Just a quick message to wish my readers a Happy Christmas. So far, for me, this festive season has included putting up two trees, eating my own weight in mince pies, wrapping presents until the early hours and attending a Christmas concert in Chesterfield featuring a brass band, a male voice choir, my children's primary school, Roy Hattersley and an Edwina Currie fresh from Strictly in Blackpool the night before. Crazy or what? I've also attended various seasonal publishing booze-ups, one of which saw me trailing my American editor round Soho on a Sunday night trying with increasing desperation to find an open pub (I'd promised her some authentic London atmosphere). Plus a newspaper books do at which I went wildly overdressed in a fur shrug, clinging satin and cripplingly high diamante heels. Luckily I wasn't asked to do the cabaret.

We also, last weekend, held our annual Christmas party for friends and neighbours as a result of which I have vowed to cut down on alcohol even earlier than usual. My New Year's resolution, which doesn't now involve alcohol, is to keep a diary, the first since those Five Year ones I used to keep as a teenager. In those days my diary was my youthful confidante, now it is all that stands between me and oblivion. I can't even remember the word for not being able to remember things. Keep a diary and one day it will remind you of what you did yesterday, as I believe the saying goes. I've got a great title for my collected witterings anyway – Downhill All The Way.

I blame my Christmas amnesia on the PTA mulled wine I had at the school Nativity. I was OK before I had thrust into my hand one of those blue ribbed-plastic glasses melting under the assault of microwave-heated Bulgarian Merlot into which a few herbs and cloves – or perhaps something more sinister - had been slipped. The Nativity high point for our family was last year when my daughter was Mary. Its nightmarish aftermath was the school suspecting that we may not have returned the Mary costume in time for this year; happily it was found in a plastic bag in one of the school outhouses just before the performance and the show could go on.

For me, the main Christmas challenge is carols. I love them, but I am incurably mawkish and they make me cry. Perhaps it is those frequent references, sprinkled throughout all carols, to Mary's gentleness, patience and general maternal fabulousness that makes me feel inadequate. However, I always approach Christmas vowing to be a better person in all respects and so am determined to sail serenely through all family festive challenges such as scoring the worst at Scrabble and facing off crazed parents also trying to park outside the dancing school disco party. Oh, and my small son's birthday – in a moment of madness I invited about twenty children to our house for a 'traditional' party and will now have to traditionally entertain them. I can't even remember the rules of Blind Man's Buff.

I moan, but actually, I adore Christmas. It makes me feel all misty eyed and warm inside. One of the loveliest moments so far this December was stepping through the doors of Derby Cathedral with my small daughter and finding an orchestra in full swing practising excerpts from The Nutcracker. It was just magical – that lovely music in such a beautiful building – and all the better for being so unexpected. As luck would have it, we've got a visit to The Nutcracker at Covent Garden lined up – I've seen it endless times and never get tired of it. Although apparently it is possible – a ballerina friend who danced one Waltz Of The Flowers too many groans whenever the ballet is mentioned

What do I want for Christmas? Scented candles, even though I roam the house for hours after I've been burning one making quadruple sure I've blown it out and we won't all perish in a house fire. Which probably counteracts the supposed soothing qualities of the thing in the first place. I also want loads of books, but, as Schopenhauer once observed, what you really need when you're given books is to be given the time to read them as well.

Have a wonderful Christmas. I hope you get everything you want.

A quick PS. Radio Four's Open Book programme is currently inviting votes and comments on people's favourite comic novels. Should any kind reader feel the urge to nominate any of mine, that would be jolly civil of them. The link is: Radio Four's Open Book.

Christmas is officially here – the first glassful of PTA mulled wine has just passed my lips. Followed, needless to say, by its traditional partner of a deep-fill Sainsbury's mince pie. Is there anything more festive than those blue ribbed-plastic glasses melting slightly under the assault of microwave-heated Bulgarian Merlot into which a few herbs and cloves have been lovingly slipped? I very much doubt it. Similarly, no Christmas is complete without attending a school Nativity full of adorably puzzled-looking children in paper crowns saying "Do you have any room in your inn?" in detached monotones. The Nativity high point for our family was last year when my daughter was Mary. Its nightmarish aftermath was the school suspecting that we may not have returned the Mary costume; happily it was found in a plastic bag in one of the school outhouses just before the performance and the show could go on.

For me, the only problem with Christmas is carols. I love them, but they always make me cry. The worst for this is 'Away in a Manger' whose merciless mawkishness gets me every time. The frequent references, sprinkled throughout all carols, to Mary's gentleness, patience and general maternal fabulousness could, I suppose, make one feel a little inadequate too. However, I always approach Christmas vowing to be a better person in all respects and so am determined to sail serenely through all family festive challenges such as scoring the worst at Scrabble and facing off crazed parents also trying to park outside the dancing school disco party.

