MRS TREFUSIS AND THE STROKE OF NOON

"I really, really need Botox", I wail to Mr Trefusis, hauling my brow up into my hairline where it belongs. "Then have some Botox", he replies, logically, if a little less flatteringly than I'd like.

On this note, I have some advice for all men: when women start to pull their face about and talk about cosmetic intervention, it's merely the grown-up version of 'does my bum look big in this' and your response should never be truthful. A little polite protestation about the years not having taken any kind of toll is appropriate, before steering the conversation to safer waters. If you don't feel it's laying it on too thick - and only you know the fragility of your beloved's ego in these matters - then a suggestion that she could give her similarly aged friend a few years can also go down well. If you're the poetic sort, I can recommend some cheesy hand-holding accompanied by quoting John Donne - "No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace/As I have seen in one autumnal face...". But gentlemen, you must do this with conviction and without crossing your fingers behind your back.

Of course, the older one is, the less likely one is to ask anyone if one's bum looks big - as the fabulous Catherine Deneuve is supposed to have said, after a certain age one must choose between one's face and one's behind, a few kilos can work wonders to plump out the lines and wrinkles. Callipygian women who look like hags from the front impress no one. The last word on the face Vs arse debate must go to Nigella Lawson: she's 52 and is ravishingly beautiful. I've seen her several times at The Wolseley and notwithstanding its gentle lighting, she could give most 35 year olds a run for their money. And for all women faced with this choice, I give you Sara Blakely, the inventor of SPANX, who was deservedly named in TIME 100 this year as one of its 100 most influential people in the world.

But as ever, I digress. I haven't exactly chosen the most tactful moment for railing against the aesthetic ravages of the passing years: Mr Trefusis's birthday is in a couple of months and if anyone should have the floor for a moan about getting older, it's him, particularly as it's astonishing how much older than me he is since I gave up having birthdays myself. But he doesn't seem to mind the years. In fact, he's always telling people he's older than he is: this is a strategy that hasn't really occurred to me - perhaps the idea is that people are always seriously impressed by how young you look if you're always claiming you're into the next decade. It doesn't really work for me. I prefer to be vague or dodge the question. After all, as Oscar Wilde once said 'A woman who will tell you her real age will tell you anything'. And I've always liked his idea that 'London is full of women who've been 35 for years'. Quite right too.

But lately, I've been having something of a mid-life crisis about the affect of age and gravity on the looks. I know that it's merely a metaphor, and I'm simply displacing a vast amount of angst about age vs accomplishment (youth being wasted on the young blah blah blah) onto my obsession with my appearance. I know I should get over it. But I don't want to look my age. At least, not until I've reconciled some stuff and at the moment the years are sliding past as easily as nails down a blackboard.

I do wonder whether I'm going to end up like Corinna from Swift's poem 'A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed' - it's all available to the modern woman - £200 anti-wrinkle creams, hair highlighting, chicken fillets for your bra, teeth whitening, eyelash extensions, false nails, fillers, not to mention the Botox...though I hasten to add I haven't indulged in all of these. I still look more or less the same after I've got ready for bed as I do beforehand. 40 watt soft tone bulbs help.

I make some idle protest to Mr Trefusis about Botox being a terrible waste of money and that I should get to grips with what's really behind my inability to proudly announce my true age. I believe I even offered some rubbish about my wrinkles being lines of experience, wisdom and character. Of course, he believes me a lot less than I believe myself when I'm offering up this kind of nonsense.

I've dabbled in botox before - I had a couple of sessions a few years ago with the beautiful Preema Vig, whose skill with botox and fillers is the secret behind many a well-known face and at the beginning of this year I went to Dr Rita Rakus, who was also very good and whose clinic is strategically placed near the back of Harrods so one can look as if one's in the market for a spot of upscale shopping and then exit through the Laduree tea room for 'rejuvenation' hem hem..... I confess I liked my three run-ins with botox very much indeed - it fixed my annoying Roger Moore-style eyebrow raising habit and made me look like a fresher, happier, less wearied version of me: it's gratifying how much better people respond to you when you look peaceful and friendly rather than suspicious and cross.

Botox may have replaced beautiful shoes as the thing I long for most, but since the Great Trefusis Economic Crisis kicked in, I can afford neither. And perhaps that's good for me. Perhaps I have to learn to live with the face that time and experience has given me and be grateful for it, rather than gazing mournfully at myself in the mirror like a superannuated Narcissus and seeing nothing but the sand running ever more rapidly through the hour-glass. Just because a little light cosmetic intervention can give the appearance of having turned back the clock, doesn't mean the years aren't there. Hmmm.

And on that note of solipsistic existential angst, I'll go and see what I can do to spruce myself up with makeup.

Anyway, if you can afford botox and so on and would like a recommendation, Preema Vig can be contacted on 07939560247 and Dr Rita Rakus is on 07000400321. 

TREFUSIS MINOR, INFANT PÂTISSIER

Three and a half years after starting at the french school, Trefusis Minor can now pass for a natural born têtard, slipping in and out of French and English without skipping a beat. All the tears and 'don't leave me Mummy's are a thing of the past, and he now reads more fluently in French than he does in English.

At home, only Mr Trefusis is permitted to speak french to him: if I offer a few words, or join in if the conversation round the supper table is in french as it often is, I get a look of withering scorn mixed with pity - 'Please don't try, Mummy, it sounds really horrible: tu vas casser mes oreilles.' he says. If Mr Trefusis sticks up for me (as he mostly does) and tells Trefusis Minor that my french is perfectly good, if strongly accented, Trefusis Minor will concede, begrudgingly, that I don't sound as bad as his English teacher, who really does 'break his ears'.

