Tikka masala cheese, anyone?

Alex James’s hilarious account of life behind the scenes of Nineties’ Britpop is one of my favourite non-fiction reads of recent years.

In Bit of a Blur the irrepressible James (above) recounts how he was catapulted to fame and fortune as bass guitarist of the rock band Blur. One minute he was a university student living in a slug-infested squat in Camberwell. The next he was living the high life – hanging out at the Groucho Club, driving around in a cab festooned with spots painted by Damien Hirst and generally being, as he describes it, “the second drunkest member of the world’s drunkest band.”

Those days are long behind him now. He’s moved to the wilds of Oxfordshire, where he lives with his wife and children, waxes lyrical about the countryside and makes cheese. But I think his latest creation could be a step too far. His Alex James Presents cheese range goes on sale in Asda on Monday (August 22) and boasts flavours like cheddar and tomato ketchup, cheddar and tikka masala and cheddar and sweet chilli. Are you convinced? No, me neither.

PS: David Cameron has just set off on his fifth holiday of the year. After a jaunt to Granada in April to celebrate Sam’s 40th birthday, an Easter trip to Cornwall, a week in Ibiza in May and a recent holiday at a Tuscan villa (cut short when he flew back following the riots), he's heading to Cornwall again with his family.

Even though lots of families can’t afford to get away at all this year, I don’t begrudge the Camerons the occasional break. But five is overdoing it – and sends out a terrible message to the millions struggling to make ends meet. Long hours and interrupted holidays go with the territory when you've got a high-powered career. If you want an easier life and a job that gets you home by 5.30 every night, then top-flight politics probably isn’t the right choice.



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New York - the perfect holiday for parents and teenagers

A message has just popped up on Facebook reminding me that a year ago I was on holiday in New York with my children. Looking back, I reckon it’s the perfect place for a city break with teenagers – so if you’re looking for ideas, here are some of mine.

After weeks of debating where to go it was clear that finding a holiday to suit both my fashionista daughter and bike-mad son was going to be tricky. She craved sunshine, art galleries and shops while he wanted high-octane action and wall-to-wall excitement.

In the end there was only one place that fitted the bill. New York – the city that never sleeps. Even so, the pair of them had to agree to compromise. My son promised to be calm while his big sister gazed at clothes in Forever 21 and she said she’d put up with him spending hours at the Empire State Building, viewing Manhattan (above) by telescope from every possible angle.

It was a flying visit but we were so determined to make the most of every second that our feet barely touched the ground. Even though the weather was blistering, with thirty-degree temperatures and stifling humidity, we packed a week’s worth of sight-seeing into four days. We walked miles and never resorted to the subway once. The Met (Metropolitan Museum of Art) was breathtaking, Central Park surprisingly hilly and I still haven’t got over the dazzling array of Proenza Schouler bags on sale at Barney’s, the up-market Madison Avenue department store. I longed to buy a lime-green PS1 satchel. The only problem was the eye-watering price tag.

We stumbled across some of our best discoveries quite by chance. Bryant Park, a tree-lined sea of green just off 6th Avenue, was one. The park, surrounded by towering skyscrapers on all sides, hosts a mass of free events throughout the summer months. One night we sat and listened to a fantastic jazz concert while the next day we watched a stunning lunchtime performance by the casts of five Broadway musicals. West Side Story, Mamma Mia, La Cage Aux Folles, they all featured, but one of the best performances came from Laura Michelle Kelly, the Isle of Wight-born star of Mary Poppins. Her cut-glass English tones and storming performance of Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious stopped the whole audience in its tracks.

Another day, much to my teenagers’ horror, I booked a sightseeing tour. They were desperate not to be regarded as tourists but in the end our tour guide won them over with his wit and street-by-street knowledge. A film extra by trade, Brooklyn resident Dane took up his new role after his daughter got fed up with him boring her to death with the facts and figures he knew about New York and told him to tell other people instead. From the history of the Statue of Liberty to the day he bumped into Sarah Jessica Parker (“she’s a very nice lady,” he confided), he kept us entertained all day.

Most days we couldn’t resist stopping off at the legendary Dean & DeLuca on 56th Street for a cup of their delicious coffee. As we watched New Yorkers whizz in and out, we could pretend, just for a second, that we were one of them.

