We arrived at the airport and were picked up by a beautiful water taxi that virtually flew across the water towards the mainland, and we sped past the larger boats and Vaporettos in the warm light of the winter sunset. The photo is our view out the back, and it was a bumpy ride but exhilarating all the same. After 20 minutes we were on the labyrinth of canals sweeping under the wooden footbridges and past the world-famous gondolas. To say we were excited was an understatement especially when we arrived at our hotel and stepped out of the boat into the canal-side entrance.

The Liassidi Palace Hotel where we stayed is a beautiful old building which is adorned with art throughout and boasts regular art exhibitions on the mezzanine floor. The concierges were always helpful, they lent me an iphone charger as I had forgotten mine, but breakfast was a different matter and we were scolded every morning by one of the staff and the food was always cold – but the coffee was great.

As Venice is very small, it’s great to get out and explore and we walked for several hours a day. It’s easy to get lost but pretty easy to get back on track. There are 122 tiny islands which are patched together with elaborate footbridges and travel is by foot or water.

We were very near St Mark’s Square and visited the oldest, and most expensive, tearoom, Florian which first opened its doors in 1720. The decor hasn’t changed and it was great to be in there to have impeccable service and chamber music. The prices are very high and a dessert cost around 15 Euro but as a one off, it was worth it.

Window shopping takes on a new meaning in Venice. There are hundreds of shops which sell carnival masks. One in particular stood out, it was along the canal from our hotel and we decided to have a nose around and there was noone but us inside and loud classical music. With all the masks and costumes inside, we began to feel swept up in an historic drama and nearly squealed when the owner appeared. Such is the atmosphere in Venice that you feel you could walk through a doorway or turn a corner and easily step back in time to a century, or even two, ago. The shop windows are lit at night like the one below.

In my next post, I will cover off some of the amazing art we experienced and visited, in the meantime, here are some of the travel details.

Getting there and back:

Flights:
We flew with easyjet from Gatwick and flying was cheaper because it was on Thursday and outside of the school holidays. Our tickets were £85 return each and booked a month in advance.

Trains:
Gatwick Express had problems with it’s booking engine so I didn’t get our first class tickets and instead took the train from Clapham for a quarter of the price. It cost £13 return for both of us using a Family Railcard discount card.

Taxi:
We usually cab it to Heathrow (it’s 15 minutes by car) and Stansted (2 hours at least by train and 90 minutes max by car) but Gatwick is a doddle for us by train. We tend to shop around for cab prices and find Green Tomatoes is about 50% cheaper than Addison Lee for account and cash bookings.

Earlier this year I stayed in a plush hotel in Brighton and had a lazy breakfast in the restaurant the next day. It was very elegant, and then I arrived. As I lay out the Sunday papers, I made a grab for the mags. But when I got to the Sunday Times plastic wrapped magazines, I couldn’t rip open the pack. I tugged, pulled and then finally tried to rip it open. Suddenly the whole thing gave way rather over enthusiastically. In a microsecond my arm punched my cup of tea which flew up into the air and did a 360 degree loop the loop, spraying tea everywhere, on all and sundry around me. I was mortified and told that I had gone red.

‘How red?’
‘Really red, like bright red.’
‘I’m just embarrassed’
I was quietly giggling uncontrollably behind a magazine but soon stopped. My face did feel hot. In fact, being a ‘nifty’ traveller, I’d packed some Space NK samples and tried out a new face cream, it was reacting and burning. As I put my hands to my face I could feel deep raging heat, and even worse, I was swelling up.

‘Maybe it’s the cream I just tried out.’
‘It must be, you missed a bit, there’s one white stripe on your neck.’
I rummaged in my handbag for a mirror and surveyed my new look. Two blue dots on a tomato – that’s what my bloody face looked like.

‘Crikey, we’ve got to get out of here!’ I squawked.
I hurriedly scooped up the papers and hoped to sneak out of the restaurant unnoticed. No chance.

I looked around for the exit. There, ahead of me, was a gap between two tables to get through. I eyed it up to see if I could get through with my big bag and bundle of newspapers. My face was hurting, my eyes were smarting with embarrassment and I tried to make a nifty twist between the two tables.

No such luck.

My wiggle was more elephantine than I’d anticipated. I heard water splashing and turned around to see, much to my horror, that I’d up ended a vase of flowers on the table of two guests eating their breakfast.