Anyway, the gallification of Trefusis Minor extends to extra-curricular activities too: after-school clubs are called 'Atelier' which makes them sound impossibly grand, quite as if he's going to come home and start pinning a toile on me for a couture frock. Hope springs eternal, I suppose.

But it's true, isn't it, that everything sounds more elegant in French - last term's Atelier was 'Jeux de Societé' which sounds like experimental sociology but seemed to mostly involve learning how to play Connect 4 and Draughts. This term, his favourite atelier is cooking: does he come home with the droopy peppermint creams, rock buns and butterfly cakes I remember learning in cookery as a child? He does not. So far, he has learned how to make a clafoutis, madeleines, financiers, and some kind of small savoury tart. I fully expect him to be working his way up to a croquembouche, or to suddenly appear with a selection of tiny macarons to rival Pierre Hermé or Ladurée.

I think this should be greatly encouraged - if he keeps it up, he'll be able to make the Tiniest Trefusis' birthday cake - in a few years, I might even be able to earn back the school fees by hiring him out for dinner parties.

LIFE THROUGH A LENS

'When was the last time you read a book?' asks Mr Trefusis one evening, 'You used to read all the time.'

'I do read.' I say indignantly, but I know Mr Trefusis is right - I was once a book bulimic, devouring novel after novel, forever on holiday in someone else's imagination. But lately I've found it tiring to read more than a few pages at a time: it's started to take weeks rather than days to finish even a thriller. I've blamed work (too much of), twitter (distraction), Angry Birds (ditto), but really the truth of the matter is as plain as the lines that are springing up all over my forehead: I can't do without my reading glasses. If I try to, even reading Harper's Bazaar becomes too much of an effort, which seems a shame considering it's the magazine I work on.

'Presbyte' says Mr Trefusis, somewhat eliptically, 'that's what the French call you, from the Greek for Old Man.'

And so it is: as confirmed by my optician, I have the kind of long-sightedness that's inevitable after forty, and, although it's helpful of Mr T to contribute to my education by offering me the French for long-sight, presbyte makes me feel as if I ought to come over all Calvinist and start railing disapprovingly about the sin of vanity.

It's no good though: presbyte or not, I still want to look good. I want my reading specs to be fabulous face-furniture, rather than just something practical: I want glasses of distinction. What's more, I want glasses that scream an elegant protest against the presbyte diagnosis - I might be old enough to need them, but I am not so old that I want to entirely relinquish looking vaguely hip and moderately sexy.

The first glasses I bought were the insanely expensive Bulgari pair you see sitting on the laptop in the holding shot of this blog. It's to my shame that I immediately went off them - they're fine, but - you know - they're a bit dull. Realising that it's deeply inconvenient only having one pair of reading glasses, I had some lenses put in a pair of Emporio Armani frames that were discovered unclaimed at the back of the fashion cupboard, but they're also a bit ordinaire. I mean, obviously I'm too grown-up to suddenly go all Hoxton, and sport statement frames like a self-consciously trendy architect or  app developer, but there is a middle ground, surely, and one which doesn't necessitate eating baked beans for a month to afford the bill.

Reader, I think I have the answer - London Retro is a new range of vintage-inspired frames, seemingly designed with me in mind. Ok, that's a little solipsistic, especially when there's enough edge in the range to please my imaginary Hoxton dwelling architect, but really, all boxes ticked - cool and interesting frames and they come complete with single vision lenses for £99 with a second pair free, which seems astonishingly cheap in the context of the Bulgaris. I have Carnaby in red, which have a wonderfully 1980's ad agency feel to them and Camden with a tinted lens for reading outside (have previously felt very foolish wearing sunglasses on top of reading glasses).

London Retro Carnaby in red £99

London Retro Camden in tortoiseshell with a tinted lens-
there's an agreeably Wayfarer feel about them, which kind of reminds me of my yoof, and of the first time I read Money and Brideshead Revisited.

London Retro specs are only available online, but all you do is imput the details of your prescription into the right box and a couple of days later they arrive on your desk, all gleaming and fabulous - kind of like a net-a-porter for spectacles - and despite the price-tag, the quality is at least as good as my existing Bulgari and Armani pairs.


I'm slightly worried now that specs are going to replace shoes as my guilty pleasure - I love the Carnabys, and they definitely suit me, but I do also rather fancy something a bit edgier: these below are next on my acquisition list, just as soon as I've finished all 974pp of Belle du Seigneur to prove that I've really earned them.

 Shoreditch - what do you think? Too cool for school, or could I get away with it, despite my advancing years? Being a bit bookish, I really wanted Fitzrovia, but my face is entirely the wrong shape for that kind of frame.


Of course, what I'd really like now that I've discovered trendy specs is a pair of bifocals - my reading prescription in the bottom so I can see what I'm doing, and plain glass in the top half so I don't fall over when I walk around still wearing them. 

MR TREFUSIS IS UNWELL

Strictly speaking, Mr Trefusis is not so much unwell as broken: A couple of months ago, he was happily free-wheeling down a hill on his pushbike and, having built up enough speed for things to really hurt, promptly hit an inconveniently positioned speed-bump and came off over the handlebars.

Thankfully, the first thing that hit the tarmac was his elbow: if the force of impact was enough to shatter his left elbow and dislocate his right shoulder, imagine what it might have done to his helmet-less head?  I mean, I can't actually quite write that sentence without shuddering and sending up yet another silent prayer that he's still here so I can make pathetic jokes about my 'armless 'usband.

