What to drink in Dry January

“Are you trying out every soft drink that’s ever been made?” asked my son as I arrived back from the supermarket carrying an embarrassingly large bag of clinking bottles. His eyes gleamed as I unloaded Diet Coke, orange juice, ginger beer and elderflower cordial on to the kitchen table.

Yes, it’s Dry January and, as usual, I’m struggling to find anything I fancy drinking. Giving up alcohol is the easy part. The tricky bit is coming up with an alternative. Diet Coke gets boring after a few days, orange juice is too rich and as for Marks & Spencer's Fiery Ginger Beer, the taste is so strong that lightweight that I am, I can only manage half a glass. The best drink of all and the only one that I keep on buying without getting sick of it, is Bottlegreen's Ginger & Lemongrass.

Other drinks manufacturers are definitely missing a trick. So many people have stopped drinking alcohol this month that if they could come up with a delicious, non-calorie-laden substitute they’d make a fortune.

In desperation I turned to my writer friend Wendy for suggestions.  Like me, she and her husband Chris give up alcohol every January and I knew she’d be full of ideas. Sure enough, she had plenty. “Pomegranate juice with soda is lovely,” she wrote. “Tonic and fizzy water with a slice of lime. Lots of fresh mint tea (hot and chilled) plus that old Middle Eastern favourite - a jug of iced water flavoured with lemon and cucumber. Teetotaller's Pimms!”

Teetotaller's Pimms. It sounds like a winner. I reckon drinks companies should get to work on it straight away.

PS. I’ve just discovered that some crafty pals go for Dry February instead. Why? Because they only have to get through 28 days (or 29 this year), not 31… 

Tanya Burr - the beauty blogging superstar

How times have changed. Six years ago Tanya Burr was a shop assistant on the beauty counter at Jarrold, the Norwich department store. Today she’s a YouTube sensation, with her online make-up tutorials attracting two million visitors a month and invitations to starry parties flooding in from around the world. Her style tips are so eagerly followed that a Mulberry handbag seen on her blog prompted a massive surge in hits on Mulberry’s own website.

But the most endearing thing of all about Tanya is that success doesn’t seem to have gone to her head. Not in the least. She still sounds down-to-earth and self-deprecating, insists she has no intention of swapping her Norfolk home for the bright lights of London and says her transformation from shop girl to international beauty guru was “totally unexpected.”

Her most recent video shows her sitting at her kitchen table with her angelic-looking little brother. Rosy-cheeked, wearing an apron and without a scrap of make-up, she says the pair of them have just spent the afternoon walking along the beach at Southwold and baking banana bread.

The best thing about Tanya’s make-up videos is that as well as being inspiring and professional, they are ultra-easy to follow. I’m the most cack-handed person when it comes to make-up but watching Tanya explain how to create this year’s stunning smoky eye look made me think that even I could do it.

“I really want to remain someone people can relate to and keep my tutorials professional and full of instructions,” she says. “The most important thing is to give viewers what they want and to keep the videos unique and professional.”

PS.  This year’s deadline for university applications in the UK has been and gone and thousands of teenagers are on tenterhooks as they wait for offers. I couldn’t help laughing, though, when I heard about the tongue-in-cheek rejection letter one student sent to Oxford University after her interview. “I have now considered your establishment as a place to read Law,” wrote 19-year-old Elly Nowell. “I very much regret to inform you that I will be withdrawing my application. I realise you may be disappointed by this decision, but you were in competition with many fantastic universities and following your interview I am afraid you do not quite meet the standard of the universities I will be considering.”

My treasured Catherine Walker dress

I spend most of my time in a uniform of Mint Velvet jeans, black jumper and my beloved Rocket Dog plimsolls. But right now I’m trying to work out what to wear to the first posh do I’ve been invited to in ages. I’ve got a stiff-backed invitation saying “Emma Lee-Potter and guest” and my husband and daughter are both so keen to be my “guest” they've tossed a coin to decide who it will be.

After all the agonising I’ll probably end up wearing my treasured Catherine Walker dress. It’s the most expensive outfit I’ve ever bought but considering I snapped it up in 1987 and still wear it, it’s definitely earned its keep.

Mornings were a tough call when I worked as a news reporter back in the 80s. We had to be in the office by seven, ready to get cracking on the biggest news stories of the day soon after. Those were the days when Princess Diana was constantly splashed across the tabloid front pages – dancing onstage with Wayne Sleep as a birthday surprise for Prince Charles and dressing up as a policewoman for Fergie’s hen night.

One of the princess’s favourite designers was Catherine Walker, who sadly died in 2010 after a long battle with breast cancer. The French-born couturier created some of her most exquisite outfits, including an amazing pearl and sequin-encrusted white silk evening gown and matching bolero jacket that Diana called her “Elvis dress.”

When she started her business Catherine Walker modestly called it The Chelsea Design Company.  She renamed it Catherine Walker & Co in 1994 but apparently she chose the original name because “in France you would be laughed at if you opened a shop and put your name on the door as a couturier, unless you had the obvious skill to back it up.”

Sitting on the top deck of the number 49 bus at dawn every morning as I travelled from Battersea to Fleet Street I used to gaze down at Catherine Walker’s simple, white-painted shop in Chelsea’s Sydney Street and marvel at her creations. I dreamed of buying one of her dresses - and one day I threw caution to the wind and actually did. I saved up my work expenses for weeks, keeping them in a battered brown envelope till I had enough. Then, clutching the envelope in my eager hand I went into the shop and bought a stunning navy dress, made of crepe and cut on the bias. The most embarrassing moment came when I had to pay. I opened up my battered envelope and handed the surprised shop assistant  £375 in grubby-looking notes.