‘Oh my god, I’m so sorry’ I said as I turned round to face them. I tried to dry them off with napkins, but at this point, they were so afraid of what might happen next, they held onto them for dear life.

‘Not to worry’ They looked at me and laughed, they’d obviously already spotted my tea cup disaster – well out of the packed restaurant of 400 or so people, I think the whole place had.
‘You’re obviously having a bad morning!’ they giggled.

I spotted their drenched Sunday Times.
‘Here, why don’t you have mine?’
‘Oh no need, it’s fine’ said the man.
‘Oh no, please have it, I’m not reading that section anyway.’
‘Oh, so you just want to dump your unwanted sections on us then – and the vase?’
‘Umm, no, it’s not meant like that at all, sorry I have to go, I’m really sorry.’

I’d outstayed my welcome, the mood was turning, it was time to make a real dash for it.

Cue sharp exit from me, now with hands to my reddened face. It’s possibly the only time in my life I have really wished I could be abducted by aliens -I looked like something from the attack of the killer tomatoes. I know for definite, I can never show my face there again.

But being me, life is just one endless source of amusement for those around me.

I walked out of my local beauty salon recently with the staff stifling their laughter – I’d had another one of my famous ‘klutz’ runs.  Moments before I had sat up from a wax and found a large lump (pizza sized of said wax) attached to my leg.  I thought it was a growth and nearly screamed the place down, and then, as I went to leave the room the beautician had to stop me as I had a velcro hairband stuck on my head – it took a few pulls to remove. How it got there I don’t know, I certainly don’t wax my head.

After popping to the loo and grabbing my handbag, I pottered back upstairs only to miss the top step and make a very loud upward landing.  I was greeted with raised eyebrows by the manicurists and their customers.  I couldn’t help laughing and as I got to the till it had become a full on and infectious giggle.

If you see me out in public, you’re best to run for the hills in case you get dragged into one of my calamitous dramas.

As women, we are told we play many roles in our lives and this is very true, one of them for me is as a business woman who sometimes travels for work. As I discovered last week, this makes you invisible to some parents, in fact, you are merely wallpaper to them.

Last Friday I took an early morning commuter flight and was quite surprised to see so many children on the flight. Doing the best mental gymnastics I could at the early hour it was (and egged on by a strong latte) I realised, oh yes, it’s school term and that these were definitely preschoolers. I love flying with kids because they treat the whole experience like an adventure and tend to whoop and cheer at all the right (and wrong) times, plus it’s a great distraction.

Well, that was my take on it and that’s all bunkum now. For the first time in over twenty years, I’ve had one of those ‘kids are a nightmare’ journeys and I feel really sad about it. I have no problem with letting families on the plane first or putting up with kids screaming at take off and landing – it’s what happens and we’ve all had embarrassing moments while travelling. But there’s no excuse for a lack of manners. It appears the basics of travel etiquette have diminished into thin air.

So back to my flight. It was early, it was busy, it was a short hop and there was time to read up on a few things and drink tea. Or so I thought. As I took my seat, right at the back of a completely cramped plane, I could see a family sat ahead of me. They looked really nice and they settled into their seats. And then to my horror, one of the children walked up to me and put his nappy on my lap – yes, his nappy on my lap, it wasn’t even wrapped in a nappy sack. I looked down, and no, I hadn’t put on a Norland Nanny outfit on that morning as I dressed in the dark, I was actually wearing clothes that didn’t mark me out as a granny/childminder/general nappy catcher.

As my jaw hit the floor, there came a very loud ‘Well done! Well done son!’ screeched by the mother. I looked down at a soggen lump of nappy on my lap, to say I was extremely dismayed is an understatement and I expected at least an acknowledgement or an apology. Neither was offered. The nappy was briskly scooped away by an air hostess. It was 8am, I couldn’t speak. But no one else said a word. I would have been mortified if my daughter had done the same thing, I would have made eye contact with the nappy recipient, I would have left my seat, I would have made some awful joke about social gaffes, but obviously she wasn’t me.

After my working day I got back to the airport and loaded my laptop into the plastic security box, my clear plastic bag, shoes and handbag and was about to walk through the security when I was accosted and mugged of my walk through. Flabbergasted again, I watched the scene unfold before me, like I was in some kind of daydream.