Of course, he's not literally armless, but he has been a bit 'elpless, and the road to recovery is long and hard. The dislocated shoulder was comparatively easy to treat with a spot of general anaesthetic and a couple of medical students standing on his chest to wrench it back into place, but the elbow has proved to be a bit of a brute - it turns out that Mr Trefusis has a displaced unstable comminuted fracture - I may well have those words in the wrong order, but in laymans terms, it means that his elbow is as buggered as it's possible to be and still vaguely connect the upper and lower arms. Of course, if you're an orthopaedic surgeon, buggered elbows represent a fantastically juicy technical challenge, and Mr Trefusis stuffed his up enough to warrant the attentions of a professor of orthopaedics, a senior consultant, a consultant and about forty five students for his five hours in theatre, and for the follow-up treatment, all working incredibly hard to give him back an elbow. And all for free, too: God bless the NHS.

Mr Trefusis continues to look as if he's auditioning for an AmDram Richard III, with his still-painful dislocated shoulder held slightly hunched and his broken elbow crooked.
Irritatingly, he refuses to launch into "Now is the winter of our discontent" as a party piece, which is rather unsporting: I daresay if I'd been through what he'd been through I'd resent someone trying to get comedy value out of it too. But six weeks on from the operation
the consultant has upgraded his prognosis from "will regain some movement" to "may regain full mobility", so perhaps that's as much cheer as either of us needs.

Update: a little more than six months on, Mr Trefusis is now back to doing forty press ups. I think the surgeon's prognosis of 'may regain full mobility' was something of an understatement.

SEVEN ANTI-AGEING SECRETS

I'm still half-heartedly batting off middle-age. By which I mean, my efforts to remind myself that I'm not absolutely over the hill are certainly more vigorous than they were last year. 2010 was mostly characterised by my devotion to eating cake and feeling morose, and of course, by the time the New Year dawned, the cake had made my pants feel like I was wearing them back to front, and the moping around smacked too much of the horror of my fifteen year old self, when all I did was stay in my bedroom wearing an oversize black mohair jersey, writing bleak, sub-Sylvia Plath inspired poetry to a soundtrack of Kate Bush and The Dead Kennedy's.

There has been some progression, thankfully: the mohair has given way to a black cashmere polo neck (admittedly, I'd much rather the label inside said 'Brora' than 'Tesco Finest', but still), and the awful poetry has been replaced by this blog (less prolific, more self-conscious). Fortunately for Mr Trefusis, I only have The Dead Kennedy's on vinyl, and we no longer have a record player. But even so, the period of appalling self-indulgence would have to come to an end at some point, and God, January is a good a cut off as any.

'Shake it off, Trefusis, and spruce yourself up,' I said to myself over Christmas, 'There's no point in waiting for your second wind, if you're still puffed out from the first, life in the old dog yet and all that.' I'm afraid I've never been one for covert, internal transformations - for one thing,  if I'm going to make an effort to buck things up, I don't want it to go unnoticed and for another, I can't possibly change myself on the inside if the outside looks shabby - it seems so hypocritical, really.

It's not a new or original thought, obviously - about two thousand years ago, Roman poet Juvenal wrote that 'seldom do people discern/eloquence under a threadbare cloak' so now, as then, the externals matter.

Of course, after a certain age, there's no such thing as a five minute fix - one can't shrug off twelve months of intimate acquaintance with the Campari Spritz at lovely Polpo Soho or Red Velvets at Hummingbird Bakery overnight - and it seems to me that, after forty, everything, from reading the instructions on a new gadget to looking halfway presentable, takes an unreasonably long time.

But there are a few rules, I find, to making one look less of a natural disaster -

(1) Decent skincare
The effects of winter weather and central heating, as much as age, make skin seem grey, dry and dull. Harper's Bazaar's Newby Hands said Nubo's Diamond Peel and Reveal 'is the best we've tried for giving refined, clear skin'. It's the best I've tried too - it's like Mr Sheen for the face, getting rid of the dusty look and putting the fresh shine back. It's not a steal at £65, but it is wonderful, and a little goes a long way.
I also really like Clinique's Repairwear Laser Focus wrinkle and UV damage corrector (£35) - I'm a huge fan of serums - I've tried everything from Lancome's Genefique to Creme de la Mer - but this works even better than products I've used at twice the price. It makes my skin incredibly clear and soft, and has all but eradicated the finer lines on my face. I use it with another Clinique product, Youth Surge Age Decelerating Moisturiser (there's a day and a night cream), which again has a performance which belies the price - it's about £28, which is only a few quid more than Olay, and infinitely more effective. I'm a complete convert.

(2) It's all about the hair
Watch any of those make-over programmes, and it's not the zillions spent on botox/fillers/peels/surgery that turns the bags into beauties, it's the hair.  Good colour and a decent cut work miracles beyond comprehension. My beloved Graham, who created the Mrs Trefusis hair (profile picture) and is King of Up-do's, has opened a salon a hop, skip and a jump from the office, so I need never let my roots admit what he tries so hard to conceal, that I'm very far from a natural blonde. Graham also taught me that a professional blow-dry is infinitely better value for money than a new frock if you've somewhere special to go.
Tilley and Carmichael, 5 Silver Place, Soho, London W1F 0JR. 0207 287 7677

(3) Until someone sensible brings vigorous corsetry back into vogue, exercise is unavoidable
I've tried, really I have. There have been a few half-hearted attempts at getting back into running, but really, it's been all about the Spanx and a push up bra since the Tiniest T was born. Apparently, exercise not only puts the zing back into your figure, it also makes you feel jolly. Three mind-boggling Zumba classes and some fiendish gym sessions, I'm still to be convinced, possibly because the programme was designed for me by an infant in trackpants, who talked slowly to me in a 'Does he take sugar?' kind of way, and said 'I expect the gym has changed a lot since you last came: it's all computerised now.'


(4) Bugger being young: be sophisticated.
(Actually, this is points 4, 5, 6 and 7 all rolled into one, partly because it's taken me a month to get round to writing this blog, and we'll be here all night if I go on much longer.)

