What are eyebrows for?

“I’m just off to have my eyebrows shaped,” I told my teenage son.

He looked up momentarily from his Xbox game, an astonished look on his face. “You’re having your eyebrows shaved?” he said. “Isn’t that what happens when people get drunk at parties?”

Well not at the parties I go to, it doesn’t. But when I quizzed my son he told me about a friend of his who’d fallen asleep at an all-night do and woke up a few hours later to discover some mean person had shaved his eyebrows off. The effect was so dire that the poor boy resorted to drawing them back on in black felt-tip pen, which of course looked a million times worse.

Anyway, that unfortunate incident got us to discussing a thorny issue. What exactly are eyebrows for? Whether they’re bushy (à la Denis Healy) or sleek (à la Madonna) they’re pretty odd things really. Whatever beauty writers say about them framing your face I’m not at all convinced.

My son quickly got on the case and came up with the following answer. Apparently eyebrows are there to keep water, sweat, dirt and debris (yuk!) out of our eyes. So when we sweat or get caught in a downpour the arch shape of our eyebrows cleverly diverts the rain to the sides of our faces. How smart is that?

My son is the finest finder-outer I know. He troubleshoots my regular computer crises, suggests new music I might like (Lulu and the Lampshades for one) and can give an hour-long lecture about the origins of Aerogel.

Even more useful, his IT know-how is second to none.  When I got a new computer recently I didn’t have to lift a finger. He and my daughter unpacked the box, set it up in ten minutes flat and then typed out an idiot’s guide for their techno-dinosaur mum to follow. The way things are going they’ll be running the entire household single-handed in no time at all.

PS. After my recent post about London's Big Egg Hunt I've just spotted my second giant egg. Only 198 to go!

Friday book review - The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

The two books that have made the biggest impression on me so far this year are the Costa prizewinning Pure, by Andrew Miller, and Eowyn Ivey’s The Snow Child.

Coincidentally, I read The Snow Child at the end of January, when most of the UK was blanketed in snow. As I watched snowflakes drift gently past my Oxford window the view looked tame in comparison to the desolate Alaskan landscape where Ivey’s novel is set.

Alaskan born and bred, she knows the place like the back of her hand and excels at describing a magical world where wild animals appear out of hidden crevasses, waterfalls of ice cascade off the mountainside and the snow is so deep that you can get lost just a few minutes from home.

Ivey’s first novel is set in the 1920s and tells the story of Jack and Mabel, a middle-aged couple who move to the wilds of Alaska to start a new life.

They expect “a land of milk and honey” but are in for a rude awakening. Winters are harsh and food is scarce. Jack finds working on the land backbreaking, while Mabel experiences acute loneliness and despair. To add to their plight, they’re both struggling  to cope with the loss of their only child, who was stillborn ten years earlier.

But one winter’s night, their mood lifts when they make a little girl out of snow, complete with red scarf and mittens. The next morning the snow child has completely vanished. But all of a sudden, Jack glimpses a small blonde figure dashing through the trees, red scarf at her neck.

As the child comes and goes as she pleases, often with a red fox at her heels, the couple start to love her as their own daughter. But is the little girl real or a figment of their imagination? Cooped up in their remote homestead, could their minds be playing tricks on them?

Ivey was inspired to write The Snow Child after discovering an old Russian folk tale about a couple who see the little snow girl they sculpt turn into a real-life child. The result is a touching and truly exceptional portrayal of heartbreak and hope.

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey (Headline Review, £14.99)

The Big Egg Hunt in London

I’ve loathed eggs since I was seven years old. In those far-flung days I used to take a packed lunch to Halton Primary School, just down the hill from the RAF base where my father worked. 

My mum had read somewhere that it was good for children to eat an egg a day (times have changed), so every morning she lovingly put a hard-boiled egg in my lunch box. I obediently ate them but suddenly the day dawned when I just couldn’t face another. Not ever. And I haven’t eaten an egg, boiled, fried or scrambled, since. I cook with them but when it comes to eating them by themselves, no. I  buy them so rarely that my children regard them as rare delicacies and savour every precious mouthful.