A man held back my stuff and then began to load his stuff on right in front of me. He had two sons with him. It took ages. They had belts and shoes to remove, then backpacks. I was ready to go through and had been for ages, but I had to wait. Then they all went through security and had to have handheld scanners run over them. I waited and waited. Again, there was no eye contact, no excuse me, no thank you or anything. In a similar situation, had the roles been reversed, I would have let another traveller through – security is just a glorified supermarket checkout after all – you have one item and the other person has a trolley – they let you go first, it’s just basic stuff isn’t it? Well obviously not.

After a quick look around myself and I could definitely tell that I wasn’t wearing an invisible suit. But that’s how I felt on both flights. And I felt unable to speak up and say anything either. It was awful so short of wearing a t-shirt saying I AM GOING TO WORK TO SUPPORT MY CHILD what else can I do?

What are your views on flying with or without your kids?

The premise is pretty funny; four guys get outrageously drunk in their hotel hot tub and inadvertently dowse the control panel in a Russian energy drink, which cunningly has a secret ingredient that activates a time warp. John Cusack and his buddies end up on the slopes with a bunch of kids adorned in bright pastels; it takes them a while to realise they have slipped back in time. John Cusack does mushrooms very well and meets the love of his life in a scene stolen straight out of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but I don’t mind, I love that film dearly.

So back to time travel. The film is almost prescient of the station of the nation post election and the irony is not lost on me in the least; with the Tories back in power and harem pants back in fashion, I think the Hot Tub Time Machine has taken us all back to the 80s…

Photoshop and airbrushing didn’t quite exist the same way they do know, but my question is; if you went back to the 1980s, what would you bring back to 2010 and what would you bury there?

My top 3 Bring Backs
1. Filofaxes
2. B52s (the band and the cocktail shot)
3. Biker jackets

My top 3 Bury in the 80s
1. Blue eyeliner
2. HIV/Aids
3. Now That’s What I Call Music

Linda Jones at havealovelytime asked me for my views on her recent article Travel PR meets Parent Blogger – How to do it Properly. Linda is someone I have great respect for her. Not only is she prolific and an all round good egg, she has amazing insights and vision. Her blog gotyourhandsfull set up for twins has been a valued resource for a friend of mine who is Mother to twins. Havealovelytime is a great resource for the family traveller. To be honest, it’s probably one of the only community of shared experience about travel and days out for families, by families. That’s why during my work at lastminute.com running it’s social media efforts, I recognised the great work she was doing and named the blog in two lists, the Top 10 Travel Blogs and also the OYLB Top 50 travel and lifestyle blogs.

Which brings me on to my response to Linda’s post. If you’re a blogger there are some things you should know about how brands view you…and not just in travel either. Your blog can make for a rich and rewarding experience through the communities you engage with which will without any doubt include brands.

And what makes me so qualified to write this post? I’ve been a corporate blogger for over four years and a parenting and lifestyle blogger for nearly two. My advice is for bloggers who are finding themselves approached by brands, pr agencies, digital agencies and advertising agencies who are all trying to get a piece of this new blogging bubble.

First and foremost
If you’re a blogger with a PR and journalism past, you will certainly understand the migration of media away from the traditional print medium towards social media. If not, well I think you’ll be learning pretty quickly that you are in demand, and here’s why

1. It’s all about you baby!
And why are you so popular? Brands are on the look out for UGC / CGM (user generated content / consumer generated content) in blogs. This could be; reviews, news, praise, rants or a personal story and it does not have to be orchestrated, negotiated, planned or placed. If there is a link back to the brand site or product mention this will help with SEO (how high they appear on the page on google) for the brand which is great for them and affiliates the two of you, giving them credibility. If the company is using a monitoring tool such as Radian6 they will find your post or tweet and be able to compile it with others to find out the public opinion and calculate sentiment. What does this mean for a blogger? You’re opinion will be analysed. Sounds weird doesn’t it? Maybe a bit Big Brotherish (in the true Orwellian sense)? Don’t be put off. It’s massively democratic – if you put your opinion out there in the public domain, it is being listened to and smart companies are using their ears to learn and hone their offerings. If you’re unhappy about a product or have an issue, you might even get a response from the company and your problem resolved. As many parent bloggers know and others who write about fashion, beauty, travel – you can also get to build strong relationships with brands which are mutually beneficial.

