World Book Night

Yay, I've just received an email telling me that I'm to be a 'giver' in World Book Night, on Saturday 5th March, an initiative in which one million books will be given away free.

My novel is 'One Day' by David Nicholls, a fabulous novel where we follow a couple's relationship on the same date each year over 20 years. It's an excellent conceit and makes for some good irony and poignancy. I loved it and hope that the 48 copies I have to give away will go to people who will be similarly rewarded.

I shall be giving some copies away at the mental hospital where I work, and to commuters at Victoria Station. Will keep you updated here as to how I get on.

But what a fabulous initiative - a million books, given away for free. Reading for pleasure, in every sense of the word.

Licking the spoon...

So, were you allowed to lick the spoon when your Mum was making cakes? In other words, did you grow up in a pre-lapsarian, pre-Edwina Curry, salmonella-free era, when scraping out the last of the cake mixture was a treat on a par with Christmas? Yep, me too. It combined the buzz of acquiring BETWEEN MEALS an additional ration of chocolate (all my mother’s cakes were chocolate), with the hint that by scraping out the bowl I was somehow contributing to the cake making effort. And that this made me a cook.

Now, being a proper grown up and all, I now know that cooking is a little bit more complicated than that. But deep down I have never lost the love of creating food from scratch, wafting around a kitchen filled with savoury aromas or the warm fug of baking. From the age of six when my mother graciously declared that my pastry was better than hers, I've chopped and whisked and rolled and sauted and enjoyed the simple pleasures of making good food. And over time I’ve found that cooking taps into magical things unrelated to the kitchen. As well as providing actual nourishment, cooking can be soothing, therapeutic, and good for the soul.

I'm not sure what I'll be blogging about, but then that's one of the big challenges of life: facing the unknown. The main ingredient will, I'm sure, be cooking. Except when it's about eating out, which is another passion. There’ll be a dollop of politics, a soupcon of social commentary, all basted in the juices of my job as a psychotherapist. And as I’m the agony aunt of Psychologies magazine, the glaze may well come from mulling over how this thing called Life makes us feel. I may not blog terribly consistently - I'm meant to be finishing my second novel, about Jax, daughter of a famous TV chef, who refuses to learn to cook - but then again, life is too short not to have a go at this multi-tasking malarky once in a while.

So join me here – not only to lick the spoon of life, but eat the cake too!

Now, where’s my apron…?