The only other place, I go to is the Park Club in Acton where we have a family membership. Now that we are members, I can’t imagine life without it.  I can do everything here except have my teeth examined, but I could join a bootcamp, go to a pilates class or have a manicure. I can also meet friends for lunch, which is particularly great in the summer, when you can sit on the terrace looking out at 27 acres. It’s somehow so much better than the local park. For a start there are no dogs or strange people lurking behind trees. I love swimming in their outdoor pool. Last year I actually swam while the snow fell around me and it was great to be in the pool with the steam blowing up around me.

Every November they put on a real swash buckling, excellent half hour long firework display (see photo above) and during  December have Christmas events for children including, pantomimes in the studios for kids, as well as Santa’s Grotto (this year being held in an Indian Tepee in the grounds). There is usually a live nativity scene, with sheep, pigs and other farm animals, again held in the grounds. Then the grand finale is Father Christmas’ arrival…. last year he was towed into the grounds on his sleigh by eight real reindeer before handing out presents, the year before that he arrived in a working replica of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the year before that he was lowered in and over the club by a crane! There are also carol concerts held on the terrace as well as an ice skating rink.

I’ve just discovered that if you sign up as a member in the month of November you will get the next month free.  Tempted? If I wasn’t already a member I would be.

I am extremely lazy about leaving my neck of the woods in Shepherds Bush, so when I heard that Destination Skin has a salon in Westfield offering a new menu of skin peel packages I signed up. Although I was wary of Westfield at first, I have since realized how convenient it is. An enthusiastic shopper could buy anything there from a flight simulator experience to a Prada bag, not that I’ve bought either of those, but I do love the Snog frozen yoghurt stand.

Anyway I turned up at Destination Skin,  located in the House of Fraser. I am not that keen on the idea of the redness and peeling which is the result of some stronger peels, so I went for the mildest package, which includes a vitamin c peel. The peel was comfortable. It was followed by microdermabrasion and then ‘advanced electrolysis’ which I had imagined would get rid of the stray hairs but in fact is a method of removing thread veins and mila spots. This was far less painful than the laser treatment I tried a few months ago to try and remove the wretched thread veins. I was finally given a red light (omnilux) treatment to calm everything down and boost collagen. My skin did appear brighter the day after the treatment and had a tanned tone to it and the mila were gone. The thread veins were improved but didn’t completely go. I had one further treatment a couple of weeks later and my pores shrunk a little, but those stubborn old thread veins have still not completely disappeared. I’m not sure they ever will. The package costs £185, but you save on having the treatments individually. Now that the weather is shiny and bright, I have to tackle my dry hands and cracked heels. I am really conscious of my teeth which are certainly not white, more grey, and I need to find time to get my hair coloured and cut, my legs waxed, and my toes painted and all that on top of trying to loose half a stone. Its just not going to happen. I may have to sit down and weep.

The Chi Yu Wellness Centre in George Street, London, is a pleasure to visit. It opened six months ago. The first time I arrived feeling blocked and stiff and Mami Tsang the owner, gave me an integrated treatment combining a few different therapies, such as reflexology, remedial massage and acupressure. I came out dancing. A couple of weeks ago I returned for her chidoriya facial, which is exclusive to the Chi Yu Centre. It was heavenly and in the next few days, two friends noticed my smooth skin.  Before the facial my skin was dehydrated and dry, so Mami cleansed it with organic jojoba, grape seed oil and lavender and palmarosa essential oils. Then she gently exfoliated and softened my skin with rice bran wash which is rich in essential fatty acid and vitamin E. Afterwards she applied hot towels and then massaged my face with a blended oil of Japanese camellia, rosehip, calendula, frankincense and rose essential oils. My face was then toned and cooled with jade stone-rollers which also encourages lymphatic drainage. She made me a customized mask from a blend of calamine clay, rice bran, organic rose water and chamomile water, organic honey and Green tea matcha powder. While it was drying she massaged my neck and shoulders, which nearly sent me to sleep. My skin was toned with chidoriya’s peach moon herbal water and moisturized with chidoriya’s secret de geiko facial cream, containing organic shea butter, camellia oil, peach moon herbal water and rosewood essential oil. This is the kind of facial that I love, applied with care, and customized to each individual.   The uniforms and towels are made from bamboo fibre (60%-70%) and cotton and the salon recycle, use recycled and / or environmentally sustainable materials and products wherever possible.  I’ll be back. Sooner rather than later.