Your blog + postive brand mention = authority and credibility for brand

2. Why is blogging so popular all of a sudden?
Blogging is very powerful and wikipedia is a good source of info on the varying trends if you want to know you knitting. Since the arrival of the internet into the mainstream, the last 10 years or so has seen a paradigm shift in the media and not just from print into online. Traditional journalism has been eroded by brand power and people power – both are putting out content in the new realm of social media. News is broken on twitter by people not journalists any longer so what does this mean for the corporate bod? They’re lonely as they don’t have many journalists left to talk to and they still need to create buzz around their brands.

PR – journalism = no press coverage
PR + social media = online coverage

3. Why brands want to work with bloggers
If you are a travel company, Linda has listed several in her article, it’s a difficult sell to put your product in 40-50 words on a website and add a thumbnail. Getting bloggers to experience and review product or holidays gives meaningful feature length content and opens the door to conversation.

Blog + brand product/experience = meaningful content

4. If brands are getting it wrong – you can do them a favour, point it out
The thing is, a lot of brands are terrified of social media and that’s why they’re getting things slightly off key at times.

Have you had an email from a PR company asking ‘when to expect coverage’? or from a marketing person saying ‘I need your decision today’. These are the questions that PR and media people ask on behalf of clients as they harvest their crop of media coverage or bums on seats for an event. At work, I constantly have to remind people inside companies that bloggers have different sensibilities; they write about niche interests and usually out of hours and the usual rules don’t apply – so they need to be patient, understanding and show they care. In fact, I would say 20% of a social media role is actually an emotional, yet professional, investment into your work. On this blog, I am on the receiving end of invites and offers for trips, products to review, news and events. I feel well within my right to explain where I stand to brands or media companies; if I am not going to write about something, I will tell them why. If they want to me to come to events, I have baggage. I’ve recently explained to a PR agency that unless they can arrange my transport to an event I can’t go because of the time pressure of the school run. They have booked me a taxi and now we’re both happy. Other brands run evening events in town; they forget the obvious; Mummy bloggers don’t live in London and have kids to put to bed. The conversations which we have with our blogging communities must continue into the relationships we build with brands to make them mutually beneficial.

Blogger = opinion
Blogger + feedback = change

5. So what to do if you are approached by about your blog?
If you are a blogger, and you’ve never worked with PR, marketing and advertising agencies or even big global or domestic brands like Disney and Butlins, you may feel wowed that you are receiving attention. It’s great isn’t it? But it’s a two way street, you are valuable because you have set yourself up as an independent blogger with a point of view. You may also experience the rabbit in headlights effect too and feel overwhelmed or even pressured into committing to something. Do make sure you ask questions; why are you inviting me? what are you expecting me to do? do you want time commitment? are you giving me product? are you offering to pay for a post? A good social media expert will set all of these things out for you but if they have not do not be afraid to answer questions. It is in both of your interests to make this work if you are interested in the brand.

Blogger + social media expert = conversation

6. What to do about unwelcome attention
As Linda and many other bloggers have stated, bloggers are often on the receiving end of unwanted, mismatched, irrelevant and untimely promotional material. As time goes by, agencies compile lists of bloggers which they rely on to blast out news. It’s important that you respond and tell them you want to be removed off that list or better still, tell them what you are interested in. Often the only way to reach a blogger is by a comment on their blog, an email or a tweet – how do they know what’s going on in your head? Of course, great social media experts will read your blog but an intern sending a press release out to 50 journalists and 100 bloggers will not take such care. Help try and change this it before it becomes common practice.

Blogger + feedback to agency = progress

If you have any comments or questions, do feel free to ask me here or on twitter @nixdminx

Sorry for the bad joke but I just couldn’t help repeating it all day long. It’s just a mask for the fact that I’ve been having kittens about being stuck abroad and have had to keep my pecker up for the last few days and make it all seem like fun for my daughter. Actually, scrub that, it’s been an adventure of great magnitude and instead of coming home feeling a bit sad the holiday is over, we’ve both experienced a huge rush of appreciation for all things domestic, friendly and well, just our own doorstep.

