Alexandra Shulman's debut novel - and how my 80s began

Alexandra Shulman, the brilliant Vogue editor-in-chief, has just written her first novel. Can We Still Be Friends is set in the 1980s and relates the lives and loves of three female friends. I’ve ordered the book from Amazon and can’t wait to see how her memories of the decade compare with mine.

Shulman gave readers a vivid snapshot of her 80s in a first person piece for The Times Magazine at the weekend. “My 80s began in the summer of 1980 when I was dumped by my boyfriend,” she said. “He chucked me the day I learnt my university degree – a 2.2 – so I began my 80s walking the streets of London in floods of tears.”

The image Shulman conjured up was so striking that I got to thinking about how my own 80s began. In the summer of 1980, I’d just graduated too – with a degree in history and politics that I’ve never used to this day.

I spent the long summer holiday driving through France in a bright green (and very temperamental) 2CV with my boyfriend of the time and arrived back in September to start training as a journalist.

I nervously drove the highly-strung 2CV from my parents’ house in Dorset to Plymouth, where the Mirror Group Newspapers training scheme was based, and booked into the YMCA for the first few nights. After teaming up with fellow trainees Fiona Millar and Jenny Craddock, we looked for somewhere more permanent to live together and ended up in a tiny ground-floor flat in a place called Mutley. Within a couple of months, though, Fiona moved to the Tavistock Times with Alastair Campbell, while Jenny and I were dispatched to the Mid-Devon Advertiser in Newton Abbot. We moved to a house in the wilds of Dartmoor, where it rained so much I had to start the 2CV with a liberal dosing of WD40 every morning to stand the faintest chance of getting to work.

My starting salary was the princely sum of £3,300 and mostly went on rent, petrol, the pub and trips to London to catch up with university friends who I thought were leading more glamorous lives. My favourite clothes came from French Connection, In-Wear and a shop in York called Sarah Coggles. I whiled away lots of evenings playing Elvis Costello, The Pretenders and Carly Simon on my (oh dear) record player. It wasn’t quite a wind-up gramophone, but not far off…

I love France - but I can't actually speak French

I had an inspiring French teacher at school called Miss Burgess. She drilled me so well that more than 30 years later I can still remember the words for an armchair (un fauteuil) and a spoon (une cuillère).

The problem is that even though my brain is stuffed full of Miss Burgess’s vocabulary and I can read French pretty well, I can’t actually speak the language. When I’m in France I understand the gist of what everyone’s saying but by the time I’ve worked out how to reply, it’s five minutes too late and the conversation has moved on. I’m far too hung up on getting my verb endings right when I should be gabbling away regardless.

One of my most embarrassing moments came when the painter arrived to decorate. The moment I shook his hand my mind went completely blank and I couldn’t think of any French words at all. It took a few second before something popped into my head. “Au revoir,” I spluttered. Oh dear. It didn't go down well.

I reckon the best way to learn French is to concentrate on speaking it from the word go. I’ve just received a copy of a brilliant new book for children called My First 100 French Words and wish it had been around when I was little. Written by Catherine Bruzzone and Louise Millar and illustrated by Clare Beaton, it lists 100 basic words – from numbers and colours to toys and transport – and gives a simple pronunciation guide for each one.  It’s a fun way to introduce young children to speaking a new language – and great for grown-ups too in fact!

My First 100 French Words by Catherine Bruzzone and Louise Millar (b small publishing, £5.99)

Bettys - the top tea place in the land

When my children were younger we always spent Easter in the Lake District – an idyllic place for fresh air, bracing walks round Derwentwater and Easter egg hunts overlooking the Newlands Valley. The last Easter we spent there, two years ago, was just a few months after the terrible Lake District floods, when towns and villages were cut off from the outside world and the whole area was turned into a mud swamp. But spring seemed to mark the start of a new beginning. The sun came out, the daffodils danced in the breeze and even the sheep looked like they had a spring in their step.

One day we’ll go back, but these days Easter revolves around revision for the dreaded impending exams. My son’s up to his eyes in chemistry papers, while my daughter’s pouring over endless books about the history of American capitalism. Eeek!

But the one thing that hasn’t changed about Easter is Bettys. My in-laws live in north Yorkshire and when my husband whizzed up to see them on Good Friday he popped into Bettys in Northallerton to buy three of their amazing Easter eggs.

