Things I'm glad my mother taught me

Before I left home, my mother gave me a sort of short-course in self-care. Having grown up in the sort of house where books teeter in piles in every corner and picnics in the garden end up with a rotting rug and some soggy crumbs three days later, I was a bit surprised when, before I went to university, mum came into my room weilding a bottle of Cif and a sponge and saying 'right, darling! Time for you to learn how to clean a bath.' Turns out, though, that learning how to do stuff is really useful. These are the things that have served me best in my adult life. They make me feel capable and self-sufficient, calm and in control. Thanks mum.

1. How to clean a bath. Weirdly important, this, for feeling grown-up and pristinely clean. I'm now so attuned to it that I actively notice if there is so much as one stray hair against the otherwise gleaming enamel.

2. Cooking. Being able to cook is seriously useful for impressing people and feeling cosy. A good cook need never be lonely. And if you've done the cooking, you don't have to do the washing up.

3. Wearing a coat. I'd always thought that coats were the symbol of the bourgeois system, only for nerds and conformists and not for free spirits like me. What a mistake. Wearing a coat keeps you warm, and being warm enough is key to happiness.

4. Small luxuries. I don't need mink coats or holidays to Jamaica... not much, anyway. But a new bottle of Floris bath oil or a delicious supper can make the world of difference to mood.

5. Attitude. My natural take on the world is mildly cynical. But if you look at life in a spirit of cheeriness, and not one of sardony, it does seem nice. And that's nice.

Port Eliot

Port Eliot is a lovely, tiny, cosy festival. It's full of bookish types, is in the grounds of one of the most beautiful estates in England and is pretty small. All of these are good things.

In fact, everything was pretty good: the sun shone all weekend, I didn't get too many mosquito bites (when I went in 2009 I counted 37 on one leg before I gave up), and the loos had lights, flushed and were continually supplied with fresh loo roll. I saw Caitlin Moran, who is a complete heroine. I bumped into lots of nice people. I felt smug about being the only person on my literary pub quiz team who knew that The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas was actually written by Gertrude Stein. I was with two of my best friends who I adore and we drank and danced and giggled a lot.

And yet... I sort of hated it.

My festival days are drawing to a close. For one thing, I hate big crowds (even Latitude seemed overwhelming) and being fenced in and herded. I also suffer from hypochondria so intense that being more than a mile from an A&E department is enough to make me break into a cold sweat and imaginary heart attack - it's the main reason I love living where I do at the moment, where the nearest hospital is so close I'm pretty confident that even if I had a stroke, I would be able to drag myself there.

But, basically, I am too old for festivals, and too middle-class. This may mean that I am boring - if so, bring on the boredom. I mean, I like staying out late and being naughty as much as the next girl; but I also like having the option of not. Of staying in with some horlicks, a BBC documentary and some actual hot running water and actual soap. And then go to sleep in an actual bed that isn't on a slope and doesn't have rocks underneath two very thin layers of plastic and isn't accompanied by the sounds of a stranger's snoring.

Try as I may to be broad-minded, I can't help but slightly disaprove of hippies who bring their brood of children (why do they always have so Goddanm many of them?!), sedate them to sleep and then go and take alarming amounts of MDMA for three days straight. Or the yobbos who leave their lager cans on the grass and rip down the art installations. Even the normal seeming, sweet and well-educated people in their mid-twenties meet with a bit of scorn - why the hell, I think, neglecting to remember that I rank among their number, are they actively choosing to be dirty and cold and surrounded by drunk stangers for a weekend?

So that's the end of that, then.

Heeeerrrrrrre's Violet

All change, please.

Since I last wrote, I have left the bookshop (which is very sad indeed and I miss A, J, D, S, C and F almost constantly) and got a lovely new job at a magazine, which I adore and means lots of writing and giggling: I spend my days mainly discussing Pippa Middleton's bottom and doing things like researchnig the cost of renting a helipcopter to take you from Nice to St. Tropez and so on.

I have turned 23, which is weirdly A LOT older than 22. At 22, you can still be precocious and enormously over-acheiving: people are downright amazed that you have got a degree AND a master's AND a job at such a tender age. By 23, however, it's the norm and tales of your success, which would have met with wild applause mere months ago, are suddenly rather dull. This is very annoying, especially for me, as I love being praised. Man cannot live by bread alone, but I reckon I could get along just fine with nothing but compliments.

Anyway, off to the Port Eliot festival this weekend with O and A. Slightly dreading it as have just remembered that a) I hate festivals and b) I don't have any gum boots, but hey-ho. I'll get all erudite, like, and fill y'all in next week.

Brothers: mine, Roger Goldman's and Jack Yeats'.

I just finished reading Barbara Trapido's 'Brother of the More Famous Jack' and seldom has anything given me so much pleasure. It is the most heavenly book, with exactly the atmosphere of how one would imagine Cath Kidston's house to be, maybe with the addition of some heavyweight literary and philosophical conversation, a handful of freshly-picked daffodils and a few cracked plates.

There was a passage which particularly delighted me, with its combination of idealistic youthfulness, pure English eccentricity and scholarly puritanism. I will copy it out in full: Jane is the mother and Jonathon the 17 year old son who has just been given a detention:

'You are cheeky, Jont,' Jane says without concern. 'I consider it part of your charm, but you cannot expect others to do so.'
'The bloody fool asks me to paraphrase "heaven's cherubin, horsed upon the sightless couriers of the air",' he says, thumping about. 'What's the fucking good of paraphrasing it? It sounds better the way it is.'
'What did you say to him, Jont?' Jane says insistently.
'I said if he didn't understand it he shouldn't be doing it with us.'
'And?' she says archly.
'He said if I was so clever would I like to take the class. So I took the class. A bloody sight better at it I was, too, but he made me stop after about ten minutes because it showed him up.'

