Beautiful Bruni should be proud to be Starkerszy

France's First Lady Carla Bruni is said to be fuming about Christies showcasing a nude print of her hours before a state visit of the newlywed Sarkozys to Britain. The Sun reports today that she is desperate to downplay her past as a supermodel and serial rock star lover, preferring to style herself as a demure consort. The woman is mad... who in their right mind wouldn't be chuffed to see their picture plastered everywhere if their naked body looked so dang good. Bruni can't escape her past, so the best option is to hold her head up high.

Tessa's bad karma and a cheeky headline

The story involving Tessa Jowell and her new gipsy neighbours is a brilliant tale of how the wheel of fortune can turn so cruelly. The Sun's headline "Cheek by Jowell" got a titter from me. Thriving on a hefty dose of schadenfreude, the story goes that Tessa, who evicted gipsies from East London to clear sites for the 2012 Olympics, now has 64 travellers as her neighbours.  The worst news for Tessa is that they have decided to stop travelling, having bought the land as a permanent home. Ironically, the gipsies didn't know who lived next door when they set up camp. But, since finding out, they are thrilled. Poor old Tessa: the MP must be gutted to hear the gipsies talk of "payback time" and boast that it will take eight years for them to be evicted for breaching planning laws. 

Credit where credit's due

The global financial system's taking a battering. Credit will be harder to come by and we're being advised to reduce debt, tighten belts and save for an uncertain future.  But if you were a good borrower before the credit crunch, taking out loans or cards you could afford and keeping up repayments, you will still be able to get credit.  It's those who have been borrowing beyond their means, taking further hand-outs to repay that debt, that have been shuffling ever closer to a personal financial precipice. For some, there may be no option but to hurtle lemming-like over the edge. As someone who recently took out a self-cert mortgage, I am amazed at how much money was on the table with little evidence of our ability to pay it back.  Luckily, I had a great IFA, who kept us focused on taking out a mortgage that we could afford come economic rain or shine. It's easy to fall foul of the system though -- I recently heard of family friends in dire straits after a remortgage and arrears on the repayments have left them facing repossession.  When this happens to real people you know, you can't help being afraid.  I'm going to dust off my piggy bank and start saving for a rainy day.

Facing up to a Fakebook disaster

Who has the biggest party hangover today?  A young lady called Sarah Ruscoe who has become a victim of a style of networking I'm calling "Fakebooking".  Community sites like Facebook have made listing friends a competitive sport.  Which is how it was possible for Sarah to invite 300 "fake mates" and 200 virtual acquaintances to her 18th birthday party.  What she didn't bargain on was how quickly word would spread.  The Guardian reports today how a combination of a poster about the party at a local Grammar school and details about it on MySpace, school bulletin boards and Facebook, attracted 2000 teenage revellers to the posh pile.  Sarah's parents were powerless as their place received a anarchic trashing of punk-worthy proportions.  The birthday girl's mum Rebecca seems far too posh for rhyming slang, but I am sure she will agree that the evening went truly "Pete Tong" following the shout-out on Tong's Radio 1 show mentioning the function among the cool places to be that night.  Oops.

No drugs for me, it's only a spot of labour

The BBC news website reports today that many women underestimate the pain of labour and childbirth and want to get through the ordeal without any drugs. Research at Newcastle University has revealed massive discrepancies between the expectation of labour and the actual experience (really?), which means that the quarter of women who have an epidural often feel a sense of failure. I can empathise with this, as I was encouraged by midwives, NCT ante natal classes and a private course with Birth Days, to find natural alternatives to pain relief and I would have been gutted if my birth plan had not panned out. For me, it worked, but I felt embarrassed revealing my good experience to those whose resembled a chapter from a Stephen King novel.  But I didn't go into labour blindly expecting a blissful time. I imagined pain of the Medieval torture ilk -- like having your body torn apart on the rack. Having been told that drugs could extend the agony by slowing down labour, I thought that an epidural would be harder work than going au naturel.  So I strapped on a TENS machine as soon as the first twinges of labour started to niggle. This released endorphins rather than adrenaline and helped keep panic levels down. Admittedly, there was a tipping point when I lamented, "This fXX*ing thing doesn't work!". Another clincher: living close to the hospital (how many have that luxury?) - I stayed at home so long, it was almost too late for hard core drugs when I checked in. Ultimately, there's no right or wrong way to give birth - we just do the best we can and, as first time mums, we can't possibly imagine what's in store. I was lucky to go to a midwife led unit, the Mary Rose Maternity Centre in Portsmouth, where caring support and a wonderful birthing pool was the best medicine for me. 