I am thinking about sex. I share a study with my husband, and he is sitting opposite me wearing a black beany hat, that is pointing up. He looks like an ageing gnome. It’s not a sexy look and its not why I am thinking about sex. Last night we watched The History of Violence. In one scene Maria Bello, dresses up as a cheerleader, to excite her husband and performs a slinky mini striptease. What strikes me is how turned on they are by each other. It’s not as if they are newly married, they have a teenage son. I wonder if she hired the outfit? And whether I should too? Am I mad? I wouldn’t even put on a cheerleading outfit as a joke. I can’t even wear a g-string. I am more comfortable wearing the filthy white apron I put on to clean up the cat sick. I conclude that I am a sexual failure and that my husband will most certainly go out and find a woman who is comfortable with a whip and a bit of leather.

But I have to remind myself that this is a Hollywood film, not real life. Most of my girlfriends in long term relationships say they have sex about once a year, except one eccentric woman who claims that her partner likes it morning and evening. I decide to do a quick mini poll and email a friend to ask how her sex life is and she replies, sex? What’s that? I’m not sure if her email makes me feel better or worse.

After the film ended I stayed up far too late reading Rapture by Carol Ann Duffy, a book made up of separate poems about a love affair. The book covers infatuation, longing, passion, commitment, rancour, separation and grief. I read the falling in love part, at midnight. I turned the light off and thought about the opening words to the first poem: The thought of you stayed too late in my head, so I went to bed, dreaming you hard, woke with your name, like tears soft, salt, on my lips…. I realized with a darkening wave of gloom, that I will probably never experience that heady, tortuous floaty, gripping, falling in love sensation ever again.

So I’m still sitting at my desk but now I’m complaining that I’m cold. My husband ignores me. I check facebook to see if the ex boyfriend I dreamt about has joined up yet. He hasn’t. I sigh. My husband is still wearing the hat. I comment on the cold house. He tells me not to moan. It really is cold. I check the boiler and find that it is broken. I am a little smug. I tell him about the boiler and he swears a bit and takes off the damn hat and looks at me for the first time today. “I like your nurse outfit.” He says. Nurse outfit? I look down at the short white filthy apron. “Yes great isn’t it,” I say.

 The judges of One Minute to Save the World, have chosen my favourite short film as the overall winner – The Paper Boat.  The films had to be one minute long and the idea was initially proposed by Wecan (Climate Action Now) of which I am a founding member. The paper boat is a really poignant film showing a little boy moving a paper boat through the sky and dragging it along the parched earth as there is no water to sail it on.  My Paper Boat was made in India, by Arun Bose who is from the state of Kerala. He has been making films based on various tribes and gypsy communities in India, and was responsible for a documentary,  “Not a Drop of Rain” about  100 years of drought in the districts on Kalahandi and Naupada in the State of Orissa. He says the key concept of the winning one minute film came from that documentary which showed him the suffering of tribes  that got displaced from their native lands as result of repeated droughts.  I was involved in the second round of judging before the short listed films went to judges incuding, Bruce Parry, the director of The Age of Stupid, Franny Armstrong, head of the British Film Council, Satwant Gill and writer Mark Lynas. The shortlisted films are on the 1minute website.  Some are brilliant – there are categories for under 18s, professionals, companies and amateurs. There is also a viral category that has a film of a talking cat that is getting a huge amount of hits on youtube.

I feIt a bit old. The couple behind me were talking hangovers and staying up till four and how the clocks going back had made them stay up even later. The man next to me reminded me of the lead singer of EIbow who I have a vague crush on. Maybe he was the lead singer of Elbow? He said his friend hadn’t turned up.

Anyway Tim Minchin covered a whole range of topics:  The environment, his wife (he’s been with since he was 17, he’s now 34) dancing bears, gay bashing and a bit of Jesus bashing, all done with style, wit and irony. At one point he managed to get the audience to sing, We Love Jesus and then We Hate Faggots. He plays the piano beautifully and sings like a pop star. Loved the rap about a new age woman called Storm and the revenge song about the Guardian journalist who gave him a bad review three years ago. Great Evening, highly recommended.