Having told the world and his wife that we were delayed and unable to return from our holiday until next Monday, instead of last, things took a drastic turn for the better when the flights to the UK were announced again.

It would be an understatement to say that we’ve been in a state of crazed delirium for the last 24 hours. Having swapped Cote D’azur for a far chiller London W4, it feels brilliant and a bit lunatic.

I don’t know what it is about the human spirit but it has a homing device that propels the heart and mind in tandem towards reaching that destination against all odds, just to be there.

Last night after Miniminx and I had skyped,tweeted, texted and called everyone we possibly could from our French outpost, we found out before going to sleep that the skies over the UK were reopening. I did a celebration dance and downed another glass of wine then spent the night sleeping very badly as my daughter did her usual holiday prank; shrieking with laughter in her sleep throughout the night. It was all good, we could travel and get back home, lack of sleep permitting.

Not to be outdone by the general somnambulent squawking and whimpering, it was my turn to wake up with a fire in my belly at 5.50am and skittle around the room turning lights on and off, before settling at my laptop screen for some airline ticket motivated search action – I was determined to get us home.

As I flicked between tabs and screens and the abundance or search items, the flights were all coming up fully booked, and every few minutes there would be a change, prices would wobble, new airlines would be appearing, it all seemed a bit crazy.

‘Psssssssst, darling, do you want to go home this morning?’
‘Yeszzzzzzzz, but ….Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz I just need sleeeeeeeeeeep. Let’s go later.’

I was tempted to go back to sleep myself but I couldn’t. I was mad awake. Just the thought of being away from home with no good reason for a day longer was driving me a bit loopy. I let her sleep, and kept refreshing the flight screen. Two flights – oh no, gone already. Another one, at £1500. Another £386 with one stopover. Then after another 20 minutes, bingo. The 9.30am flight out of Nice, after the fourteenth try, had availability.

‘Wake up – we’re leaving in … oh quick, in 15 minutes, we have a flight to catch. Brush teeth, get dressed, close suitcase, do a room sweep*’

It was 20 minutes actually, but in that time I had to call reception to prepare the bill, shower, pack (yes for two) and dress and panic, oh and buy the tickets. The merry dance began and within 15 minutes we were out of the room and finalising the hotel bill and leaving, not before drinking a massively strong coffee. Our taxi arrived and I prattled on in French to the driver. It turned out his wife was stuck in Frankfurt, unable to return. Everyone had a story about some loved on somewhere, our waitress at breakfast had a boyfriend stuck in Thailand.

Determination and sheer bloody mindedness are one thing, but navigating the nuances of local traffic are another thing altogether. Needless to say as we lurched through the early morning traffic, 7.45am is never a good time anywhere, there was still a chance we would miss the check in period so it was all a bit touch and go. We arrived at 8.20 and had to go to the ATM to get the cab fare then to the check in desk, we had 8 minutes to spare. We got through the whole process, very smoothly in fact and boarded.

The flight was amazing, we arrived 30 minutes early and got back across town in good time. Arriving home was perfect – the sun was shining and London is full of Spring blooms. We are very very happy to be back.

So home and back to the grindstone it maybe but the simple pleasure of cooking an evening meal and having neighbours pop over to say hello is just the bees knees.

I’d always believed the old adage that travel broadens the mind, but it also emboldens the home loving heart much more than I imagined or remembered.
I wonder how long it will last?

*a room sweep is what I do after packing, moving around the hotel suite with military precision to check cupboards, wardrobes, shelves and drawers and underbeds for anything and everything I might have left lying about

We are away so have yet to benefit from this experience. In fact we are on the flipside of it, far from home with no way to get back at the moment.

It’s a little bit too chilly on the beach so we’re ensconced in our hotel room for the timebeing to warm up a bit. There’s a great programme on tv called Les Perles – bit of a TV Burp Euro-style and it definitely beats the goose bumps. We’re not just hiding away from the sunshine though, it’s more a habitual check in on the latest flight news every few hours to see what the latest is. It’s a habit that we’ve swiftly developed since we realised we might be unable to return home.

So far it’s not looking good and we are staying in France for maybe a few days longer than planned. I’ve never felt homesick on holiday but this time I have. What started out as a short trip to see friends and then a jaunt by the coast has become an epic adventure of sorts.

