An Angel at my table.....

So, I have a story I will tell you and you can make of it what you will. Several years ago I met a friend of a friend who was very into Angels. She was writing a book about them and told me all about it. Now I'm quite into a bit other-worldly hoo-ha and I like the idea of having a Guardian Angel, Wings of Desire and all that. So I listened intently. She told me I was very angelic, asked where I lived.

'North London', I replied, 'near the Angel.'

'Of course you do.' she said.

When the book was published she sent me a copy and it's a lovely book.

Now, feeling somewhat fed up last week, rather lacking in work from the many and varied freelance jobs I do, and rather broke, I happened to pick up the Angel book and read the bit about being successful and solvent. Apart from asking the Angels for help it suggested sprinkling angel confetti on your bills ........ OK I thought, whatever. The next day I happened upon some of these tiny silver angels at a friend's house so I popped one into my purse...... why not? Half an hour later I got a call to come do a last minute make-up job for an eminent director who was being interviewed. And today I have been offered another job on an on-going basis ......... what can I say? The spirit has moved me.

Downton Abbey is over, for the time being, and what a roller-coaster it was. Am now bereft. How will I cope without (my) Hugh Bonneville? It's going to be a long, harsh winter.

Top tip: Co-Op Fairtrade Chocolate Brownies.....I know, I know but just try them.....

I know when to go out....

But I want to stay in. 8 things in 7 nights: two movies, one gig, one play, one film festival thing with eminent actor/director/writer, one dinner party and a pub quiz at the Union Chapel.......and there's more, there's always more. This is just the nighttime stuff, things happen in the daytime too. Don't get me wrong, I'm got complaining.......well maybe just a little bit.....I love living in one of the most vibrant, happening, stupendous, read-all-about-it cities in the universe. But London is also a tube-crunching, elbowing-out-of-the-way, salt-in-the-wound, late-night, kebab-in-yer-gob, city of extremes, and it can be exhausting. Not to go to the many and marvellous galleries, museums, theatres, cinemas, cafes, bars and restaurants, with all their equal opps, ethno-diversity would be churlish and quite honestly a waste of a perfectly good city. So out we go. Otherwise we'd be in Dorking.

But the thing is....... maybe it's an age thing, maybe it's a seasonal thing..... I just want to stay home, under the duvet, on the sofa, wrapped in a blanket, anywhere with a TV, watching winter telly. Because even with modern science allowing me to watch whatever whenever, it's hard to keep up. And everything makes me cry, whether it's Ann Widdecombe (clearly getting the Michael Portillo make-over and fast becoming a national treasure lite), almost whirling around the Strictly dance floor, or Dame Maggie scoring points over Penelope Wilton in Downton Abbey, ITV Sunday 9pm, which I'm loving for all it's stand-aside-madam, pre-war-Sunday-night-pomposity and the excellent Jim Carter whose nose must have it's own agent by now, entering ever room as it does, several minutes before anyone else. And now I have a supersized crush on Hugh Bonneville to deal with too. Not to mention Single Father, at the same time on BBC1, to which I have now become hooked. Is it just me, or is David Tennant rather vulnerably cute? I think he's very good, who knew? I missed what I believe was his masterful Hamlet, opting to see Jude Law instead when they were both strutting their stuff upon the stage (there is only so much Hamlet anyone person can take....) which I now rather regret. Jude's was OK, from the squat school of acting, as in he would randomly squat down on his haunches to deliver any given speech as if eyeing up a particularly tricky boules movement. And then of course there's Mad Men, Don Draper what are you doing? So many shows, so little time.......

Top tip: stay in and listen to Jarvis Cocker's Sunday Service, 6 Music Sundays 4pm

French without tears.......

I lay on a lounger, canopied by twisted vines, knotted through with climbing roses, my bare legs and pale toes warmed by the hot autumn sunshine; I am in France, enjoying the last of the pink wine ......... not now of course, now I'm back home, swaddled in winter woollies, playing catch-up with the sky plus (oh the anxiety of trying to get through Mad Men and Downton Abbey before they roll round again......). But, for a few days, I was away.

'Do you like chestnuts?' asked my friend.

'Yes I do,' I said, 'I love them.'

I had decided some time out was needed. So, armed with a ludicrously cheep return flight to Rodez (honestly, it cost more to get to Stanstead and back.....) I'd packed my ryan-air-sized-suitcase and wheeled off to the Aveyron, in south central France, to stay with an old friend and her young family.

'Right then, lets walk up the track and get some,' she said, 'kids....'

Entente cordial reigns supreme in this multi-cultural home, made-up as it is of a German, two from Vietnam, two from Mali and a Brit..... all abroad. Really, it's like visiting the UN. I stuffed first my pockets and then the children's, with the shiny, fallen chestnuts and we trudged back to the house: an old stone farmhouse, beautifully restored over the many years they have lived there, with the creative eye of a real artist.

'Do you not prick the nuts first?' I asked.

'No,' said my friend, 'I don't think so.'

And so we sat in the heavenly kitchen, hand-painted, patterned walls, strung with chandeliers and the kids' artistic endeavours, listening to the sound of exploding marrons, buried deep beneath the embers of the range. And drank the pink wine.

It wasn't a long trip and I have never visited so late in the year before, but a change, as they say, is as good as a rest. We picked the last of the red tomatoes and yellow courgettes from the vegetable patch, all part of the beautiful garden, it's winding paths and stone steps leading to hidden treasures buried amongst the flora and fauna (gardening: an unknown skill my friend developed after leaving London 20-odd years ago, with enormous success) and we ate soft cheeses and ripe figs sitting in the sunshine. This is an area silenced but for the sound of rutting bulls and the squawk of force-fed geese, this is peace and quite on a grand scale, no roads rage or sirens whale, just the occasional whine of a moped and the bark of a distant dog. And the crunch of gravel under foot as more pink wine is brought to the table.

I ate thick slabs of moist date and walnut cake, baked with the walnuts collected by the children, and stirred the quince jam made with the quinces that hung heavily from the tree close to where we sat and ate, which would fall suddenly with a thud; their heady, perfumed scent still haunts my nostrils. I slept soundly in a large, attic room with a small, single window, waking every morning to a view of butterscotch-coloured cornfields and undulating, French-green, countryside, studded with ex-pats. It was good. Could I live there? Without my sofa cinema, theatre, openings, private views? No, not right now. But I can still eat, drink, play........

Top-tip: go see 'The Social Network', so, so entertaining and absolutely why I've never done Facebook.......