Why bother to épater les jeunes when this season's ultra-groomed glamour looks utterly bonkers on the under 35's. If you try to do the current  'done' look, all blow-dried hair and proper lipstick, and you're in your mid-twenties, you risk looking like the Tiniest Trefusis after a raid on my wardrobe.

Ha! Quick, quick, Middle Youth, I call upon you to rise up: our fashion moment has finally come.

Anyway, the quickest short cut to sophistication is a bold lip, which seems to be very now, thankfully - Sali Hughes has it bang on in this lovely piece from the Guardian. Unconsciously, I've been working up to this moment for a while because at the last count I had fifteen red lipsticks, all different, but then with red lips, it's all about the nuance. It's not especially easy to pull off - a strong lip doesn't really work if the rest of you is a bit laissez-faire - but on the days one can be bothered, it's pure beauty prozac.

It's also probably time to develop a signature look, as recommended in one of my favourite books  - Backwards in High Heels - I'm still working on this, but I'm told it's not only sophisticated, it's most youthifying.

I was also told the other day, by someone who knows, that fast fashion is over and it's all about 'considered shopping' - for example - no one needs three expensive handbags - invest in the one you really love and look after it. Don't buy six cheap white shirts, find the definitive white shirt, and so on and so forth.

But really, the apogee of grown-up chic is the ability to eat oysters. In my head, I am exactly the kind of woman who could perch elegantly on a high stool and lunch on a half dozen Duchy Natives and a glass of champagne - not only is this sublimely elegant, it's also only 4 Weightwatcher Pro-points, the same as a couple of slices of toast but infinitely more impressive.  Reader, I have yet to manage more than two oysters, because secretly they rather revolt me, but I am practising hard, helped by the opening of fabulous new seafood restaurant, The Wright Brothers on Kingly Street in Soho - just walking in makes me feel impossibly stylish, like Alexis Colby, but in a good way.

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON

'I like dragons,' says Trefusis Minor, 'They can throw fire, they're quite like snakes and lizards and they can fly. And they're really quick. And they have armour. The most important thing about a dragon is its wings, its fireballs and its teeth.'

Trefusis Minor is obsessed by dragons. I'm sure many more experienced parents will nod wisely and tell me that dragons are simply the next turning on the left after dinosaurs on the map of boyhood. Mr Trefusis and I are not experienced parents - it's a case of the blind leading the blonde as we struggle to keep up with each new enthusiasm as best we can - though I think we're both secretly relieved we no longer have to remember that a compsognathus was the smallest of the carnivores, or struggle with the pronunciation of Pachycephalosauria.

Anyway, I asked Trefusis Minor why he thought dragons were so popular. 'It's because of St. George,' he said sagely, 'And St. Michael. Everyone likes dragons, even the bad ones.' And, really, that was as much as he'd say on the matter. But everyday he draws pages and pages of them: some have two heads and look ferocious, some are equipped with a terrifying arsenal of weapons, some look amiably bovine, but no two are identical.

Actually, I think the dragon fascination started with a trip to see 'How to Train Your Dragon', a film full of adventure and beautifully realised dragons in exhilarating flying, swooping, gliding and fighting scenes. The hero, Hiccup, is a young and appealingly useless Viking living on the beleaguered island of Berk, who defies tradition when he befriends one of his deadliest foes — the ferocious dragon he calls Toothless.

The film is inspired by Cressida Cowell's book of the same name, subsequently a huge hit at bedtime with Trefusis Minor, though he maintains he prefers the film - I hope his review, which I took down verbatim, makes up in enthusiasm what it lacks in coherence.

'Hiccup is brave and very, very intelligent, he likes the dragons and wants to be friends with them. He didn't want to kill them. In the book he can speak Dragon Language: he can't in the film but he captures a Night Fury which is the best dragon there is and he calls it Toothless and he does find out by himself how to train dragons really well and he saves everyone from the Red Death.

In the book no one actually flies on a dragon but they do in the film and it's amazing when Hiccup flies on his dragon. In the book Toothless doesn't look very scary and he's a bit pathetic but in the film he's beautiful like a black flying snake with green eyes.'

Dreamworks 'How to Train Your Dragon' is out on DVD and Blu-ray tomorrow, Monday 15th November. It will almost certainly find its way into Trefusis Minor's Christmas stocking, and I shan't be sorry to watch it again either - I'm a sucker for films with unlikely heroes, and there are few as unlikely as Hiccup the Useless (later 'Useful') and his beautiful dragon Toothless.

And, as Trefusis Minor says, 'Dragons are actually in Real Life. they're different from ones in the films because they're Komodo dragons who can't spit fire or fly but they do have armour and they are dangerous because they can spit poison and they are big and scary and strong and can defend themselves'

MRS TREFUSIS TAKES A BICYCLE

"If it all gets a bit much, don't be too proud to cycle on the pavement" says Mr Trefusis, kindly, rapping me on the top of my helmet as if to test its strength, and waving me off on my inaugural bicycle ride to the office.



Well, I say inaugural, but I do have form for cycling, albeit in the dim and distant past. Eight years ago, in the middle of a tube strike, I wobbled off to work on my monstrously cool yet entirely impractical Kronan, and I only did it because I had no alternative. The Kronan was developed in the Second World War for the Swedish army, weighs as much as a tank, and was once selected by Tyler Brûle as one of the most stylish design objects of the twentieth century. A bicycle less suited to a commute from West London to Carnaby Street, I can't imagine. Quite apart from its heft, it has no gears and only a back pedal brake, a distinct disadvantage when pedalling up and down the aptly named Notting Hill. As brutal as it is beautiful, I keep expecting to find it used as a murder weapon in an episode of Wallander. Anyway, it was a one off experiment and the Kronan has long since been retired, due to the hassle of getting spare parts shipped in from Sweden, as well as its other disadvantages. Until now, cycling to work has remained nothing more than a latent aspiration.