Tips on morale boosting for home workers

I'm self-employed and work from home, which doesn't suit everybody. If you've worked 9 to 5 before, the freedom can come as a culture shock... and so can the lack of a trusty monthly pay cheque. When work is slow, you have to remind yourself that you are actually a professional. There's no-one to pat you on the back for the introductory letters, emails and pitches you have toiled over. And, if you're in my line of work, reading new magazines and dreaming up feature ideas can feel like play rather than work in the traditional sense. Here are my top self-motivation tips to help put the puff back in your shoulder pads when you feel less business-like than your office-bound peers:

1. Create a separate work space, away from distractions, and make sure you can walk away from it at the end of the day.
2. Ask for testimonials for every job you do.  Reading them is like a shot of adrenaline when you need a self-esteem boost.
   
3. Make at least one business call a day to remind yourself that you exist in a world with other humans.
4. Start every day by reading the news and being aware of what is going on in the world outside your front door.
5. Get into a business-like routine:  You work from home, but that's no excuse to slouch around in sweat pants all day.  
6. Focus:  To Do Lists aren't just for the employed.  Your time is money, so set goals and use it wisely.
7. Bookmark the Enterprise Nation website for lots of amazing advice for home workers.

Rewired and ready for action

Getting back into the swing of things after having my son Nathan is exciting. I've read some books to give me a giddy-up, like the brilliant The Greatest Freelance Writing Tips in the World by Linda Jones and The Renegade Writer: A Totally Unconventional Guide to Freelance Writing Success by Linda Formichelli and Diana Burrell.  More on these later, but just a quick note on one of the many helpful things I have learned:  Editors are human beings just like me. Having worked in PR for 10 years, I saw how the PR and journalistic worlds run parallel, rarely to meet as friends. It was assumed by some that if you had the PR chip, you didn't have the right wiring to be a good journalist. When I started out this held me back. As I get fired up for working life again, thanks to Linda, Linda and Diana for reminding me that a little fear is healthy, even motivational, but should never be an obstacle.  

Rainy days & Mondays

The lead story on the BBC website is the dismal weather.  As the country gets a battering from rain and wind, the stats are being gathered: 80mph winds, blocked roads, power cuts, flood warnings... the news rooms relish weather-based hysteria.  I can't help feeling smug:  A year ago today I was getting married and the sun shone.  Our big day was bathed in a golden glow and the daffodils danced in the Spring breeze.  What were we thinking having our wedding in early March in a cottage at the end of a mud-track?  Could've been a mucky affair.  During the build-up, clicking refresh on the BBC weather website became my pre-wedding OCD.

Heart-to-heart

A friend this week said that she was looking forward to going away with her hubby at the weekend because they would have time to talk.  She wasn't referring to a scary "talk" but just a good old chat, the kind you have when you are dating.  It made me think about how many folks communicate on a need-to-know basis without regularly flexing their talk muscles.  So I'm making a "new month resolution" for March to practise the art of proper conversation with my other half every day.

Healthy attitude

There's nothing like a brush with death to give you a kick up the jacksy and make you Go For It! A health scare has bugged me for two weeks like an theme tune I couldn't get out of my head.  But now the irritating jingle has gone for good after the doc gave me a clean bill of health.  So I'm full of the joys and feeling invincible.  Time to fill that head space with fabulous new pitch ideas.  Or chase that editor whose silence is deafening.  What doesn't kill me will make me stronger, right?