LA part two

Went surfing to Malibu on my birthday with Jude. It made up for not seeing the girls and Iain, which felt very weird. Now Watergate Bay, where beginners can stand up is one thing, Malibu is another. Put it this way, I did not do a Cameron Diaz and effortlessly sweep in on every wave, I spent most of my time paddling out to catch waves that kept eluding me. Caught a few in the end, but got nervous when one female surfer paddled over to say she just wanted to tell me how brave I was! It was plainly obvious to all the experts I was completely out of my depth. No worries, I surfed (very badly) at Malibu, and if you lose the brackets, that's all that matters! We had cocktails on the beach and then headed back for a fab supper.

Our big night out was at The Abbey, LA's most famous gay bar, and whether you're gay or straight, you cannot fail to have a good time. Most of the barmen are very good looking, straight, married guys (work that out) and it reminded me of the mad times we used to have clubbing with Gary, my lovely bro-in-law.

Came home Sunday night and still battling jet lag - as an eight hours a night girl, it is so dull to wake up at 3am feeling wide awake - and back in the groove of doing the less glamorous bit of writing everything up.

The only thing to get really excited about this week was the prospect of an open fire now the nights are getting chilly. It's a way of avoiding the five times an hour power cuts we were getting last winter and nothing beats an open fire. As I write, it's been going an hour, the room is filling with smoke and I can barely see, so not exactly a triumph but determined to get that *&**%ing chimney working. Have discovered that flames are good, but as soon as they die down, the smoke starts to flow in, so it's a constant relay of chucking more on everytime it starts to settle down - the perfect antidote to a cosy night lazing by the fire!

Sometimes there is nothing better in the world than room service. Arrived in LA on Friday and have been busy working and going out to fab restaurants. Interviews so far include Sam Neill (charming) Sally Field (very sweet) Rob Lowe, Felicity Huffman (very witty) and today, Courteney Cox (having heard horror stories, was surprised to find she was really quite funny and a good chat and in excellent shape at 45, which is comforting for someone who is not a million miles away from that herself.)
I'm staying at the London Hotel in West Hollywood, a truly decadent hotel where they hold yoga classes by the pool, give you suites big enough to throw a party in and generally go the extra mile to make you feel special. After eating sushi at Koi, which is one of the best Japanese restaurants in LA, and dinner last night here at Gordon Ramsay's restaurant, it was a thrill to realise that actually, I didn't have to go out tonight. So I went to the gym, soaked in a bath so big that a small child could swim lengths in it and ordered, yes, more sushi, from room service. Perfection.
On Sunday night some friends of friends took me to see Kylie in concert at the Hollywood Bowl. It is an amazing venue, an amphitheatre set in parkland so as it gets dark, it looks even more magical. We were right at the front and Kylie was a little pocket fairy in wacky costumes, belting out all her disco tunes and making the 75% gay crowd go delirious with excitement. The after-show party was equally fab, with pole dancers, drag queens and dancers on stilts entertaining everyone while Kylie sat in the VIP area with a few friends.
So far, have checked out a few shops between interviews (it has to happen) and these are my tips if you come to LA. Wasteland on Melrose is probably the best vintage store I have ever been to, they stock everything from Marc Jacobs to Missoni at basement prices, including Sass and Bide jeans for $45 (don't bother rushing, I bought them.) Everything I have ever bought there I still love, it's worth the airfare for that alone. Madison on Melrose is designer but with a sale offering 75% off, it was affordable too, so the studded black Pour la Victoire heels found a worthy home.
It's my birthday tomorrow and it is going to be very weird waking up alone. I have the girls homemade cards in my suitcase which will make me cry, but Judy has arranged cocktails and dinner at the Mondrian tomorrow evening, which will be really good fun. If we get a chance we are heading to Malibu after work so I can do some surfing and she can do some laughing.