What do I want for Christmas? Scented candles, even though I roam the house for hours after I've been burning one making quadruple sure IÕve blown it out and we wonÕt all perish in a house fire. Which probably counteracts the supposed soothing qualities of the thing in the first place. I also want loads of books, but, as Schopenhauer once observed, what you really need when being given books is to be given the time to read them as well.

Have a wonderful Christmas. I hope you get everything you want.

Grim times all round, but itÕs always sunshine on the Wendsite. And at this time of year, that low, rich, November sunshine which always makes things look so glamorous. Not that autumn doesnÕt have its challenges - my gardenÕs autumn glory has now passed into mud and fallen leaves and last week I tried to go for a W B Yeats-esque woodland walk but lost the path and ended up fighting my way through nasty brambles like one of the princes trying to reach Sleeping Beauty. My painful thrashings in the undergrowth were made worse by the fear that my family would wonder where I was and be worried; when, eventually, I reached home however they were all sitting quite happily in the kitchen eating pizza.

The thing I most enjoyed recently was a trip to Venice during the October half term; we looked at paintings until our eyes boggled and ate various wonderful fish bought from men with mediaeval faces at the Rialto fish markets. Venice is wonderful for children – there being no traffic, they can run over the bridges and through the paved squares until they are quite worn out. There are canals, of course, and my daughter fell in one, but this obviously necessary and inevitable rite of passage completed, she didnÕt do it again and it was a great story to tell everyone at school.

Chugging up and down the Grand Canal in a vaporetto I was able to enter, at least in imagination, the crazy world of one of my literary heroes, Lord Byron, who had a three-year holiday in Venice. He stayed in various different places; there was a hard-to-find address in the winding streets behind San Marco that I marched the family up and down trying to pin down. When, eventually, we did, it turned out to be next door to a shop selling diamante handcuffs and sparkling nipple tassels – Byron would no doubt have approved.

For someone with such a wild reputation, Byron seemed to me amazingly disciplined; rowing out to Lido to ride his (four) horses every day, followed by a row to another island to study Armenian with the monks. In between times he dashed off a few groundbreaking literary epics as well as endless letters and (despite being lame) won astonishing swimming competitions in the Grand Canal. ItÕs incredible he had any energy left to womanise on the heroic scale that he did. During the course of my reading I came across the tragic story of Dr John Polidori, a hanger-on of ByronÕs who nursed literary ambitions of his own and who came with him on part of his European trip. When Byron met up with Shelley the two of them told Polidori in no uncertain terms what they thought of his writing…the poor man took prussic acid a few years later. Imagine having B and S telling you you were crap! Whenever IÕm having a bad day I think of that.

Now itÕs back to work, back to piano lessons and back to Pilates. All good discipline, hopefully the latter will have me flat-tummied in my cocktail dress at Christmas and the former banging out some carols around the old joanna while the family gather round and sing lustily along (some hope, on both fronts). Still finishing off my pushy parent comedy Gifted and Talented, out next year. Marrying Up, my social climbing epic, will be in the shops at Christmas still, so if you know anyone who likes to laugh at folks getting above themselves – and who of us doesnÕt – itÕs worth a thought. ItÕs done very well, and will be hitting America soon – my US publishers love it and are incredibly pleased with the success of Beautiful People there, so fingers crossed!

See you next time, until then ciao ragazzi, as we say in Matlock.

It's all burnished autumn tones round our way at the moment; the chestnuts were the first to go and the route down the drive is now ablaze with yellow and auburn. The beeches lose their leaves like men lose their hair, from the top down, and so look rather comical at the moment. The birds are almost deafening, perhaps they can't agree on the route south that surely some of them are preparing for. When I lived in my old village, the pub landlord used to tell unsuspecting townies that hens migrated. “Oh yes,” he used to say. "They're an amazing sight, lined up on the telegraph wires waiting for the off'.

There are some fascinating fungi about, especially the orange peel one at the bottom of the garden; it looks just like it sounds - furled citrus parings. It's as much as I can do not to pick it up and throw it into a cocktail with brandy and a maraschino cherry. We still have plenty of flowers, the children's garden is a romantic tangle of marigolds and nasturtiums, there's a cascade of delicate lilac clematis over one of the rose bushes and small, bright sunflowers peep out everywhere from the top of one of the birdboxes to the garden wall beside the children's nursery.