We left the UK on April 13 and headed to Auvergne. It’s not an easy journey if you don’t drive but I love travelling across France by train because the extremes of the countryside take you from mountains and valleys and from coast to coast. With just seven days to get around we flew to Lyon St-Exupery, a sprawling modern airport which has grown massively since I first flew into it over 12 years ago.

We took a taxi to Lyon Part Dieu station, it’s smaller than Perrache and I thought I’d discovered a shorter journey that would save us a couple of hours. I booked a ticket but the train failed to appear on the departure board. There were long queues at the information desk but we joined one. The lady hastily wrote down a new route for us. But still the train did not appear so we went to join another queue. Tired and slightly ratty by this point, it was not easy.

It was then that we found ourselves in the midst of a French train strike. That meant a two hour train journey became a 45 minute detour and then a two hour coach journey, and with still another leg to go until we reached our destination in the deepest countryside and a beautiful town called Blesle. Arriving at Clermont Ferrand station, we camped out in the station restaurant and ordered a plate of frites which arrived and was surely a mountain of chips? Oh, the irony of being the English abroad was not lost on me but certainly was adrift as I watched my 10 year old daughter tuck in.

It took a few fraught phone calls and timetable rechecks to realised we were stranded…and some. We were lucky enough to get picked up in Clermont Ferrand and driven a further hour to our orignial destination and arrive at 10pm – very late for dinner but not too late for Miniminx since we benefitted from the hour time change between the UK and France. We put the stress and strain of the day behind us, Miniminx by dancing and singing with her friends and me by drinking a glass or four of red wine with mine. A perfect way to arrive in my book. We had three nights and two days of great food, wine and fun in the countryside. This included being chased by wild horses, discussing alcoholic phd tutors over dinner, eating far too much rare red meat and downing copious amounts of wine from a very early time in the day.’Happy days’ was the catch phrase of a very short but appreciated time.

As we hoped for the train strikes to cease, so the second stage of our journey to Antibes would be easier, we found the news online of the volcanic cloud but thought little of it. Not wanting a rerun of our journey into Massiac, I’d already booked us a taxi to the tune of €130 and internal flights (I won’t scare you with the cost) for our ongoing journey. This would reduce 14 hours or so of chaos and disruption to a mere 3 hours. I was then left with the unsettling feeling that we might not be able to fly. Sacre blue (or much worse words to that effect I’m afraid to say).

For us to make light of our new arrangements, we had to take the taxi at 8.15am. It turned up. I was starting to wonder if the flights would be for real as this was all becoming a bit far fetched for my liking. The journey took an hour through beautiful countryside of hills and valleys and spring blossoms which looked magical as the morning dew slowly rose in a swirling mist as the sun warmed the earth.

Arriving at Clermont Ferrand airport, we were amazed at how small it was; tiny in fact. There were hardly any people and no queues, so I checked us in. All good so far. I loaded up the luggage. No cries of derision from the check in desk. I breathed an internal sigh of relief and was still quite unsettled by the rapidly changing landscape of our holiday. Should I really be getting on a flight with all this chaos and uncertainty?

The announcements board showed a full set of flights, it was only 9.30am. Just half an hour later, cancellations began to apear. I knew that CDG Paris was closed and was hopeful that we could still fly although fearful at the same time. I hadn’t been this scared to travel since the aftermath of 7/7. I kept telling myself, if it wasn’t safe, we would not be taking to the air. Our flight was fine, great in fact. We arrived at Nice airport which was deserted. We both felt very lucky and relieved that we had managed to make a swift and uneventful exit from our first part of the holiday.

We remain in the dark about whether we can get home tomorrow night. We just want a safe journey.

Holidays are great but real life is even better. Here’s to getting back to the UK tomorrow…or sometime soon x

I was sent a preview copy of the movie Motherhood which I watched the other night and wished I’d watched it with a group of Mums, and Mums who blog too. There are some priceless moments in there that will resonate with a lot of you.

Uma Thurman plays the central character, Eliza Welch, she is a writer turned blogger with two children and a disengaged husband. She’s stressed, leaves the house in her night clothes and still manages to pull off quirkly glamour. She is all too human and we discover she smokes, swears and doesn’t pick up dog poop.

