Society prizes a girl for being thin more than anything else she might bring to the table.

I don't think I've got the expertise with which to nit-pick, and I freely admit that my motivation to support charities has been emotional, rather than as a result of being particularly well informed as to how the money is used.

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

Sending your child off to school for the first time in their life is terrifying.

I dont understand boys - just ask my husband.

With a diplomat father, for whom foreign postings were a fact of life, my siblings and I were expected to attend boarding schools in Britain.

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.