As a self-confessed ‘moaner’, I thought I’d use this blog to help me remember all the things I actually like about my life. I’ve heard that one of the best ways to feel happier is to develop an “attitude of gratitude” so that’s what I’m going to try and do. Apparently, it’s very simple: all you have to do is write down, every day if you can, at least three things that you’re genuinely grateful for. They don’t have to be big things, could just be a cuddle from your kids or fresh sheets on the bed. Feel free to join in by commenting on my blog posts with your own three things for the day. I’d love to hear from you!

Anyway, today the thing I’m most grateful for is the weather. After a few grey and rainy days, I opened the curtains this morning to find a spectacularly beautiful scene – the English countryside glowing in golden sunshine, blue skies, a rich mixture of green fields and rusty orange and red autumn leaves. Wow! It was the most lovely surprise, and I think I’m appreciating it even more because I wasn’t expecting it.

Second thing: my mum. Bless her, for all her ‘foibles’, she’s always at the end of the phone and has given me so much love and support. Thanks, mum. And please don’t be offended that you’ve come after the weather, it’s just the order in which things happened today!

Third thing (so far, and it’s only lunchtime): Coffee and free WiFi in Starbucks. I honestly don’t know what I’d do without the place.

I have spent most of my lifetime lusting after other people’s gorgeous long, lush eyelashes, probably because my own are more than a little bit sparse. I’m one of those pale English Rose types with mousey hair, mousey eyebrowns, white skin (verging on mauve at the moment) and light blue eyes framed with just a sprinkling of lashes. I’m also over 6’ tall. As a result, I would give my eye teeth (whatever they are!) for the kind of dark, fluttery, flirty, film star lashes that people like Penelope Cruz, Monica Bellucci and so many other women seem to have. The kind that are utterly feminine, deeply seductive and ever-so-slightly dangerous-looking. It seems to me that enhancing your eyelashes is one of the quickest ways to “oomph” up your sex appeal and powers of persuasion … hence, I guess, the umpteen million dollar market in mascara!

I’m sure I am unhealthily fixated. Anyone who knows me will know that it’s often the first thing I comment on when I meet someone new. And I’ve realised that, for some bizarre reason, it’s usually little boys, who have no need of them whatsoever, who have the best lashes going – another one of life’s great mysteries!

Anyway, the whole reason for this ramble is because I have discovered something that actually “oomphs” up my eyelashes. Having tried many many mascaras over the years, I was a little bit cynical about all the claims made for Cargo Lash Activator. And, to be honest, I don’t think it has made my eyelashes actually grow. But however it does whatever it does, somehow or other it seems to make them look a bit thicker, a bit darker and, dare I say it, a bit more lush than any mascara gone before! The effect remains even when I take it off, which makes me think perhaps I’m not taking it off properly … but then again, who cares?! Until the day that I can afford regular eyelash extensions (never had them but I hear they’re fab!), I guess I’ll be paying £19 a pop for Cargo Lash Activator. Unless, of course, you’re going to tell me about some other miracle product that I just have to try!

Right now, I’m wondering whether perhaps it’s time to brave a brow ‘shaping’ experience as well? A manicure? A pedicure? Even a wax?!!! And maybe, just maybe, I’ll wake up one day … sometime soon-ish … and find I have finally metamorphosed into that grown-up well-groomed woman I really ought to be by now!

PS. This is not a sponsored post, it’s entirely genuine.

It’s not very often that I have sleepless nights, but the looming deadline for our younger daughter’s school admissions form has got me tossing and turning with the best of the them! And asking myself all sorts of deep and meaningful questions about the type of ‘education’ I want for my children. Of course, it would have been helpful if I’d had all these thoughts before my elder daughter started school, but for some bizarre reason it’s now that I’m chewing the cud over private versus state, big versus small, alternative versus ‘mainstream’ …

And suddenly, there are so many questions:

* Would I go private even if money was no object? What about all my long-held “leftie” principles? Does all that go out of the window when it comes to your own children and what’s best for them?

* When I say I don’t want my children put under pressure to pass the 11+, does that mean I’m quite happy for them to amble along to the local secondary? No, of course not! I secretly just want them to sail through the exam without batting a beautiful eyelid and then sail through grammar school in the same way, collecting a plethora of A*s along the way. Or do I? I mean, really? After all, as I know only too well, there’s far more to life than academic success.

* When I “ooh” and “aah” over the little village infants school with fantastic views and fewer children in the whole place than in my daughter’s current class, am I really thinking about what’s best for my girls or what I would have liked for me? And am I grasping the reality, or just lusting after some rose-tinted fantasy of what life could and should be like?

* Hell, what is an ‘education’ anyway? In fact, ‘why educate’ at all? (If you’re really interested, that’s a link to a 146 page document on the subject from the Learning Skills Council!)

As you might imagine, I’ve been looking into all sorts of options, from upmarket private schools priding themselves on their state-of-the-art IT ’suites’ through to the rather more alternative Steiner Waldorf movement where computers aren’t even introduced until secondary school. I’ve looked at places like the Meadowbrook Montessori, with its underpinning model of positive discipline. I’ve spent time at the fantastic, pioneering Lewes New School, venue for the recent New School Thinking conference. I’ve even contemplated home schooling, one of those things that seems like a great idea on a lovely sunny day when the kids are getting on and you fancy a trip to the seaside … but like hell on earth most other days! I’m watching with interest the development of places like the Heroes Flexi School and other ‘new schools’ being established by parents. Perhaps they could be the answer, one day. But, of course, right now, the forms need filling in and – as is normally the case when there’s too much choice – I’m in a classic state of “analysis paralysis”!

So what do you think? What have you chosen for your children? I’d be really interested to know.