Eliza is “The Bjorn Identity.” ‘mommy blogger’ who navigates the ups and downs of competitive, strung out parents in Brooklyn. There’s a great cameo from Jodie Foster in the play park who is hounded by both paparazzi and mamarazzi – the latter who travel around childrens’ play parks, with kids in tow to spot celeb parents.

The whole premise of the film is that Eliza is drowning in a Sylvia Plath 2.0 style career block – she has two young children that take all her time and energy but she wants to exert some intellectual muscle through writing – it’s a very familiar tale.

This hectic gallop through a 24 hour period sees Eliza fall out with friends, neighbours and at one point, herself, and veer out of control and lose the plot.

Watch out for the scene where she dances with the delivery boy – I can imagine at least two of my friends doing that!

What about successful women? What’s behind us?

While the glass ceiling still very much exists, women have been succeeding in the workplace now for many decades. The stigma of the working Mum is on the decline. I love this and I think 2010 maybe just the year that things finally make a turn around for the better. Did any of you read about the ‘Career women make bad Mothers’ billboards that were pulled down recently? It’s noted here in the Guardian which also references the mauling that both Cameron and Brown have received by going on to Mumsnet. I love this very much too.

The more I look around my friends and their unique situations, the more I’m starting to pick up on some of our commonality and micro trends. These are well worth punting out for discussion.

I’ll use this post to put out the first trend I am noticing around me. It may be peculiar to London, it maybe not, but it’s definitely not just a hunch. It came out of a lengthy telephone conversation with a close friend and I was quite stunned.

The urban minxes I call my closest friends, are all very intelligent, go getting, fully rounded women and that’s why I love them like sisters. They are all doing well professionally – not all of them are professionals but they definitely know how to make a good living – and moving slowly but surely up the ladder and all have at least one child. Work is an essential for us. Not all of us work full time or even do conventional jobs. We are independently minded and expect to pay our way and have our own money. We have all reached a level of maturity and sophistication which means we can handle workplace politics but we all still have to put up with the day to day crap that goes on.

Funnily enough, we’re ‘that’ generation, hailed as the the e-head ladette girls of the early 90s who spent our days or rather nights at illegal parties, we travelled, life was one big party – the media was horrified by us – when would we settle down, we were heading for 40 and unashamedly unmarried.

We obviously had a lot to get out of our systems before deciding we really didn’t want to ever conform. So how about continuing our ambitions to grow old disgracefully and perhaps never marry, never stay at home, have children by more than one partner and enjoy life to the full? You could call it disdain but I say it’s disregard for tradition and with a touch of defiance added in for good measure – a very healthy existence in fact. Nihilism is no fun, we’re dyed in the wool hedonists who have calmed down a lot but still know what we want – to feel good about ourselves and pass it on to our children – in the best way possible of course.

It’s not just my friends that go out to work, there are thousands of women across the country and they are not the ‘traditional doormat backbone of the household tasked with pushing hubby out the door with ironed shirt and lunchbox. In fact many of them are the breadwinners, outstripping their husbands on both the domestic and professional front by doing more and earning more. This has been really highlighted by the credit crunch where more men are out of work than any given time in the last decade. Then there are single Mums, including me, who have always out earned their boyfriends, partners, or perhaps have made bad relationship decisions and are lumbered with virtually all of the parental responsiblility and the heinous task of not only playing both parental roles mentally and physically, but trying to cover them off financially too. It is all achievable and incredibly rewarding. It certainly isn’t the ‘having it all’ approach to life, it’s challenging, chaotic and rewarding.

When I stop and think even more about how things have changed and these tiny trends speak volumes about the world we inhabit today. Years ago, when relationships, or more likely marriages broke down, the woman would be cast away from a shipwreck and desperately searching for a life jacket or a lifeboat to take her to safety. She would have to fight through the courts for her income. It’s very unlikely she would have been a professional or in a career. These days however, many of us don’t need to do that, in fact we’re hopping into the proverbial light aircraft, straight into the pilot seat and flying the plane (off to sunnier climes of course).

So whether you find yourself with broad shoulders in a relationship or broad shoulders out of one, it seems to me that we should be saying ‘Every successful woman leaves a man behind’.

It may sound cynical but one thing you definitely can’t call me is old fashioned.

Armed with backpacks, sleeping bags, cameras and sunglasses, we headed off from Heathrow and from the moment we left our front door the nine day adventure began.