Twenty years on, I don’t regret my rash purchase for a minute. The dress hasn’t dated at all and I still love it. And I take an awful lot of pleasure in the elegant Catherine Walker for The Chelsea Design Company label inside.

Could you give up Twitter or Facebook?

Blimey. I thought I’d set myself a tough challenge for the New Year by giving up alcohol for January (successfully so far, but we’re only halfway through!) and resolving to blog every day for a month. But one thing I've never contemplated is relinquishing Facebook and Twitter.

But that’s what writer Tom Cox has done. Well, he doesn’t exactly say he’s given up Twitter but he’s deactivated his Facebook account and says he’s doing just fine without it. Better still, he’s got cracking with his new book and no longer wakes in the middle of the night and reaches for his iPhone.

As he writes in today’s Guardian: “No matter how positive you feel about Facebook or Twitter and the ways in which they’ve enhanced your life, it is unlikely that anyone will ever lie on their deathbed and say ‘you know what? I’m really glad I spent all that time social networking!’”

Hmmm, he’s definitely got a point. The only trouble is that I could give up Facebook and LinkedIn without a backward glance or twinge of regret (I’ve never really got the hang of either), but Twitter? Now that would be hard.

Since I signed up to Twitter two years ago I’ve had a whale of a time. I’ve discovered fantastic press articles (this month’s Vanity Fair profile of Rebekah Brooks for one), gleaned brilliant tips on writing and blogging, got advice about renovating a house in France, got back in touch with old friends (hello Constance!) and made lots of new writer pals. Admittedly I’ve procrastinated for England (and France) over my work and probably wasted hours and hours of time, but so what, it’s all been good fun.

Perhaps the answer to the social networking conundrum is to go cold turkey on the accounts that you’re not bothered about and stick to the ones you enjoy. And perhaps I should be ultra-disciplined and leave Twitter alone between nine and five. Lots of writers tell me that they’re on Twitter chatting to people at the crack of dawn but by nine they switch off and get down to their manuscripts. Well, that’s what they claim anyway…

What do you think? Could you give up Twitter and Facebook? I’d love to know.

Working mums and latchkey kids - the debate goes on

My jaw drops with astonishment when I see pictures of high-profile women just a few days after they’ve had their babies. Svelte in designer outfits and killer heels, they look like they’ve come straight from the health spa rather than the maternity unit. When my daughter was born it took weeks for me to have the oomph to leave the house, let alone contemplate getting dressed up to the nines and going to the office. By the time she was six weeks old I was still grey-faced and jabbering through lack of sleep – barely able to put her complicated, fold-up pram together and walk to the shops in Camberwell for a loaf of bread.

Now Gaby Hinsliff, the former political editor of the Observer has ignited the working mothers debate with her insightful book, Half a Wife: The Working Family's Guide to Getting a Life Back. Should we race straight back to work in double-quick time after having children or stay at home to look after them? Or is there a third way? A halfway house, where as Gaby Hinsliff herself has found, you can have both? As she wrote in Grazia this week: "I'm lucky to have picked a career in writing, which turned out to be the little black dress of professions: a versatile standby that can be dressed up or down - Fleet Street or freelance, working from home or the office - to suit. But with a little corporate and political imagination, the same could be true of other careers too."

My theory is that women study what their mothers did and do the opposite. My grandmother worked long hours in a Lancashire wallpaper and paint shop. It was hard graft for not much money and my mother was frequently a latchkey kid, arriving back from school to an empty house. When my mum had children she didn’t want to give up her job so she asked her beloved aunt to move in and help look after us. 

My mother adored her career but she sometimes wished she’d been at home more. So when my children were born I attempted to have the best of both worlds by leaving my newspaper job and working from home as a freelance writer.

All good – except now my daughter is 20 and thinking about careers she’s horrified by the very thought of being self-employed.  After years of watching me, she hates the precariousness and solitude of freelancing and yearns to work in a busy office – with other people to spark ideas against, proper lunch breaks and (fingers crossed all round) a monthly salary cheque coming in...  

Pret A Manger goes to Paris

The most memorable lunches I’ve ever eaten have been in France.

From a posh restaurant lunch in a medieval hilltop village near Cannes to a freshly baked baguette and some brie de meaux under the plane tree at the House With No Name, le déjeuner in France is special. It’s certainly not something to be gobbled at top speed in between phone calls at your desk. When my daughter started school at the école maternelle round the corner from our house in Orléans, classes stopped for an hour at noon and virtually every child went home for a proper lunch.

Most French people I know take time over lunch They wouldn’t dream of going to a sandwich shop or takeaway – which is why I was taken aback by the news that Pret A Manger has just opened its first branch in Paris. A cheery notice on the Pret website reads: “We've opened our very first shop in  La Défense, Paris... and we're 
really very excited! So, if you're planning a trip to Paris any time soon, do pop in and say bonjour! Our second shop on Marbeuf, Paris, opens in a few weeks (our builders are on a roll!)…”

I’m a big fan of Pret A Manger – the Pret sweet potato and lentil curry soup is sublime – but I’m not convinced the French are ready to give up their traditional long lunch break to eat sandwiches. And what they’ll think of the plastic cutlery, triangular bread and indeed the name Pret A Manger is another matter (strictly speaking Pret should be Prêt after all…)

But maybe there are enough time-pressed office workers and ex-pats to make the venture a success. When we lived in France I remember making special trips to buy Cheddar cheese at Marks & Spencer in Boulevard Haussmann every time I was in Paris. My husband got very irritated. “It’s absolute sacrilege to buy English cheese in France,” he said. But I still did.

PS: The old M&S in Boulevard Haussmann closed in 2001. But M&S recently opened a new store - on the Champs-Elysées, no less.