On the last afternoon we visited MoMA, where my daughter was entranced by the Cézanne masterpieces and my son was gripped by Vietnam war footage. Finally we sat for a while in the lovely courtyard, admiring the Wish Tree donated by Yoko Ono. As we duly lined up to write our wishes on luggage labels and tied them to the tree, I took a quick, surreptitious glance at my daughter’s tag. “I wish I could live in New York,” she’d written.

The first freelance journalist to take on an apprentice

After a decade of working in Fleet Street news rooms I went freelance when my daughter was born. Working from home, I juggled looking after her with writing features for newspapers and magazines. There were a few tricky moments when I had to bring telephone interviews to a close in double-quick time because she’d woken up from her nap, but mostly it worked fine. And these days, when my children are fiercely independent teenagers and I can write full-time, I’m so glad I persevered with my career.

The one thing I never considered, though, was employing a trainee journalist to help run my business. But that’s what freelance education journalist Jan Murray has decided to do. Two days before this year’s A level results (fingers crossed for everybody), she’s written a piece for The Guardian, outlining her decision to become the first freelance journalist to take on an apprentice.

“I’ve decided to recruit an apprentice to assist me with research, transcription, developing story ideas and – once they have enough experience under the belt – possibly even the writing of articles,” she says.

“They’ll work for me four days a week and spend a day a week working towards a business administration apprenticeship at Harlow College... I want to give them as much hands-on experience as possible, so I’ll be taking them along when I go out to cover stories and, where appropriate, getting them to do some interviewing.”

Jan’s idea is an innovative one, and I’m sure loads of ambitious youngsters will apply, but I’m not convinced it’s the best way to train journalists. As she says, trainee hacks need to be accurate writers, possess good research skills and have “plenty of initiative and determination.” But I reckon these skills are best learned in the news rooms of local papers.

I did my training with a group of weekly newspapers in Devon, where I spent two years writing about flower shows, parish council meetings, golden weddings and village fetes. It wasn’t exactly cutting edge stuff but it taught me a lot of skills that I still use today. After eight weeks of learning shorthand (still essential for journalists), public administration (how local government works) and law (so we knew what we could and couldn’t report in the local magistrates court without committing contempt), we were let loose in the news room to do the job for real.

My worry with Jan’s idea is that her apprentice will spend most of his/her time doing general admin, like transcribing interviews, printing out cuttings and sending out invoices. But in my view it’s the buzz of working in a busy news room, seeing a variety of experienced reporters in action and crafting a great story from an initially unpromising interviewee that teaches you how to be a journalist.

I hope Jan’s initiative is a brilliant success but I’m not convinced it’s the way journalism training should be going.

PS: Thanks to Liberty London Girl's entertaining and informative blog I've just discovered this lovely Anthony Burrill poster (above), which I'm going to order for my office wall. Work hard and be nice to people - I can't think of better advice for us all, trainees or otherwise.

Creative writing courses - is there any point in doing one?

Creative writing courses have sprung up all over the place over the last 20 years. I still can’t quite believe this but apparently there are a mind-boggling 10,000 short creative writing courses and classes currently on offer in the UK.

Lots of people sneer at the notion that creative writing can be taught but I totally disagree. I was one of the first batch of students to do Manchester University’s MA in novel writing 18 years ago and it inspired me from start to finish. Launched by novelist and academic Richard Francis and Michael Schmidt, the founder and editorial director of Carcanet Press, it gave me the time, space and confidence to write Hard Copy, my first novel. It also encouraged me to study writers I would never have read in a million years otherwise - Ismail Kadare and José Saramago for starters.

Richard, who's had ten novels published, has always been a firm advocate of creative writing courses and was professor of creative writing at Bath Spa University till 2009. “You may not be able to teach people to write,” he once said, “but you can take people who are capable of writing and provide them with the space and structure within which they have to write.”

It was certainly true of my intake. We were a very eclectic lot, some producing literary fiction, a couple dreaming up hard-bitten thrillers, one working on a comic novel about a game-show hostess and one (me!) writing about a Fleet Street hack whose career was on the slide. Each week we read and commented on each other’s work, making suggestions and encouraging our fellow writers along the way.