However, the ongoing Great Trefusis Economic Crisis, and the onset of incipient middle-aged lardiness has put commuting by bicycle firmly back on the agenda. Could I save money and get fitter at the same time, ideally without finding myself squashed between the 148 bus and a John Lewis delivery van on the Bayswater Road? I'm not convinced enough to invest in a bicycle of my own – and of course, that would hardly tick the money-saving box - so I borrowed an old one from my parents instead and bought the sort of luminous waistcoat that people on building sites wear. I figured that if I was to cheat death on two wheels, it was best to make my lack of cycling proficiency really, really visible.



On paper, or indeed by car/bus/tube, the journey to work is simple – turn right out of our road, turn right again, and keep going straight until one gets to Oxford Circus. But on a bike, going along Holland Park Avenue and then down Oxford Street feels like a route mapped in one's own blood. I plugged the postcodes into TFL's planner which came back with a route so circuitous and complex that it went on to two pages – God only knows how one is supposed to memorise a route like that, but I tried to keep it in my head by earmarking the familiar. It's roughly straight on West to East – how hard could it be?
Anyway, I set off, went straight, turned left at the Rug Company, ran behind Holland Park Avenue and Notting Hill until I passed Le Cafe Anglais, and then, not quite a third of the way into the journey, I promptly forgot the route, found myself back on the main road, inches from the thundering juggernauts. I remembered Mr Trefusis's pavement advice, but the pavement was, rather inconveniently, full of pedestrians, so I crossed at the lights and went into Hyde Park – what could be nicer? Trees, no cars, squirrels, loveliness and Parks Police. "Cycling is not allowed" shrieked the Parks Policeman, "can't you see the sign?". 'No Cycling' is written in two foot high letters at intervals along the path so I was definitely caught red-faced and red-handed. All I could do was dismount and walk my bike, head held as high as I could muster, to the nearest exit. Not being able to cycle in the park, parallel with the Bayswater Road, seems to me to be the most enormous swizz – Hyde Park is huge, with much wider pavements than the street, and could easily accommodate a small cycle lane. Boris should have fixed this at the same time as planting all of his bikes all over London. I overtook two Boris Bikes after that, just to get my pride back.



Actually, the journey from then on was relatively uneventful – I took a slightly idiosyncratic route north of Oxford Street, and then down through Hanover Square so I could 'wave' cheerily, hem hem, at Vogue House before arriving at work rather earlier than usual.



Cycling is moderately terrifying, I must admit, but the greatest dangers seem to be from other cyclists – those wearing earphones to cycle seem to lack an appropriate respect for their own personal safety – and Professor of Traffic Psychology (and God, who knew there was such a thing), Dr Ian Walker's insights seem to work, cars/buses/cabs and vans give you a wider berth if you're obviously a bit rubbish, your mum's bike and long blond hair worn loose are as essential a part of your Cycling Safety kit as a helmet and lights. As I write this, I'm about to don the fluoro waistcoat and swirly-girly helmet for my newly mapped route home, past Estee Lauder's head office, over Park Lane and straight on until I get to the cup of tea Mr Trefusis promises he has waiting for me at the other end.

A LA RÉCHERCHE DES VACANCES PERDUES

'I've turned into my parents, haven't I?' I said to Mr Trefusis halfway through our holiday, as I tuned the car radio into Radio Four and suggested we might stop to have a look at the view. I found myself parroting phrases like 'Just in case' and 'You can't trust the forecast' as I packed cagoules and cardigans, sunhats and suncream, and insisted on the children getting out to the beach even when it was far from warm for 'a bit of a blow'. Worse still, every time anyone yawned, I said 'Tires you out, all this sea air'. It's true: it does.

The piéce de résistance of my search for early eighties authenticity was dragging the tirelessly good-humoured Belgian Waffling down to the beach in a howling gale so we could enact the time-honoured British Tea Ceremony, Holiday Edition. I think we managed one cup each from the outsize thermos and a scone, crunchy with wind-whipped sand, before the charm wore off, but it evoked the requisite nostalgie de la boue. The only way we could possibly have trumped the experience would have been to drink the tea in the car whilst watching the sea and the lashing rain. But I think you have to be in Filey for it to work properly. I spent several summers as a child on the North East coast, and apparently I used to go swimming quite happily - God knows how I avoided hypothermia.

Even Mr Trefusis - who, like the Bromsgroves, came from a family that went Abroad for their holidays - fell for the charms of lovely Ventnor, even if he spent most of it pretending to be Alain Delon, hanging out in a fishing village somewhere on the Cote D'Azur.

Steephill Cove, our nearest beach, is the Petit Trianon of the British seaside. Tiny as it is, and accessible only by foot or by boat, it manages to boast not only the kind of rockpool action beloved of the Cappuccino Classes but also two of the best fish restaurants on the island, and café-cum-shop selling a mean espresso, Minghella's ices and cool retro sweets like Starbars, Fry's Mint Cream and Sherbet dibdabs. I muttered something about it being the new Dorset, and took Trefusis Minor and The TT down to the shoreline to build sandcastles and swim in the sea, leaving Mr Trefusis to 'watch' us from his favourite table, whilst simultaneously reading one of those 'The Girl with ..' novels and taking surreptitious peeks around his sun specs at the pretty girls coming in and out of the café.

Yet it wasn't all about trying to recapture the holidays of my childhood - as The Waffle's charming brother said as he took us all out on a boat, it's about making new memories too, even if some of them are inspired by old ones. 'I'll never forget the first time my dad took me fishing.' he said, as the mackerel lines were passed around. Fishing for mackerel off the coast of the Isle of Wight is infinitely more satisfying than catching crabs - the little blighters jump with lemming-like enthusiasm onto your hooks, and even The Tiniest Trefusis caught three, first time she dropped her line over the side. Trefusis Minor was less successful - he's more likely to remember his valiant attempts not to be seasick. We caught twenty-five mackerel in about ten minutes - and took them back to the lovely holiday house and baked some en papillotte with cider and onions, and froze the rest to take home after the holidays.

