Call me an over anxious, middle-class mum, but my eight-and-a-half-year old son looks very much, to me, like he's headed for a life of crime.

If, however, you have richer pursuits in mind and know that no woman should be judged by how she looks - that everything she brings to the party is more important than the size of her arse - then refuse to be sucked into the never ending whirligig of self-doubting, self-hating madness that is stop-start dieting and crazy new exercise regimes.

My dad was a diplomat and after living in America, where I was born, he was posted to Cairo.

Does everyone turn into a truculent thirteen-year-old when they go home, or is it just me?

Success, in whatever form it takes, is a tricky thing - once you've achieved your goal, then what? Where do you aim?

There is an inherent tolerance and kindness in the state school teenagers I know.

I have never done a package tour in my life. It appeals in a way, but then I remind myself that you can't control the other people with you, which could turn out to be ghastly.