My favourite glossy magazine

Glossy magazines have always been a big part of my life. My mum started her career as a feature writer for Woman’s Mirror, a weekly magazine in the Sixties, and I can vividly remember the day she met me from primary school brandishing a tall retro coffee pot in her hand. She’d bought it with the proceeds of her first magazine commission and she was SO proud. So was I for that matter.

In the intervening years I’ve subscribed to scores of different magazines – from Vogue to Country Living – and even worked for a few myself. I love that exciting moment when they thump on to the doormat, usually a couple of days before you can buy them at the shops.

But in recent months I’ve cut the magazines I read down to two. I’m not sure why but I found that I was flicking through most of them and barely reading any articles. They all seemed a bit samey and dull.

There are two subscriptions I’ve hung on to though – for two magazines I reckon are head and shoulders above the rest. One is Grazia, the weekly magazine I’ve blogged about before, and the other is the utterly brilliant Red.

So what’s so great about Red? Well, for starters, it looks like a work of art. The photography is stunning and if I was a student I’d be half tempted to tear the fashion pages out and stick them on my walls. But more importantly, it’s full of stuff I actually want to read. Take the March issue. It’s got an At Home piece with novelist Maggie O’Farrell (I’m counting the days till her latest novel, Instructions for a Heatwave, is published on February 28), an interview with Noel Gallagher and a Q&A with the wonderful Tracey Thorn. The Everything But the Girl singer has just written a book about her life called Bedsit Disco Queen – my favourite book title of the year so far.

But as I flicked through the current issue’s 274 pages I was sad to see that the March issue is editor-in-chief Sam Baker’s last one. She’s leaving to write her next novel and have a go at being her own boss – which shows that she follows her own advice because Red is all about inspiring its readers and exhorting them to try new things.

So, from a loyal Oxford reader, all I can say is goodbye and good luck to Sam Baker. And thank you for all the amazing issues of Red you’ve published over the last six years.

The best boulangerie

The woman at the front of the queue was in full and belligerent flow. I don’t know who she was talking to on her mobile but she was certainly giving them what-for, effing and blinding away and yelling that she f…... wasn’t going to be treated like that.

The weary-looking shop assistant (at a chemist's in a nearby town) had clearly seen it all before. She didn’t turn a hair, just waited for the woman to finish ranting, raised her eyebrows ever-so slightly and then slapped her change into her hand. The loud-mouthed customer grabbed her shopping and stomped out without saying a word to the assistant. No thank you. No nothing.

I haven’t blogged about France for ages but it suddenly struck me how different shopping on the other side of the Channel is. At my favourite boulangerie the lovely proprietor is so charming that her devoted regulars don’t mind how long they wait to be served. Her freshly-baked baguettes and tartes aux framboises are so delicious that the lunchtime queue snakes out of the shop and down the pavement - but no one bats an eyelid, let alone complains about the wait.

When we get to the counter she always greets us personally, compliments my children on their French and smiles as we fumble for the right number of euros. She packs everything into exquisitely-wrapped paper parcels, tells us a bit about her time working as a hotel receptionist in London and wouldn’t dream of letting us leave without a cheery “au revoir, bonne journée.”

Am I the only driver without a satnav?

I seem to be one of the few people who doesn’t have a satnav in their car. I still rely on an ancient AA atlas that cost £1.99 in a garage years ago. The Oxford page has got a massive rip through it, but apart from that the map is still doing sterling service and I rarely get lost.

But now it appears that I’m one of a dying breed. A survey by budget NetVoucherCodes has found that the UK’s map-reading skills are fading fast. Sixty-nine per cent of women and 59 per cent of men say they’d be lost without a satnav, while four out of five 18 to 30 year olds couldn’t manage without one.

I’m mystified by the popularity of satnavs. For a start I don’t want to be bossed about by an annoying voice when I’m driving - and quite apart from that, satnavs aren’t all that they are cracked up to be. Lorries are always getting stuck in tight lanes, while car drivers have ended up on railway lines, cliff edges and in Richmond, North Yorkshire, rather than Richmond upon Thames. And look at what happened to Sabine Moreau, a 67-year-old Belgian woman who set off on a trip to Brussels earlier this month to pick up a friend from the station. The journey should have been 38 miles but thanks to her satnav she took a wrong turn and ended up 900 miles away in Zagreb, Croatia. Stick to a map next time, Sabine, and you’ll be fine.

PS. Don’t worry, these two tube trains haven’t gone AWOL after relying too heavily on their satnavs. I passed them in Shoreditch the other day and couldn’t resist taking a picture. They are actually recycled Jubilee Line trains (there are four altogether) and they’ve cleverly been converted into offices and studios high above Great Eastern Street.

Friday book review - The Kissing Booth by Beth Reekles

Thousands of writers dream of hitting the big time with their first novel. And that’s exactly what Beth Reekles has done. The surprise is that Beth is a 17-year-old schoolgirl studying for her A levels and hoping to read physics at university.

She began writing at the age of 15, sitting upstairs in her bedroom at the family home in Newport, Wales and uploading a chapter of her work at a time. She quickly got the thumbs-up from her readers. Her very first chapter received a million hits and pretty soon she was being deluged with emails urging her to upload the next instalments faster.