This morning, before leaving for the office, I made Mr Trefusis some mackerel pâté with the last of them (not as goddessy as it sounds - it's an insanely easy recipe, involving nothing more trying than mashing the ingredients together with a fork). I took the cooked fish off the bone by hand and as I sat on the bus on my way to work, I couldn't help noticing how appallingly whiffy my fingers still were, despite washing them several times. Ick.

Mackerel-scented fingers are too prosaic as a memory trigger and can hardly compete with Proust's madelines for romance, but all the same, I spent the whole journey wrapped in the comforting memories of a blissful fortnight spent in wonderful company, rediscovering simple pleasures.

THE TRAVELLING TREFUSII

As a child I was deeply envious of friends who holidayed abroad, particularly the Bromsgroves who, every summer, would pack up their Volvo and drive off to the South of France, returning relaxed and happy, tan marks livid against Piz Buin bronzed skin. I wanted to be one of those families, off for a fortnight on a beach in Spain or France, the children left to their own devices way past their usual bedtime, whilst the parents got mildly wasted on Rosé or Sangria. But no. We went to Norfolk, or Dorset, or Devon. Our entertainment came straight from the pages of a Ladybird book, digging endless sandcastles and dragging shrimping nets through rockpools, punctuated by the odd trip to a National Trust house or the treat of a coca-cola and a packet of crisps in a pub garden. The sense was that there was something decadent - slightly degenerate even - about the Foreign Holiday: we were above such things, in the same way we were above having a pumpkin at Hallowe'en, and instead if we wanted a spooky lantern, we had to spend an entire afternoon hollowing out a turnip with a dessert spoon.

But now I'm a bona-fide grown-up and can choose my own holiday destination, do Mr Trefusis and I bundle the infant Trefusii into the Audi and head off for the fleshpots of the Midi? We do not. The early programming was too effective. Holiday heaven for me means the Great British Break and doing my best to repeat the highlights of childhood summers of the nineteen seventies. If there's a tea room to be visited, so much the better. 

It means a spot of unspoilt coastline, preferably with a proper beach café. We have yet to try the crab tea, but I'm longing to.

My childhood memories are, like everyone's I suppose, all shiny and golden, full of endlessly balmy summer's days. I tell a lie, there was a holiday in 1982 which was mostly full of thermos flasks, anoraks and windbreaks, but mostly there was sunshine - I promise you it's a myth that the weather in England is unremittingly and uncharitably wet.

This year's holiday is no different. So far, we have honestly had very nice weather, well, mostly - today decided to be the exception that tested the rule and indeed, it was like this, and I wasn't the only one who was glad I packed the waterproof bhurka-style pacamac. Anyway, here is Mr Trefusis, the day after we arrived, trying his best to pretend it's thirty five degrees as he reads his copy of The Week.

Why is it that fathers can read the newspaper - every section, even the Review and the motoring bit - whilst also 'supervising' the offspring. I have to start breathing into a paper bag if I take my eyes off them for an instant: He's entirely unconcerned that the children are hurtling into the sea fully clothed.

We get on with the lovely business of poking at rockpools: half afraid, half hopeful a crab might nip our fingers, but ready to settle for finding a whelk or an untethered limpet.

And then spend the rest of the afternoon trying to execute an over-ambitious sandcastle

before working out that the water is actually really lovely after all, perhaps not quite lovely enough to swim in, although people were, but definitely perfect for paddling.

(with very many thanks to Belgian Waffling)

LOVE IS A UNIVERSAL MIGRAINE

I am shockingly bad at writing prompt thank-you letters. I always mean to, and yet, I came across one loitering unfinished in my handbag the other day that really should have hit the post-box in early January. I've come round to the idea that a text or phone-call the next day is actually better than a letter that never gets sent, but still, you see, the guilt dogs me. It doesn't feel proper, somehow.

The reason I'm feeling twitchy about gratitude is that the ever inspiring Tania Kindersley has given me an award, an honour I'm quite sure I don't deserve, but for which I'm none the less touched and incredibly grateful, and I know that if I don't say thank-you now, it may well be months before I get round to it. Tania is the co-author of one of my favourite books of last year, Backwards in High Heels, a consoling and deeply satisfying book about 'the impossible art of being female'. It's a book one dips into again and again, coming away with fistfuls of gems that go on glittering at you throughout the day. It covers everything from developing a signature style to what it means to be a feminist, and if you don't have a copy I urge you to buy it (it's a complete steal at Amazon - less than six quid). Tania is working on a new book, but in the meantime you can find her terrific blog here.

The award, like all good inheritances, comes entailed with conditions - passing the award onto six other bloggers is the easy bit (see below) but I think another seven things about me hot on the heels of, um, nine things about me, might just end up being Too Much Information.

I'm going to offer you Seven Poems that Saved My Life instead. Coincidentally, the day before Tania told me she'd tagged me for the Beautiful Blogger, I'd found my old commonplace book tucked away at the back of a drawer. It's full of no end of nonsense - old vaporetto tickets, quotations, restaurant receipts and whatnot - and I'd written nothing in it since Trefusis Minor was a tiny wailing infant, but at one stage in its genesis I went through a phase of copying poems into it. They're mostly from a time when I was not very happily single, so if there's rather a relentless theme to them, do forgive.

1. Past One O'Clock. Vladimir Mayakovsky

Past one o'clock. You must have gone to bed.

The Milky Way streams silver through the night.