But despite my dislike of eggs I was entranced by the giant eggs I spotted in London this week. With Easter on the horizon, two charities, Elephant Family and Action for Children, have launched The Fabergé Big Egg Hunt. More than 200 beautifully crafted eggs, created by artists, designers, architects and jewellers, have been hidden around the capital.

The idea is that egg hunters can enter a competition to win a diamond jubilee rose gold egg, worth £100,000 and decorated with 60 gemstones (one for each year of the Queen’s reign), by texting a keyword from each egg to 80001. Entries are open till April 3.

Not only that, the decorated eggs, 2ft 6in (74cm) tall and made of fibre glass, will be auctioned for the charities at the end of the hunt.

Anyway, walking through Mayfair with my daughter before the RNA awards on Monday, we came across this beauty. Egg number 126 is the creation of fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg. It's called Love is Life and is perched high above the doorway of the bar at Claridge’s. I still haven’t been converted to eating eggs but finally I've found an egg I like.

The day I was mistaken for a dirt jumper

My eyes nearly popped out of my head when I saw the email.

“Hi Emma,” it read. “We know quite a few places to do dirt jumping. Are you an experienced rider or are you just beginning to get into the sport?”

For the uninitiated, dirt jumping is a sport that involves cycling at top speed down a ramp, leaping high into the air, maybe doing a couple of twirls on the way down and then landing (hopefully the right way up) on a pile of soil. In other words, it’s a completely mad thing to do. The very thought that a fairly sane, middle-aged city-dweller who prefers to keep her feet firmly on the ground at all times would contemplate taking up dirt jumping made me laugh out loud.

But after a few seconds of puzzling over the email, everything fell into place. I’d been trying to help my bike-crazy son find some new places to pursue his hobby and had emailed a shop up north for advice. And for some reason, they’d assumed that it was me who was the dirt jumper.

Funnily enough, the email arrived soon after I read an interview with Dame Fiona Reynolds, director-general of the National Trust (she's just announced that she's stepping down to become Master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge). She told The Times this week that children’s freedom to roam unsupervised has shrunk massively since the 1970s. “Children are missing out on the sheer joy and physical and mental well-being of being able to play outside and experience nature in all its messiness,” she said.

Well, not in this house they aren’t. We’ve lived in towns and cities since my son was five but he’s had more fresh air than any child I know. Not because of anything I’ve done but because as soon as he was old enough to ride a bike he grew obsessed with performing cycling tricks. The higher and scarier the better. In fact one summer he leapt merrily off a local hill on his bike, came adrift in mid-air and crashed down on to his handlebars with a horrendous thud. Result – a collar bone broken in three places and two months off bikes.

So, even though I’m forever worrying about him, my son definitely hasn’t missed out on “the sheer joy and physical and mental well-being of being able to play outside.” If only…

The RNA Awards - winners include Katie Fforde and Rosie Thomas

The Romantic Novelists’ Association sure knows how to throw a party. I was thrilled when my invitation to the RNA’s RoNA annual awards dropped into my inbox. For a start, the awards celebrate the very best in romantic fiction, but secondly, the RNA’s bashes are brilliant fun and ultra-glamorous. The (pink) champagne flows, waiters whizz round with elegant canapés and you get to meet some of the best writers, publishers and agents in the business.

This year’s party was held at One Whitehall Place in Westminster. Author Jane Wenham-Jones, resplendent in a sparkling silver dress and pink hair, hosted the awards ceremony, while bestselling crime writer Peter James (he’s sold 11 million books and been translated into 33 languages – wow) presented the prizes. As Jane told the packed audience, Peter’s books are “not so much ‘then he kissed her,’ more ‘then he bashed her head with a blunt instrument.’”