It reminded me completely of my own brother, the lovely G, also 17, who is the sweetest and gentlest person I know but who also has absoutely zero respect for authority, and is too funny and perceptive to ever be quiet for long. His school reports always say things like 'G is a very bright and able pupil, but would do better to spend less of his time in class distracting his peers'. Or, 'G shows great promise but his contributions to discussions would be more beneficial to him and his classmates if they were less tangential.' The best thing he has ever done, in my eyes, goes like this: he was in an English class and put his hand in the air to answer a question. His teacher, mistakenly, thought that he was making a rude gesture and snapped 'Right, G, I've had enough of this! Detention!' to which G replied, solemnly but vehemently, 'Don't be ridiculous.'

Never have I been so proud.

Idler and Idler

Went to the opening party for the 'Idler Academy' which has just opened in Notting Hill on Thursday night. It was a fabulous party - lots of beautiful and interesting people and 'slebs (including Emma Thompson who I elbowed in the face, accidentally, obviously). Saw someone I thought I knew and kissed them hello (on the cheek) before realising it wasn't someone I knew, it was just someone who comes into the shop sometimes. Got called 'Violent' for about two hours by a drunk man. Kept needing to pee. Saw the Latinist and author Harry Mount and quite fancied him. Managed to walk in my high heels all night EVEN THOUGH they are very high and the floor was very uneven and I was very drunk. Told A and S that I loved them about a zillion times, which is true but perhaps didn't need to be stated quite so often. Spent a lot of time walking from the front of the shop to the garden at the back in case there was someone fun I was missing. Flirted a lot. Left party and weaved around the surrounding streets with a group of other hungry revellers looking for an open restaurant, couldn't find one, went to a pub, felt very cross when the last order bell rang almost instantly. Then went back to local friend's house and insisted on him slaving over a hot stove for forty minutes to make me food, didn't eat it and fell asleep in my dress. All in all a lovely evening, and one which precipitated much idleness the following day.

Things that don't suit me and never will

Body-con dresses: I am too womanly and fertile i.e. pear-shaped and pot-bellied.

Palazzo trousers: particularly sad as they look so darned comfortable.

Neon pink lipstick: emphasises that weird patch on my chin that's a different colour to the rest of my face.

High-waisted jeans: see 'Body-con dresses' above.

Beanies: in fact, any hat. Or headband. My face needs to be mostly obscured by hair to be at all presentable. This can create problems in the winter - maybe a balaclava might be the solution.

Sexy lingerie: makes me look cheap, however expensive it is.

Cropped t-shirts: see 'Body-con dresses' above.

Pink, purple or red eye-shadow: makes me look like I've been in a fight / crying / have conjunctivitis / all of the above.

Those adorable plaits above one's head like a German milk-maid: try as I might, and believe me I do, I can never get these to look good. It is the thing about me that most disappoints my mother.

Bikinis: see 'Body-con dresses' above.

I Dream of Spring

It's that time of year again... After four months of being constantly swaddled in winter clothes (I'd like to pretend it was all fine-knit cashmere in biscuit colours, but actually it was moth-eaten Barbours and long-jonhs under jeans), I am ready once again for tea-dresses and bikinis. The fun bit of winter is over - Christmas and its attendant snows have come and gone, New Year's Eve is a distant (and blurred) memory, mince pies are, alas, no longer readily available.

Now the dullness sets in: the February detox (going cold turkey in January isn't the done thing any more); the unrelenting, unrepentant cold; the momentary hope in the morning when one sees a clear blue sky, only to step outside and be plunged instantly into icy misery. All any of us want is summer by now, yet God refuses to give in even a little bit and shift it back to earlier in the year. And, worst of all, spring itself is such a false dawn - yes, things look prettier and you're less likely to die of hypothermia on your way to buy a pint of milk, but - let's face it - England doesn't really get warm until mid-June, and even then not really and not for very long.

So, a little cheering up is necessary. After my woes of last week, I have been on a self-care mission, modelling myself on my friend B from school who is undoubtedly the most sorted girl I know. She recommended tom yum soup as the perfect comfort food: my fridge is now replete with nam pla and chicken stock. I have been having hot baths with lavender-scented bubbles and going to bed by ten every night. Treats include leave-in conditioning masks and trips to art galleries. I have been reading up on Jung and have just ordered Julia Cameron's 'The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity'. There has been lots of DVD watching - currently, the boxed set of The Tudors which is utterly compulsive in a sixteenth-century-Gossip-Girl way. I have been wearing my nicest silk blouses and high heels instead of leaving them languishing in the back of my wardrobe. I do yoga stretches before bed, for goodness' sake!

And I am feeling absolutely fantastic. The feeling of potential inherent in waking up every day without a hangover is perhaps the greatest revelation of my life. My mind, soul and psyche feel nourished (yes, I know this is bullshit terminology, but it's good for all of us to suspend our cynicism every once in a while). My body is my temple (utter bullshit). I feel bright-eyed and bushy tailed and a whole host of other insufferable clichés. Instead of hankering after spring, I am living in the moment in a very zen way, embracing winter's root vegetables and maxed-out central heating. Best of all, I bought a fabulous bright yellow top with scalloped ruffles from H&M. Even in the zenith of non-materialistic self-care, what girl could resist a primrose coloured t-shirt?