The upshot was that out of the 12-strong group, at least five became published writers. The most successful is the highly acclaimed Sophie Hannah, who’s not only a brilliant poet but has also written a string of bestselling psychological thrillers. Meanwhile TV scriptwriter Sam Bain has a list of credits as long as his arm (including Channel 4’s Peep Show) and Anna Davis, the author of five novels, is now director and tutor of Curtis Brown Creative, the first literary agency to run its own creative writing courses.

So if you’re an aspiring author who’s thinking of doing a creative writing course my advice is: ignore the cynics and get that application form off in double-quick time.

PS: I've decided that the washing line at the House With No Name (above) is the most scenic in the world. Hanging washing out is the dreariest chore but over the last two weeks I've done it with a spring in my step. As I pegged basket-loads of laundry on the line I stood in the sun and gazed across at this amazing view. Blissful.

Lunch under the plane tree in France

French shops pride themselves on their service. Shop assistants always greet customers when they arrive, check whether your purchase is a cadeau and wish you a cheery au revoir, bonne journée when you leave.

My favourites are the amazing patisseries, where the displays look like a work of art. At Anne’s, in Dieulefit, the lovely proprietor is so charming that her customers don’t mind how long they wait to be served. Her pizzas and tartes aux framboises are so renowned that the queue often snakes out of the shop and down the pavement.

When we get to the front she always greets us personally, compliments my teenagers on their French and waits patiently while we fumble to find the right number of euros. She packs everything up into exquisite paper parcels, tells us a bit about her time working in a London hotel and says she looks forward to seeing us soon.

My latest discovery is the amazing D.Cochet (above) in the town of Crest. Yesterday we bought a tarte aux poires there. The smiley assistant wrapped it in a dashing purple box and we hurried home. An hour later we sat with friends under the plane tree at the House With No Name, the terrace where generations of local farmers have sat and put the world to rights over a glass of Pastis. My teenage daughter brought out a home-cooked red pepper and courgette flan, rosemary potatoes (a la Jamie Oliver) and salad, then cheese (always served before the dessert in France) and finally the tarte aux poires. And yes, it was every bit as delicious as it looked.

PS: On the down side, the rodent problem at the House With No Name continues. My daughter rushed downstairs two days ago to report that she had actually spotted the noisy loir (a dormouse). Most nights we’ve heard it scratching and scurrying about busily in the roof but this time it had been brave enough to sneak through the roof insulation and into her room. She’d woken up in the middle of the night to see its bushy tail disappearing back into the tiles. Eeek. Monsieur Noel, the amiable pest man from Montelimar, arrived promptly that afternoon in his immaculate white van, and got cracking on the problem. Whether the loir dares to show his face (or tail) again remains to be seen…

London reflects - the view from France on the riots

When I wrote in my last blog how our pretty sunlit café in the south of France seemed “the best place in the world” I had no idea how prescient those words would turn out to be.

While we were happily sipping coffee, worrying whether the mysterious scratching sounds in the roof were coming from a loir or a fouine (both rodents and both equally alarming) and planning a housewarming party, London had turned into a war zone overnight.

The French rarely take much notice of UK news but even here, in the middle of nowhere, everyone’s talking about the riots. The story features on page four of today’s Le Figaro under the headline Londres s’interroge après une nouvelle nuit de violences (London reflects after another night of violence) and the man in the local boulangerie asked my husband for an update when he popped in to buy croissants this morning. 

The best piece I’ve read so far is by Mary Riddell in today’s Daily Telegraph. “London’s riots are not the Tupperware troubles of Greece or Spain, where the middle classes lash against their day of reckoning,” she says. “They are the proof that a selection of young Britain – the stabbers, shooters, looters, chancers and their frightened acolytes – has fallen off the cliff-edge of a crumbling nation.”

She’s so right. I can’t remember a time when the divide between haves and the have-nots has been so terrifyingly wide.  A whole generation of teenagers in our most disadvantaged areas have next to no hope in their lives.  They may possess the latest smart phones and coolest trainers on the block but a large proportion of them don’t have caring families, skills, qualifications or any passions in life.

PS: On a lighter note, the first party at the House with No Name went with a swing. As the sun went down over the Roche Colombe we drank Clairette de Die, the local sparkling white wine, and toasted everyone who has helped bring the house back to life. When one of my dearest friends first spotted the tumbledown house six years ago she emailed me to say it was “a very old farm, with heaps of charm.” And do you know what? It is.