's the endless hysterical diagrams leaping across the set of Channel 4 News or the stomach-churning footage of Gordon Brown trying to charm bemused shoppers in Morrisons, the election really is a lot of old bollocks.

I accept that it's important and all that, but it's just hard to scratch up much enthusiasm when you truly believe that the result will make little difference to your day to day life. For me, it's about as thrilling as the final of X-Factor. Will the squeaky voiced Mariah Carey-alike claim victory or the lad that looks and sounds like the love child of Robbie Williams and Keith Chegwin? It's of very little consequence, because both of them will trouble the charts for about a fortnight before sinking back into obscurity anyway and, let's face it, they're both pretty shit.

Obviously, Labour and the Tories will have a slightly greater longevity - at least five years, anyway -and will have rather more impact on your rate of income tax. But there is still an overall feeling of thudding boredom and 'god, we've been here before and it was rubbish then', much like visiting a Brewers Fayre restaurant.

But by far the worst thing about elections is the conversations you end up having, usually with your nearest and dearest. Is there anything more designed to wreak havoc among personal and professional relationships than finding you're on very different sides of the fence when it comes to your politics? When fluffy, mumsy Sally in credit control has been bringing in marshmallow cakes all year and knitting socks for the Armed Forces abroad, it can be something of a shock to discover she thought Hitler 'had a point'. Equally, finding out that Hugh in sales believes all women should be sterilised after their first child and any second-borns drowned in a pan, could make you think twice about sharing a room with him at the next company conference.

Most people will not have quite such surprising viewpoints of course, but chats that start out as good-humoured debates can quickly become rather heated and bad-tempered. This is not necessarily because you hold wildly differing opinions to your friend or family member, but because revealing our political views can expose the inner workings of our minds and consciences that others may not have seen before. Which leaves you open to scrutiny and criticism at the most basic level - your values, beliefs and attitudes to others. This is rather different to being critiqued on your work or ability to run a marathon, as it goes straight to the heart of you as a person.

The feeling that someone you care about and admire might not be impressed by your views on a particular issue, especially if you feel you have not expressed yourself very well, can be a pretty damning feeling. Of course, if you have the patience and sense to talk the matter through, people who are like-minded enough to be friends will often find that at the core level, they actually share the same opinion on most important issues, it might just be the choice of approach that differs. But a discussion about politics can leave you feeling frustrated, misunderstood and concerned that you may have done lasting damage to someone's opinion of you, which is even more upsetting if you feel they came away with the completely wrong impression.

Unfortunately, no party will ever present the perfect manifesto for any one voter and I usually find I am attracted to some elements of all the three main parties' values, while alienated by others. So most people end up stuck between a rock and a hard place come polling day. Elections do not allow you to choose this candidate's tolerant values with that candidate's no-nonsense approach, or to blend the Tory guy's plain speaking with the Labour gal's compassion. You have to come down on one side of the fence or the other, which can be a divisive experience. So that's another reason why I'm looking forward to the election being over and we can all go back to moaning about the government together.