If you’ve never been to Bettys Café Tea Rooms you’re missing a treat. There are only six branches– one in Ilkley, one in Northallerton and two each in Harrogate and York – plus a very good mail order service. Despite countless pleas from customers, the company hasn’t opened any outside Yorkshire. Their elegant cafés, staffed by smiley waitresses in starched white pinnies, serve everything from Bettys famous Fat Rascals (a sort of giant scone with cherries and almonds) to lunch and afternoon tea. But their Easter eggs are works of art. Made from the best quality chocolate and hand decorated with delicate spring flowers or chocolate buttons, they are so stunning that I haven’t dared eat any of mine yet. I won’t hold out for much longer though!

PS. I was thrilled to see that Bettys in Northallerton has just been named the best place in Britain to have afternoon tea. The Top Tea Place accolade was given by The Tea Guild, which has been running the awards for nearly 30 years. As Irene Gorman, head of The Tea Guild, said: “The attention to detail, quality of food, lovingly prepared by their team who strive to ensure, where possible, that all food is sourced locally, and whose excellent knowledge and service of teas served, is second to none.”

The award is SO deserved. For three years we lived in a tiny village just four miles outside Northallerton and every Monday afternoon, after I’d collected my children from school, we’d drive to Bettys for tea. My son always had a tea cake, my daughter a pink fondant fancy, and we’d drink lashings of Earl Grey tea. It was perfect in every way. WELL DONE BETTYS!

Friday book review - Alys, Always by Harriet Lane

Snow, gridlocked traffic, hosepipe bans – the lead-up to Easter hasn’t exactly been cheery this year. In lots of ways I’m quite pleased to be hunkering down at home for the weekend with (hopefully) a stash of chocolate eggs and a pile of good books.

If you’re doing the same in your neck of the woods and are looking for a great read, I can’t recommend Alys, Always highly enough. I’d been interested in Harriet Lane as a writer for a while, ever since I read a moving Daily Telegraph piece about her sight problems. A former staff writer for Tatler and The Observer, she suffers from a rare auto-immune disorder affecting her optic nerve and has lost the sight in one eye.

After losing the journalistic career she loved, Lane decided to turn to novel writing and joined a creative writing class. It was a wise move. In May 2010, the germ of an idea for her debut novel appeared in her head and she began writing. Five months later she’d found a publisher.

Alys, Always is the story of Frances, a lonely, 30-something sub editor on a paper called The Questioner. At work, the literary editor and her bumptious 23-year-old deputy treat her like a skivvy, and at home she leads a colourless, solitary existence where nothing much ever happens.

But one winter evening, as she heads back to London after a visit to her parents, she spots an illuminated shape through the trees. A car has crashed off the road and inside the crumpled wreck a woman is dying. Weeks later, the woman’s family contacts Frances “to meet the person who was there” and she is drawn into their brittle, privileged world - with life-changing consequences.

Alys, Always is a subtle, beautifully observed and exquisitely written novel – the sort of book you read in one beguiling go. I can’t wait for Lane’s next.

Alys, Always by Harriet Lane (Orion, £12.99)

Dear Virginia Ironside - Hell is NOT a room full of other women

It’s been a bad week for women, I reckon. First we had Samantha Brick wailing how other women hate her because she’s so beautiful and today the usually astute agony aunt Virginia Ironside has written a piece in the Daily Mail titled “Hell on earth is a room full of other women!”

Ironside claims: “I have dozens of female friends and I’m deeply fond of them all. But if you put a load of women together, a toxic chemical change seems to occur – one that turns them into bitchy, gossiping harpies, and produces an explosive reaction to me. And I’m not the only person to feel this way.”

Well, I’m sorry, I don’t know ANY women who feel this way. I’ve worked in loads of offices where women have been in the majority and have encountered nothing but professionalism, support, friendship and fun.

Ironside mentions that she used to work at Woman magazine, where she says, she found “how bitchy and cruel women can be when they’re in a group – women, who on their own, are perfectly nice and friendly.”