It's official...Issy is a proper Frenchy now. She sang La Marseillaise yesterday in the village square with all her classmates at a commemoration for Amiral de Grasse, a famous French admiral who was born in the village 200-odd years ago. It was amazing to hear her sing the French national anthem in perfect French, especially when she doesn't even know God Save The Queen! She has been practising all week and despite the fact that we had heavy heads thanks to a very late night, we were blown away.
I'm off to LA on a lovely job this week but it has extended from 8 days to almost three weeks, meaning I will be away for my birthday, so we had a few friends over for sushi and champers on Saturday. The highlights....making a speech barefoot on the bench as everyone sang happy birthday, falling over with Faye (thankfully by that time I was so 'relaxed' that neither of us hurt ourselves) and just catching up with all our lovely mates. Iain had been out the previous night in Cannes with all his old city mates plus Mat and Milly so to say he was fragile would be understating it somewhat.
He came home Saturday afternoon, really wanting to go to bed, but instead had to be the host wth the most and actually filled people's glasses up and was very effective, much more so than usual when he is too busy knocking back the vino to worry about silly things like making sure everyone else has a drink. Then he cut all the sushi that Issy and I spent Friday night making, and laid it all out beautifully. I'd like to say that he also cleared up while I went to bed but that would be a lie. When the last stragglers left at 3.30, he just mumbled 'gotta go bed, let's leave it til morning' always a mistake but I could see his point.
Had my second tennis lesson today. Liv is fuming that my coach is the best looking man that possibly either of us have ever seen, which certainly makes it a more enjoyable experience on a Monday morning. It was a toss up between the tall, dark and extremely handsome 25-year-old and the grey haired but very sweet closer to my age 50-year-old. Reader, who would you choose?
My efforts to be cool are failing miserably though. Last week, I fell over trying to return a shot and cut my knee and ended up a bloody, sweaty mess. And this week, I managed to top that by whacking him in the shoulder with my raquet as I tried to practise the shot he was demonstrating. He said he is going to wear a crash helmet for my next lesson and I don't think he's joking.

Surf bore

Going to an old people's home to see my 92-year-old Nanny Kit, who has Alzheimers and is virtually immobile was always going to be a sad experience. It's the first time I've seen her since April, when I visited her in hospital in London after a fall at home left her bruised and disorientated. What I didn't expect was the laughter and sheer hilarity that a random bunch of old people can generate. Justin and mum have dubbed it One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest at Lennox House because there is always some utterly mad scenario going on which has the visitors in stitches.

Last time I saw Nanny Kit, she looked very old, very frail and very much like she had given up on life. She was barely eating, she hated being visited by carers four times a day at home and seemed to have nothing to make her smile. I braced myself for the worst so to see her with her hair freshly permed, her nails painted, looking yes a bit thin but happy was beyond brilliant.

She has made a good friend in Lily, an octogenarian with two teeth, whose best buddy is a toy monkey called Jamie, which hangs off her walking frame and which she talks to non-stop. She also has three-way conversations between her girlhood self, her dad and Jamie...getting the picture? Lily got up to start dancing around the dayroom on her walkng frame as everyone else was having afternoon tea and cake, and Nanny Kit whispered to me, in a stage whisper that everyone else could hear, 'Oooh Karen, look at Lily, she's mad that one!' like she was only sane person in the room.

It's the best laugh I've had with Nan for about five years, and you couldn't feel sad for her, because she seems so much happier surrounded by people and staff who really care, than sat in her flat on her own 24/7.

Went surfing to Newquay the next day and after three years of trying desperately hard to stand up on the board for longer than 3 seconds, finally it all came together. Sarah and I spent our mornings struggling into wetsuits to be battered around by the waves, but the sun was shining and the surf made you feel alive, even after 4am nights and too much partying. On paper, it sounds like hell but it is the most fun you can have, and we would drag ourselves exhausted out of the water after three hours, desperately keen to carry on but just too damn knackered to continue. Norma thought we were both mental, and kept wondering how being rolled around the Atlantic could be more attractive than lying on a sun lounger with the papers, wandering off for the odd massage or swim in the heated outdoor pool.