I'm in no hurry: with lightning telegrams

I have no cause to wake or trouble you.

And, as they say, the incident is closed.

Love's boat has smashed against the daily grind.

Now you and I are quits. Why bother then

To balance mutual sorrows, pains, and hurts.

Behold what quiet settles on the world.

Night wraps the sky in tribute from the stars.

In hours like these, one rises to address

The ages, history and all creation.

When I was half-sick with unresolved love for that scoundrel Vronsky, I used to find the line 'love's boat has smashed against the daily grind' extremely helpful. See also Carol Ann Duffy's 'Words, Wide Night', and - later - 'The Art of Losing' by Elizabeth Bishop.

2. Celia, Celia. Adrian Mitchell

When I am sad and weary

When I think all hope is gone

When I walk along High Holborn

I think of you with nothing on.

I got that on a text once from Mr Trefusis' predecessor. It made me roar with laughter, which wasn't entirely appropriate since I was reading it under the desk in the middle of a hugely dull corporate boardroom love-in at the time.

3. Bloody Men. Wendy Cope

Bloody men are like bloody buses -

You wait for about a year

And as soon as one approaches your stop

Two or three others appear.

You look at them flashing their indicators,

Offering you a ride.

You're trying to read the destinations,

You haven't much time to decide.

If you make a mistake, there is no turning back.

Jump off, and you'll stand there and gaze

While the cars and the taxis and lorries go by

And the minutes, the hours, the days.

Few poets are as cheeringly witty as Wendy Cope, and this one was such a solace in the internet dating days.

4. Mrs Icarus. Carol Ann Duffy

I'm not the first or the last

to stand on a hillock,

watching the man she married

prove to the world

he's a total, utter, absolute, Grade A pillock.

It's a matter of public record that I had a very short-lived 'starter marriage' when I was as young as I was stupid. The last time I wrote anything about it, he tried to sue me, so I shall draw a veil over the details. In any case, Carol Ann Duffy's poem says all that needs saying.

5. To His Coy Mistress. Andrew Marvell

Had we but world enough, and time,

This coyness, Lady, were no crime

We would sit down and think which way

To walk and pass our long love's day.

Thou by the Indian Ganges' side

Should'st rubies find: I by the tide

Of Humber would complain. I would

Love you ten years before the Flood,

And you should, if you please, refuse

Til the conversion of the Jews.

[text continues here - it's too long to scribe out on this post]

A terrible rake once seduced me by quoting this poem in its entirety. I don't think I've ever quite recovered.

6. He wishes for the cloths of heaven. W.B. Yeats

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams:

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

My lovely sister read this at my wedding to Mr Trefusis. We all cried. It's one of the few poems I know by heart.

7. Child. Sylvia Plath

Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing.

I want to fill it with colour and ducks,

The zoo of the new

Whose names you meditate -

April snowdrop, Indian pipe,

Little

Stalk without wrinkle

Pool in which images

Should be grand and classical

Not this troublous wringing of hands, this dark

Ceiling without a star.

This is the very last thing in the notebook. I must have written it in the anxious, uncertain nights of new motherhood, when - if Trefusis Minor wasn't wailing - I'd send Mr Trefusis upstairs three times an hour to check he was still breathing, or, if he was bawling in the unrepentant way of newborn babies, I'd be out, pacing the twilight streets with him in a baby sling, in a futile attempt to march him into sleep.

And now it's my turn to have the very greatest pleasure in passing on the Beautiful Blogger award to the delicious blogs below - it's an edit of some of my favourite aesthetes.

She hasn't posted for a while, but this presents one with all the excuse one could ever need to investigate the back catalogue of http://monavismesamis.blogspot.com/. She writes so beautifully, and she loves AS Byatt, Molly Keane, Mary Wesley and 'obscure early twentieth century female authors' (isn't it funny how much one instantly likes someone who shares the same taste in books?). I also suspect her of once doing a very similar job to mine.

Do look at the blissful box of delights that is http://littleaugury.blogspot.com/ There are always exquisite pictures, and she loves Virginia Woolf, and Edith Sitwell, and Diana Vreeland, and Oscar Wilde - reason enough to point you in her direction)

I'm greatly in favour of http://easyandelegantlife.com/ - his latest post on the importance of 'distinguished' and 'dignified' says it all. What's more, he quotes one of my favourite lines from Baudelaire 'Luxe, calme et volupte'. Wonderful.

http://fashionsmostwanted.blogspot.com/ is such a lovely mix of culture and fashion, and always a treat to read. Christina tagged me in a fabulous meme about shoes, which I will do when Mr Trefusis goes away in a couple of weeks on one of his expeditions (I can't quite face justifying to him quite why I'm photographing all my favourite pairs of shoes, though I really want to and I keep making little jottings about the stories of those I plan to feature).

http://knightleyorelton.blogspot.com/ is my friend in Real Life, despite the fact that I am old enough to be his mum, so I hope it's not cheating to nominate him. He has the nicest manners of just about anyone I know and his blog, albeit new, always offers a fresh perspective.

http://afemmeduncertainage.blogspot.com/ is about France, and about fashion, but above all it's about the kind of elegant, classic style that comes with confidence and self-knowledge, and which never goes out of season. She mixes opinion with observation and includes terrific images. A paradigm of effortless chic.

MEME-ORIES

I'm so sorry, the minute I wrote that heading, I planted a Barbara Streisand shaped ear-worm in my head (misty water-coloured memories of the way we were tra la la) - I don't even particularly like the song, but there it is, firmly embedded, and so, like this Meme, I'll pass the ear-worm onto you too.

Anyway, I have the beginnings of six blog posts in my draft folder, half of which have become obsolete since I started them, and since Real Life is conspiring against me getting any of them finished in the foreseeable, I thought I'd take the opportunity to do the lovely Foxymoron's meme, since she was generous enough to tag me.