For five years our weekends and most holidays were spent at a tiny rented coastguard cottage on the Solent. It was in a row of ten, with shared gardens, and neighbours with petty issues, but it was amazing to be by the sea. Having said that there were long expanses in the mid winter when we simply didn’t use it.  We couldn’t face the drive, the weather, the wind and the cold. We gave it up in January as it didn’t make sense to be paying for two houses.  At first it was exciting to be in London, so much to see and do. I liked tramping the dirty pavements and going to cafes, and seeing random last minute films. There were friends to invite over and museums to visit, but having exhausted trips to the country to stay with out of town friends and with a five year old and an eight year old to keep amused, our small garden, (well more of a patio) is not enough to contain them.  When we had friends over the other day the gang of children spent quite a lot of time climbing up the trellis to the flat roof outside my daughters bedroom while we all pretended not to notice that they could possibly fall through the conservatory style roof over the lunch table.

So I discovered the joy of a family health club.  A family health club with a garden bigger than a patio, in fact there is more land at The Park Club in Acton, than in our local park. The Park Club has 27 acres.  There are tennis courts, 2 swimming pools, tasteful playgrounds and space for children to run, and not be seen. Or occasionally seen but not heard. This is what we now do at the weekends. We take them and watch them swim, or swim with them, or sit, like we did last weekend having a three hour lunch on the terrace, while  the children disappear and come back several hours later covered in sand, but at least we haven’t driven two hours to find that sand. Of course all of this doesn’t come cheap, but its less than half the price of renting that tiny dolls house cottage in Hampshire with the huffy neighbour and the sitting room the size of a dice. And we no longer have to lug a box of food and a huge suitcase, plus God knows what else, and unload it in the dark and sit trying to be chill but secretly fuming in the traffic on the way home.   

I have also recently discovered a brilliant little book. Adventure Walks for Families in and around London by Becky Jones and Clare Lewis. Last weekend we drove to the Chilterns in the rain because I was determined and desperate to get out of London for a hearty walk.  My husband kept muttering shall we turn around, but I just stared out of the window, thinking it would be fine. We followed directions to the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Walk. At first the children were hyped but also reluctant.  My five year old sat at the bottom of a hill and refused to budge. We coaxed her up, (well my husband put her on his shoulders) and as we passed the famous windmill, used in the film, she climbed down and sped down the hill towards some black cows. I forgot to mention that by now the sun had come out and the landscape was stunning. The children ran and laughed and looked for certain items for a  scavenger hunt,  a feather, a shiny stone, a piece of poo etc. (again advice from the book) and from then on were in heaven. The walk was two and a half miles and completely restored us. The book also recommends pubs to visit and things to do in the car. Genius.

It was about six months after my seventh wedding anniversary, when I became aware that I was finding random men attractive. I was interested in nearly every man I met, including my son’s gay headmaster. Before marriage I had been very discerning, but after seven years of marriage it was a different story.

What was going on? Perhaps it was because my children were out of nappies and I no longer felt like a joint proprietor of a small, noisy, nursery school. Perhaps I was worried about growing older and wanted to be admired. Conversations with my husband had become predictable. We no longer talked about art or literature or film; we talked timetables and children. One lunchtime, I realized with shock that we were scheduling operations, him something to do with his knee and me a hernia. It was all so mundane, and unsexy and middle-aged. To make sense of it all, I began to write a fictional column for Tatler Magazine. The woman had been married seven years and inevitably looked outside her marriage for love, something I didn’t dare do.

My agent suggested a novel, The Seven Year Itch, and sold the idea to Penguin UK. I began to think more about the subject from a woman’s point of view. Why is that men have traditionally been the ones to stray from their marriages? Is it because when a couple divorces, the average income of the woman often plummets by 20% or more? But the man’s stays the same or in some cases rises. Traditionally after women start a family it is assumed they will want to stay stable, mostly for the sake of their, children. Women may daydream about having affairs, but don’t actually go searching for men. They don’t want to deceive their families. And when would they find the time or the energy to skulk around bars? Or is it simply that their sex drive isn’t as strong as a man’s? Generally they want more than sex, they want commitment of some sort too. I wanted to write about what happens when a woman does follow her heart. What are the consequences?

I have a friend, who has recently taken a lover. She is not married but is in a long-term relationship and has four children and a stressful freelance job.  She says her relationship is stale and she is enjoying the attention that the new man gives her.   I have another friend who has been married for about fifteen years and has not had sex for two. She is no longer attracted to her husband, although she loves him and feels lucky to be married to him, as they get on very well. He rejected her sexually originally, (I have to add here that she is gorgeous, most men would die and go to heaven to have her in bed with them) and she learnt to live within a sexless marriage and now no longer even wants to have sex with him, even when he approaches, which he does very occasionally. But the other day she confessed that she had asked a single girlfriend to find her a lover.