My little world was rocked this morning when I saw Sara on the school run and she told me that she and Adrian are moving back to England. Adrian was the first person who spoke to me on the school run last year, when we were newbies and had no friends, and their Christmas Eve drinks party introduced us to the village community and put us in the mood for a great crimble. They both love a party, are always the last to leave (just like us!) and we quickly became friends, so it is a real blow to hear they are going, although hopefully their departure is not imminent.

It's eight years since I last went to New York. This trip was a fly-in, fly-out job, one night at the W on Lexington (fab, especially all the Bliss spa minatures in the bathroom) one night on the red eye (not so fab, but Virgin premium made it a bit more bearable) and a total of 40 hours on six planes and in transit. I could have done New Zealand and back in the time it took to connect to London and NY, mainly because there were no available direct flights to London at such short notice due to the mass exodus back to the UK for the start of school so I had to fly Swiss Air via Zurich both ways. The best bit of all, after eight hours in the lounge at Heathrow post red eye, was being delayed into Zurich which meant a jet lagged dash from one gate to another to make the last flight to Nice. Fun.

Even so, it was worth it. We arrived Wednesday afternoon, dumped our luggage and went straight to Brooklyn to watch Phill Jupitus do the comedy circuit with loads of other New York stand ups. He was unknown to everyone but us, and pulled it off at two brilliant clubs, The Lovin' Cup in Williamsburg and The UCB, in Chelsea, which is one of NY's most respected comedy clubs. Lasted til 1am fuelled by mojitos and was gutted to find out we missed karaoke until 4am with Phill and his mates belting out numbers from Hairspray at a tranny bar. Another time.

Highlight No 2, shopping in SoHo after the interview on Thursday. Abercrombie's ridiculous up-their-own-bottom rule of making shoppers queue outside to be allowed in by two bouncers (I'm not kidding), only to struggle through the store, which is dimly lit and reverberates to really loud music, slightly dented the experience. Maybe I'm just getting old but I fail to see the joy in not knowing what colour hoodies and t shirts you have bought until you have paid and stumbled back out into the glaring sunshine. Suffice it to say I'm popular chez moi with the girls and Iain who got his longed for Converse (at $45 not €70, which almost makes it worth the trip alone.)
Here's me and Zoe, above, having a rest in SoHo, shopping is hard work!

Have fitted in some work and am off tomorrow to see my nan in London in her care home, which I know will be sad. She has aged so much since I last saw her according to Mum, so I'm bracing myself for that, but still so pleased to be seeing her. Then off to Newquay to make a fool of myself in the surf one more time - if i don't stand up for longer than 10 seconds on my board I might have to admit defeat and take up crochet instead. AS IF.

Where did summer go?

Summer is almost over, the girls go back to school this week and we have had the best time. The last two months has been busy with lots of UK friends and family visiting, and although it has been amazing fun, we are all completely shattered and secretly looking forward to a normal back-to-school back-to-work September.

Spent a week at Lake Maggiore in Italy, see pictures above, Mac and Laura took a camper van and a speedboat so we spent our days wakeboarding, waterskiing and exploring villages like Arona and Stresa, shopping, eating and drinking. We were outnumbered by kids (7) aged between 15 and ten but they all hung out together and had the most brilliant time (especially Livvy, who had three teen boys to keep her company!)

We had a pitch right by the lake so every morning started with a swim and breakfast outside under the trees. I know that of all the holidays the girls have had at amazing places around the world, camping is their absolute favourite. I remember once packing up our stuff early after a wet weekend in Dorset and they refused to speak to me all the way home because they were so mad that I had cut short their best ever holiday. And even for a creature comfort freak like me, leaving after five days under canvas felt a bit premature, but it's a different deal altogether when you don't have to wade through mud in flip flops to reach the shower block.