What experience has most shaped you, and why?

If one allows oneself to be shaped by experience, one gets into all sorts of trouble - it implies one might learn by one's mistakes, which doesn't half take the fun out of things. I always say, if a mistake's worth making, it's worth making again, and again, and again.

However, that's no kind of an answer, is it, so I suppose growing up as an army brat is the defining formative experience. I used to envy people who'd lived in the same town all their lives and had friends they'd been at nursery school with, but there are advantages of moving every few years: it teaches you to make friends easily, and to be incredibly self-sufficient in the gaps between making those new friends - a skill I'm failing to pass on to Trefusis Minor and his sister, who won't play on their own at all. My parents also had to do vast amounts of entertaining, and my sister and I were always on peanut and crisp passing duty before we were scooted off to bed, and had to make lightly intelligent small talk with Generals and Colonels and their wives, and to be able to start a conversation with someone one has never met before. Curiously, this turned out to be incredibly good training for my career, but more of that another time.

If you had a whole day with no commitments, what would you do?

I'd write something moderately entertaining for this blog, and try to store up a stash of posts for when the gaps between work and life close down once more.

What food or drink could you never give up?

Cocktails, naturally - I'm devoted to a classic Daiquiri, which is one of the few cocktails that it's easy to make at home if you get the quantities right (recipe here). I also find the way Claridges make a champagne cocktail very cheering. It's a great restorative, and a lovely treat. I can't remember what they cost exactly - I think it's £12.50 - obviously not cheap, but infinitely better value for money than four Starbucks frappucinos, say.

Food? Well, I'm very fond of the marachino cherry in the champagne cocktail.

If you could travel anywhere, where would that be and why?

Venice is my favourite place on the planet, not least because one of my favourite people on the planet lives there and I don't get to see nearly enough of her, so if I could travel anywhere, it would always be there.

I've also a longing to go to Istanbul, so I can straddle two continents (ouch).

Who do you have a crush on?

Ha, I thought, I don't have crushes, how juvenile. I haven't had a crush on anyone since I had a massive crush on Julian Cope when I was fourteen, and kept the photo-set I tore from The Face under my pillow. And anyway, obviously, I'm far too devoted to Mr Trefusis to have a proper moony crush on anyone.

But then, what about Gene Hunt? Fictional character, very unprepossessing, makes me quiver with lust every time Ashes to Ashes is on the telly. Crushes on fictional characters don't stop with D.I. Hunt - there's Gabriel Oak from Far from the Madding Crowd [pictured above], James Bond, Maximus Decimus Meridius, Oliver Mellors, William in Flambards, Beowulf, Carrisford from A Little Princess, and, erm, Dracula. The list is a bit longer than that, but I don't want to get a reputation for being that sort of girl.

Lately, though, I realise my crushes run to the gerontophile: David Dimbleby, Bryan Ferry, Melvyn Bragg, A.C Grayling, even Jeremy Paxman. No one needs a doctorate in psychology to analyse my devotion to clever old men.

I also have a mammoth crush on my art teacher, who looks just like a superannuated Lloyd Cole. So consuming is my passion for him I am even able to overlook his horny toenails and Jesus sandals.

If you were leader of your country, what would you do?

Oh God, I don't know. Even David Cameron didn't know, which is why the last election in the UK was the one none of the candidates wanted to win.

I asked Mr Trefusis instead, it being his kind of question. This is what he'd do if he were your Prime Minister

Economics: pay down the debt and make Europe accountable [long tirade about corruption in the EU and subsidising european farmers.... I shall spare you the full version]

Education: pay teachers more, sack bad teachers, insist on higher standards in teaching colleges, allow people to open more schools.

Foreign Policy: work out what the hell we're supposed to be doing in Afghanistan, do it, and leave.

Culture: make sure there are tangible, long-lasting benefits from the money spent on developing the London Olympics. Remove all arts subsidies [I'm afraid there was a long pause whilst we had a mini row about that one...]

Immigration:"If you want free markets, you have to allow free movement of people. Any kind of immigration control is complete lunacy"

[There was more... I distracted him with a television programme about the Romans in Britain before he made me write him a Manifesto].

Give me one easy savoury recipe that doesn't include cheese.

Take one Boots Advantage Card, go into the shop and select a large packet of salt and vinegar crisps, open and serve.

Only joking.

Tagliata in the Nigella manner:

Put olive oil, the juice and zest of a lemon, a couple of handfuls of thyme or oregano, two crushed garlic cloves and salt and pepper into a deep sided dish.

Show a large rump (or sirloin - whatever's in Waitrose) steak to a searingly hot pan, longer if you like.

When you've given your steak a couple of minutes each side, put it in the lemon/olive oil/herb mixture and leave it to rest for at least five minutes each side.

Slice it into strips.

Put it on a generous pile of rocket salad, pour some of the marinade over it and season.

How many it serves depends on how big your steak was in the first place. Mr Trefusis complains if I don't offer him some kind of carbohydrate to go with it, preferably cubes of potato roasted in the oven with olive oil, garlic, rosemary and a lot of sea salt.

What did you think you were going to be when you grew up?

A Prima ballerina. Stop sniggering.

If you could spend just one day in someone else's body, who would it be?

Anna Wintour. With an option to morph into Grace Coddington if I can't keep up the froideur past elevenses.

Now, the way this meme works is that I have to add a question of my own, and tag three other bloggers.

Which woman writer - living or dead - do you most admire and why?

And my three bloggers are

Blighty: http://blightyworld.blogspot.com/

The Knackered Mother's Wine Club: http://knackeredmotherswineclub.blogspot.com/

and,

Perfect Welcome: http://perfectwelcome.blogspot.com/