Beth then began writing on Wattpad, the free online novel-sharing platform for amateur writers, and the compliments flooded in. Her first novel, The Kissing Booth, rapidly became the most-viewed, most-commented-on teen fiction title on Wattpad, with 19 million reads and 40,000 comments to date. It won the Wattpad Award for Teen Fiction and last October was snapped up by Random House.

Beth has now signed a three-book deal with Random House and the publisher has already released The Kissing Booth as an ebook (it will be published in book form this summer). The ebook reveals that Beth, whose real name is Reeks, is “an undeniable bookworm and an avid drinker of tea,” while her acknowledgements include “a big thank you” to her GCSE English teacher, Mr Maugham.

So after all that, what is the book actually like? Well, it’s aimed at the YA market, so I’m clearly not the target reader. But the answer is that it’s sweet, romantic and well-written. Not only that, it will appeal to older readers too.

Set in America, it’s the story of Rochelle (also known as Elle or Shelly), a pretty 16-year-old who’s never had a boy friend and has never been kissed. She and her male best friend Lee hit on the idea of organising a kissing booth at their school’s spring carnival, where she ends up kissing Lee’s bad boy older brother Noah, tries to keep her feelings for Noah secret from Lee and finds her whole world turned upside down.

Not surprisingly, Beth’s teenage characters sound real and authentic. They talk like teenagers and act like teenagers – which is more than you can say about some of the teen novels written by older novelists. The book’s gone down a storm with readers in America and the Far East, as well as the UK, and there’s no doubt about it, Beth Reekles is an author to watch.

The Kissing Booth by Beth Reekles (RHCP Digital, £2.84)

Les Misérables - rapturous applause from the audience

I’ve been longing to see the movie of Les Misérables since last spring, when I unexpectedly stumbled on to the film set during a visit to Greenwich. With filming due to take place the following day, I couldn’t quite work out how the giant stone elephant and extraordinary pile of old wood, furniture and rubbish the crew had built next to the Old Royal Naval College would look in the movie.

Well now I know – because the film is out in the UK and I foolishly went to see it with my husband at the weekend. I say foolishly because a) I can’t think of a single film we’ve both liked (I’m keeping my fingers crossed for Lincoln) and b) he hates musicals.  But he sweetly went along with my Les Mis plan – and apart from the moment when he whispered a bit too loudly “Oh God, he’s not going to snuff it, is he?” didn’t complain too much. 

So what was our verdict? You won’t be surprised to hear that my husband loathed it. As for me, I thought parts of it were stunning, but at 157 minutes it is way too long and I’m sorry, but the Old Royal Naval College does not look like 19^th century Paris.

The best bits of the film, I reckoned, were Anne Hathaway's touching I Dreamed a Dream, the comic pairing of Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter as the evil innkeeper and his wife (their performances veer slightly towards panto, but are very funny), Samantha Barks as Eponine (she gives a wonderful performance of On My Own) and child actor Daniel Huttlestone as Gavroche (who steals every scene he appears in).

The Tom Hooper-directed film has won three Golden Globes - and been nominated for nine BAFTAs and eight Oscars, including Best Picture Award, Best Actor (Hugh Jackman) and Best Supporting Actress (Anne Hathaway). Some critics have given it ecstatic, five-star reviews, although others have been less enamoured. But on Saturday night in Oxford the audience (apart from my husband) clapped wildly at the end.  I’ve never seen that happen at the cinema before.

Natalie Haynes and Alexandra Shulman appear on With Great Pleasure

With Great Pleasure is one of the best programmes on BBC Radio 4.

If you haven’t discovered it, do give it a try. The series asks well-known names to pick prose and poetry they love - so it’s a fantastic way to discover new writers and hear old favourites.

This week I got the chance to attend a recording of two forthcoming programmes at the BBC’s Broadcasting House. The shows featured two ultra-inspiring women – the first, comedian and writer Natalie Haynes and the second, Vogue editor-in-chief Alexandra Shulman.

The programmes will both be broadcast in February so I don’t want to give too much of the game away but Natalie Haynes’s selection included two rare and exquisite readings by one of our most distinguished writers. Like the rest of the audience, I couldn’t quite believe my eyes when he walked on to the stage.

Then it was time for the second recording. I was fascinated to hear Alexandra Shulman’s choices – not only because she is a brilliant editor but because she is exactly the same generation as me. And sure enough, listening to her choices (beautifully read by Tracy Wiles and Stella Gonet) sent a shiver down my spine. Her favourites included Noel Streatfeild’s classic White Boots, Dorothy Parker’s The Telephone Call, Rosamund Lehman’s Invitation to the Waltz and even Mediterranean Cookery by Elizabeth David. Shulman recalled how the book took her straight back to her North London childhood, in the days when her mother (the distinguished journalist Drusilla Beyfus) would rush in from work and start cooking supper from scratch in their tiny kitchen.

As the child of two journalists, Shulman said that when she was growing up journalism seemed like very hard work for little remuneration. But she loved reading journalists’ writing and the journalist she most admired was Joan Didion, whose Play It As It Lays was another of her (universally excellent) choices.

Shulman, dressed in a stylish bottle green velvet dress, was surprisingly modest and self-effacing as she talked about the titles she’d selected. Being asked to do the programme was, she said, “an incredible treat and privilege.” Actually, being part of the audience was a treat and privilege too.

PS. Alexandra Shulman’s debut novel about three friends who graduate in the 1980s is out in paperback this week. Can We Still Be Friends (Fig Tree, £5.99)