 There is no doubt in my mind that women enjoy the thrill of the chase, the intrigue, and the passion of a new affair, just like men, but have more issues around saving the sanctity of their marriages and keeping it together for the children.  It’s unlikely that they are going to seek out extramarital sex, or meet someone on an aeroplane and take off, leaving their children behind. A married girlfriend of mine lost her husband to a woman he met on an aeroplane. He’s a documentary maker and travels all the time. He has left two children and a devastated wife and  moved countries to be with his new girlfriend.

Ellie, the character in my book takes a lover, but only for one weekend and she knows its wrong but feels justified.  Her husband, an actor, has been made redundant from a day time soap, and he’s now under her feet and suffocating her with his demands. At the time I was writing the book, I didn’t have any female friends who had had affairs, but I could imagine Ellie’s frustration. She has been a stay at home mother for a year or two. The last straw is when she goes into Gap and hears herself saying, “It’s a shame you don’t do those shirts with the teddy logos any more.” But Jack does not support her idea to start a business even though they now need the money. The book is a chastening tale and had a surprising ending that some people are disappointed by and others love.

If long term relationships and marriages could get back on track, after infidelity, perhaps the odd liaison would enliven a stale marriage. I don’t have the answers though, I just don’t know. 

The amount of CO2 emitted by the coal station per annum, will be equal to the 25 least polluting countries combined and we will not have a hope in hell of reaching our climate targets proposed by the government.

Actors, comedians, singers, filmmakers and various others have taken part in the Big If pledge. Some have promised not to vote labour in the next election, others like filmmaker Nick Broomfield have said they will be involved in some kind of direct action if the coal station goes head. Singer VV Brown has said she will chain herself naked outside parliament and scream. What would you do? Go to the Greenpeace site and look under the Big If Video.

After ten years of marriage, life together, particularly with children, can seem a little routine and mundane. My husband and I occasionally have lunch, but we end up discussing plans or change of plans. Once to my horror, I realized we were scheduling operations – him something to do with his knee, me a hernia. It was deeply depressing.

 We haven’t spent a night alone for about two years. We are a family without an extended family and have no one to leave boy 8 and girl 5 with. My husband’s parents are dead. They died in a shocking brutal way when my husband was 8. Their small aircraft crashed to the ground over a mountain range in Peru, leaving three orphans. I can still cry thinking about it now.  My mother lives abroad, my father has a new young family.

 We don’t ever seem to properly escape from the trials of family life and when we do go out we are usually mildly irritated with each other; but the other evening we laughed until we cried. We laughed as though we were single and could stay up all night, dancing. And I remembered why I loved him, and wanted him as the father of our children.

 We had been given tickets to a recording of a BBC concert. No one seemed to know what we would be listening to. The BBC had no idea and nor did the venue, but at the last moment we decided to go anyway.  We imagined it would be a classical concert. We arrived with two minutes to spare and there was no room to sit together. We were the youngest people in the audience by at least thirty five years.  I do not exaggerate.

The conductor came onto the stage and the audience roared with appreciation. He was middle aged, wearing a tail coat with sandals and his hair was longish like a public school boy circa 1975.  I could imagine him at home, somewhere like Somerset, with a glass of wine and a splif. He seemed the wrong choice for a concert like this, but maybe he had fallen on hard times. Or had smoked too much dope. A nice blond woman, a dj from Radio 2 came out in a black dress and humoured the audience by telling them they were good clappers. I had already begun to laugh and was half pleased half not, that Luke was three rows in front of me. You see I knew he would be laughing too. I knew that if he was sitting next to me, I would be laughing in that way, that hurts. And then I saw his shoulders shaking.

You would have recognised the songs. Best ever hits from well known musicals, played by the BBC orchestra and some solos and duets  by two, not particularly current,  West End musical stars. We laughed at the two singers, particularly the man who looked uncomfortable and twiddled his hands a lot. The elderly woman next to me hummed all the tunes in a warbly out of tune voice.  I laughed until the interval and then we laughed all the way home. It was better than the most bonding kind of sex, better than anything.