Funnily enough, at the time Ironside was writing for Woman, I worked as a feature writer for the opposition, Woman’s Own. The two weekly magazines were in the same South Bank tower block, two floors apart, and I’m sure the offices were pretty similar. The Woman’s Own features department consisted of one man and around ten women, and I can’t remember any bitchiness at all. Deadlines were tight and the pressure to get the best interviews intense, but we worked hard and had fun. I made lifelong friends there – in fact if my best pals Lesley and Daff phoned right now and suggested lunch I’d drop everything and go like a shot.

I’m a freelance writer now and mostly work from home so I wondered if I’m perhaps out of touch. But over the last five years I’ve worked closely with an international PR company, writing newsletters about apprenticeships, skills and training. All my colleagues there are high-flying women in their 20s and 30s and I’ve found exactly the same environment of hard work, courtesy and respect.  No back-biting whatsoever.

And then there’s the fabulous (mainly female) Romantic Novelists’ Association. From providing advice and support to up and coming authors to throwing ultra-glam parties to celebrate the achievements of their top names, the RNA proves once and for all that hell is NOT a room full of other women…

Teenagers, cars and insurance

When my teenage daughter celebrated her 17^th birthday I rashly promised that I’d buy her a car once she’d passed her driving test. We lived 20 miles from her school at the time, a journey that took more than an hour as the number 59 bus wove its way through the pretty villages of north Oxfordshire. Not surprisingly, she couldn’t wait to ditch her bus pass and drive her own car.

It took her nearly a year to do it but she passed her test first time (thank you to BSM’s wonderful Tracey). So despite my misgivings I threw caution to the wind and bought her a second-hand Renault Clio. That’s when, like many other parents, I discovered how expensive it is to insure a car for a teenager. So when the Sainsbury’s Bank Family Bloggers Network asked if I’d like to run a guest post on car insurance for teenagers on House With My Name, it seemed like a pretty good idea. Here it is:

Will you be paying for your teenager’s car insurance?

Most teenagers can’t wait to pass their driving test and discover ultimate freedom with their first car. Before you know it, a savings account will be empty and a new motor will be parked outside, waiting to be driven by an ecstatic teenager. Only trouble is, it could cost them thousands of pounds to insure. 

Cue an intervention from loving parents, who are only too happy to help out. Is there any harm in lending a helping hand? Well, that’s the question. So to avoid any major headaches, it’s important to be aware of the pros and cons.



Risk



First things first – if the new driver is to have their own car, it will be worth their while choosing one with a small engine. Anything sporty or with modifications will add to an already large insurance bill. 
Some insurance companies won’t even insure 17 to 20-year-olds, even with a small car. This is mainly due to the high risk posed by younger drivers, especially 17 to 19-year-old males, whose average claim according to 2010 figures is £3,433 – almost three times more than a male over 50. 

Now, that’s not to say all teenagers are dangerous drivers, but it explains why insurance providers are wary.


‘Fronting’ the policy



Many parents choose the option of adding their teenager as a named second driver on their own policy, and this can be a good way of saving money. However, deliberately ‘fronting’ a policy for a teenager when they are in fact the main driver of the vehicle is considered fraudulent. If the young driver was to have an accident, the insurance company could refuse to pay out, and might even prosecute. 



Insurance providers have methods of discovering who the main driver of a vehicle is – they might examine the contents of the car or trace who’s been paying for the fuel bills. So if you’re going to name anybody on your own policy, make sure they remain the second driver – and that they drive safely, of course.



Protect your no claim discount



So adding a teenager to your own car insurance can save you money, but there are also disadvantages. For example, they might not be able to build up their own no claim discount this way, and that could be important in reducing their insurance bills in the future. So consider choosing a policy that offers a no claim discount to second drivers, as well as the main policy-holder.

Another disadvantage is that your own insurance premium could increase with a young driver added, plus you may risk losing your own no claim discount if the second driver has an accident.

Every teenager is different

As a parent, you’ll know your teenager the best and make your decisions accordingly. Some might feel it best to delay the age their offspring starts their driving lessons, until they’re older and in a better position to pay their own way – and their insurance bills might be cheaper by then too!

Some parents might consider lending their teenager a percentage of the insurance premium, on the condition they’re prepared to earn the remainder. This option allows them to appreciate the responsibilities of being an adult – surely an important lesson.

Whatever option you choose, it's essential that you and your family pick a car insurance policy that meets your needs.

Guest blog written by Jules Anthony.