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

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.

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

When popularity is your only goal, doing well in class is going to feature very low, if at all, on your priority list.

I dont understand boys - just ask my husband.

My mother, father, stepmother and surrogate mother have all died of cancer; my best friend has got terminal cancer and at least five of my other friends have had cancer but survived it.

If there's one thing I know, it's this - everybody thinks somebody else is having a better life.