The last ten days have been spent catching up with London friends, which means putting your tourist hat on and doing all the things you don't have time to do when live here. Shopping with the girls in St Tropez and lunch at Byblos, Baoli with Lydia and Livvy on their first grown up night out at a club, lazy suppers with friends, cocktails at a couple of new beach bars and tennis with Sarah have been my highlights. We have all agreed that this has been the best summer in the seven summers we have spent on the Cote d'Azur.

The month was rounded off in fabulous style last night at Tony and Shan's summer party. Eighty people sat at long candlelit trestle tables under the trees on their terrace and Shan produced a fantastic array of dishes, many of which were made from veggies grown in her garden. Gazpacho, garlic soup, tomato salsa, chicken kebabs, Thai chicken, pork and aubergine curries were followed by liqueur panna cottas and frozen grapefruit in bowls made of ice. It was a magical night.

Work hat is firmly on now, and am off to New York this week to watch Phill Jupitus take the stand-up circuit by storm and get his views on the differences between American and British comedy. Cannot wait.

Breaking and entering

It's the holidays, cue a time when you get nothing productive done and have whining voices in your ear saying I'm hungry, what are we doing today and when can we stop for lunch so this week my plan of action was take them out as much as possible and make them so tired they can barely speak, all in the name of fun.
So, we tripped off to St Tropez on Tuesday to stay with a friend who is house sitting in a villa overlooking the bay for six weeks. We chatted by the pool, drank un petit Chablis and put the world to rights while the kids played, all good. It is so hot at the moment, at 6.30 last night it was showing 34 degrees on the car, which is too, too much (but I know how rubbish the UK summer is right now so not moaning, really.)
Arrived back last night and spent this morning in Antibes at the market with a friend who knows it so well that I ended up spending a fortune at all the rigt stalls (but a Triumph bikini, sundress, silk shift and red leather handbag made it feel better and all for the price of a half price Tara Jarmon silk skirt in Rue d'Antibes) before heading to the beach. The boys suggested tombstoning off the rocks at Cap d'Antibes, a phrase which conjures up the local A&E to me, but the girls were keen so off they went, leaving us to swim and chat on the beach in perfect peace.
When we got a text at 7 asking if we could come and meet them, they couldn't wait to tell us how they bunked into the pool at the Eden Roc, only the most expensive hotel on the Riviera (preferred choice of Brad, Angelina, Quentin etc) and how they spent 45 minutes in the infinity pool undetected. Scarily, they had the whole trespassing thing off to a fine art. Every time they swam past a resident, one of them would say, my suite is lovely, how is yours? They talked about the chocolates left on the pillows each night and even worked out which room numbers they would use if quizzed by the lifeguard! Issy spent an hour tonight facebooking all her friends with the hotel link so they can check it out - most of them live in Brookmans Park in currently very rainy Herts so am sure they will be thrilled to get her message.
The day got even better when I saw that my first feature, on our lovely mate Mat Barker and his boat The Blue Peter, was the cover story of The French Paper's Life section, and then arrived home to open my mail - a cheque from the DSS for overpayment of my NI in the UK for the past 11 years, two copies of Grazia (thanks Jeanie), and a letter from my accountant saying that the taxman owes me. Don't feel so bad about the market now.
The only downside of the past two weeks has been getting stung by a jellyfish. As I swam I felt something attack my thigh, no kidding I thought it was a shark the pain was so intense. By the time I got back to the beach, my leg was throbbing and the next day, it had swelled to twice its usual size, was bright red, itchy and about 100 degrees. Ten days on, I have a massive scar and it is still itching like the pox. I braved the sea today but must have looked like a paranoid schizo as every time something glistened or moved by me I was a bag of nerves. Have noticed people really staring at it if I wear shorts or a bikini, it is quite interesting how differently you are perceived with such an obvious physical imperfection.
Anyway, tennis tomorrow, am planning to hold my head high after the aquasplash swimsuit debacle, I have no shame. Perhaps I should just slash my tennis skirt across the butt to prove that I do indeed have a sense of humour.