Peter James declared right at the outset that he was very fond of the RNA. An RNA awards judge 20 years ago, he’d been struck by the “terrifically compelling” stories he came across then and had been hooked ever since. He also pointed that romantic fiction and crime fiction account for more than half the book sales in the UK today. And not only that, he reckoned most of the great writers of the past wrote books that would now be classed either as romantic novels or crime novels – War and Peace, Madame Bovary, Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Rebecca, The Great Gatsby and more.

Then came the big moment – the awards themselves. To tumultuous applause, Katie Fforde stepped up to receive the Contemporary Romantic Novel award for Summer of Love. Katie saw off stiff competition from fellow big hitters Jill Mansell, Freya North, Miranda Dickinson, Karen Swan and Kate Johnson.

The Epic Romantic Novel award was won by Rosie Thomas for The Kashmir Shawl, reviewed on House With No Name last month. She beat Michael Arditti (the only man on the RoNAs shortlist), Betsy Tobin, Deborah Lawrenson and Ruth Hamilton.

The Historical Romantic Novel award went to Christina Courtenay, for Highland Storms, while Jane Lovering scooped the Romantic Comedy category for Please Don’t Stop the Music. When Jane climbed onstage to receive her award, she gave hope to budding writers everywhere. “It’s taken me 25 years of writing to publish a book,” she told the audience. “If I can do it, anybody can. So go for it, girls!”

Finally, the first-ever Young Adult Romantic Novel award went to Caroline Green for Dark Ride. “I’m completely in shock,” she admitted.

The excitement isn’t over yet though. All five winners now go forward to the prized Romantic Novel of the Year award, which will be announced on May 17.

Judging by yesterday’s ceremony, romantic fiction is in very good heart right now. As RNA chair Annie Ashurst (aka highly successful Mills and Boon author Sara Craven) said: “In the big sky of romantic fiction today’s winners are among the brightest stars. Their talent, diversity and commitment are awe-inspiring and we congratulate them all on their success.”

We certainly do.

Car boot sales and getting rid of stuff

“Car boot sale...16 years of junk gone and £150 better off...result!”

Those were the words of my friend Jennie on Facebook last night. Her update status caught my attention the instant I spotted it and I immediately set about trying to persuade someone to do a car boot sale with me. My daughter says she might, so you never know, maybe I’m making progress.

Our family has a real problem with stuff. Accumulating it, I mean. And I’m the worst. I simply can’t throw anything away – from my children’s first shoes to my faded Evening Standard newspaper cuttings.

To everyone's horror, when my father had a sort-out at home and asked us to go through some of our childhood belongings, I came back with yet more stuff.

I swore that since I was 21 when he and my mum moved to their house in the wilds of Dorset, none of it could possibly be mine. How wrong could I be? Within the space of a few hours I’d found my Brownie badges, my first Timex watch, some Janet and John reading books, a set of scary school photographs and even my university thesis on Christopher Isherwood. I offered my daughter a load of treasures – a Biba T-shirt I thought was the bees-knees, a Squeeze CD and my A level history notes on the Russian Revolution. She took one look and said “er, no thank you.”

The best find of all though was a tiny, yellowing newspaper cutting of my mum’s that fell out of my history notes. I’d cut it out 25 years ago and kept it to read again. I never imagined that by the time I set eyes on it again my own children would almost be grown-ups and she wouldn’t be here anymore. But as I stood in the attic and read her words, time stood still and I could hear her voice so clearly in my head.

“I don’t think my children owe me anything,” she’d written. “I had them because I wanted them, because they’ve given me endless hours of joy. I’m in their debt, not they in mine.

“And if they want to emigrate to Yemen, as long as they’re doing what fulfils them I don’t think they owe me a letter, kindly or otherwise, a phone call, a card come Mother’s Day or Christmas, or even a hand-crocheted shawl, if ever I should come on hard times.”