We arrived in Ouzazarte a day before rest of the party, since we’d checked in our hotel at 2am we really needed that day to chill out and adjust. We spent it by a hotel pool and hung out in cafes.

As we sat and watched the world go by, out of nowhere, a small boy about five years old ran by with a cigarette tucked behind each ear.

‘Mum! Look at him!’
‘Don’t point!’ I said laughing.
Miniminx gave me that widemouthed, wide eyed look of disbelief. I smiled to myself, I knew this trip was going to be quite an education.
The irony was all on us in fact since we were odd ones out. People were actually stopping and staring at us. A mother and daughter in a strange land.

The next morning we met our travelling companions for the first time. I was pleasantly surprised that we were all women with young girls. We already had a lot in common. Our first stop was a kasbah in Ouzazarte, it was strange and fascinating. Our guide began to tell us about the great films that have been shot there, Gladiator and Babel, but we were more interested in the locale and the people there.

On our drive we stopped to take photos and a farmer welcomed us and shared his date harvest.

The girls spotted a cute frog and chased the poor thing around the field.

Heading off in a truck towards the desert, we were going to camp in Bedouin tents that night and as you can see, it’s quite a fairy tale existence. The food was great too, lovely soups and tagines and very sweet mint tea. We were awoken several times first by the birds and crowing cocks, then early morning the call to the mosque, followed by the braying donkeys and then by the sun.

There was an empty pool on the camp site and our four little girls found a tiny scorpion in it. There was another one in the shower too – none of the girls screamed and we were assured it would not harm us.

The evenings when we camped were very sweet. The girls all played together as the Mums chatted and as we all went to bed around the same time, bedtime stories became a shared experience.

The next day was the start of a two day camel trek across the Sahara with a night in the desert. We all had to learn how to put on a shesh. It was fun and it was also hard work, Miniminx did not like being on a camel so ended up walking. I discovered my daughter is quite the tough cookie and walked happily for hours, which was a very pleasant and unexpected surprise.

The highlight was camping out in the Sahara and watching shooting stars in the night sky. We all laid out on thin mattresses after dinner and watched the slow moving drama of the heavens above. Waking up the next morning was great too. It was so wonderful, even if the camels do snore (well I hope it was the camels).

There is something very hynotic and mesmeric about the Sahara, I was suprised that a desert I had imagined to be barren had quite a few trees and weird looking plants.

Our guide recommended that instead of buying our carpets and rugs in Marrakech, it would make more sense to go direct to a co-operative. This meant we could buy from the local people and not have the added commission which would be added in the souks. We bought some amazing stuff there and I was delighted (so was the owner of the co-op).

With the bright sun and still air, there was a sense of calm and ease of being that is a great antidote to London. But this was really a non stop whirl wind trip. Staying in a different place every night, we unpacked and repacked daily and dealt with all manner of things. I was the only person who didn’t get a 24 hour bug.

We spent a night near the kasbah of Ait Benhaddou. I loved the homemade advertising – see photo below.

The drive through the Atlas mountains was stunning and we all chatted and sang our way through the dizzy heights. I still look at these photos a lot, it really was a special journey.

There was mounting anticipation about our arrival in Marrakech – the journey was four or five hours. The road signs were getting bigger as we got nearer.

And we got there eventually with a big all round cheer and headed to the main square and spotted the snake charmers. It was like going back in time.

The early morning view of the city sprawl from the hotel window was pretty atmospheric. We went on a four hour walking tour with a guide and then had the rest of the day free to shop and explore. We had our final meal together that evening and the kids were all very sad to be going home.

About a week after we got back we had this funny conversation.

‘Darling, you were really good about the scorpions.’
‘Yeah, well Mum, they did scare me a little bit.’
‘Yeah, I was surprised you didn’t say anything about them in the tent that night when we went to sleep.’
‘I thought you’d be a bit cross with me if I said I was scared.’
‘Well I thought if I told you I was a bit worried there were any in the tent, you’d hit the roof.’
We both looked at each other and smiled.
‘What a couple of scaredy cats we were!’ I said and we laughed for a very long time.

For anyone looking for a holiday that’s definitely off the beaten track, I’d definitely recommend a trip like this. It was hard work and tiring but so magical and such a great cultural experience, I’d definitely go again.

For the full itinerary go here