I simply can't get over the success I have had with my dahlias, which I grew from seed this year. There's a whole sturdy row of them now behind the onions, colours from orange to yellow, purple to red and shaped like Spirograph drawings. I get such a rush of joyful achievement whenever I see them. To think that when I was a child dahlias were a byword for boredom; my parents used to buy some annually, stick them in our miniscule front garden and it was the job of my brother and I to water them. How we hated it. I would never have believed then that I could find them the least bit interesting! I'm sorry to go on, but I just have to mention the amazing greengage jam we made this year – an elegantly subdued green and with a slight caramel tang. I have it daily on toast for breakfast and lunch and would probably have it for supper as well were it not for the dangers of scurvy. Do look at the new autumn pictures here on the site in My Garden.

Marrying Up is now out in paperback and selling well, hooray. Huge thanks to those of you who have bought it! I've been out and about doing various book signings – when you spend your time, as I do, sitting in a hut in Matlock, going to three cities in one day and hitting all those shops is a heady experience! Lovely to see all my favourite booksellers, too. I'm on the final leg of the new book I'm writing, my pushy parent comedy Gifted and Talented, which is looking set to be the best yet. I can hardly bear to finish it, but there's a trip to Venice twinkling on the horizon as a reward if I do…

Holidays are over, boo hoo, back to work/school and Writer's Block, my literary compositional headquarters, to put the finishing touches to Gifted and Talented, my new pushy-parenting comedy coming out in January 2012.

Also to prepare for the global media event otherwise known as the paperback launch of my latest novel, Marrying Up on 19 September. In some ways the return to the grind is a relief; the last six weeks have been EXHAUSTING!! See my attached poem to find out why!!

Marrying Up is finally out, my new novel in which my rampantly aspirational heroine (or anti-heroine, depending on how you look at it) battles her way to ancestral towers, tiara and title.

I wrote it because social climbing is a great comic subject – perhaps THE great British comic subject, although for some reason we seem to take it very seriously these days. It's clearly touched a nerve, I've been all over the place talking about social climbing, from the pages of the Mail on Sunday (see link below) to the airwaves of Woman's Hour with the venerable Dame Jenni Murray!

But it's not only that which has kept Marrying Up in the news. The novel has been spookily prescient about a number of current events. Part of my heroine Alexa's evil plan for social domination is to make friends with a giddy blonde Sloane called Lady Florence, the sort with three surnames and a sometime career in modelling. And blow me down if Prince Harry hasn't started going out with her real-life counterpart. Similarly, towards the end of the novel, there are shenanigans galore around a royal wedding in a Monaco-style location, culminating in a thrilling dash through Nice Airport. Is Marrying Up the Nostradamus de nos jours, I ask myself. Am I the Madame Vasso of popular fiction?

I haven't got much else to report, as Marrying Up is rather dominating things. But do please look out for various things I'm doing, including a Country Life diary next week which contains my sensational tell-all on what appearing at a literary festival is really like! And in the current issue of Woman I bring the world up to date with my new interest in life – piano lessons! Read about how I did it Steinway. I'm also rather obsessed with wild flowers at the moment, mostly because of the romantic names (Queen Anne's Lace, Lady's Bedstraw) as well as the crazy ones. I'm on the lookout for stinking hellebore and policeman's helmet, among others. Piano, wild flowers – I'm turning into an Edwardian dowager!

Until next time – and let me know what you think about Marrying Up (also, whether you like the new cover design). There's an extract on the site, just follow the links. I do hope you buy it – and enjoy it!

Wendy

'WOW!' said the Riviera shop assistant, clearly blown away by my physique.

Which might sound flattering, except that this was a chemist and what she was examining was an insect bite that had caused my left elbow to swell up to grapefruit proportions. I'd suffered this unglamorous incursion whilst sailing to one of my favourite places in the South of France, the Iles de Lerins, off the coast of Cannes. Strange to relate that one of the two islands has a mediaeval monastery on it where monks in habits go about their peaceful, abstinent lives a mere short stretch of water from the excess-all-areas Croisette and film festival.

But then, the Cote d'Azur is full of such contrasts. One of my favourite bars anywhere is the tiny one on top of the Cap d'Antibes, just by the lighthouse. There is no sign, only a handful of white plastic chairs under the pine trees, and more often than not when we go up there it is shut. It's the simplest and least pretentious place in the world yet it sits above some of the most expensive real estate on the planet. Having said that, you overhear bizarre things. I once eavesdropped on some smart middle-aged ladies who were definitely plotting. more>>

My daughter celebrated her seventh birthday while we were in France; we had some amazing cakes from the patisserie round the corner to mark the event. When asked by her teacher what she enjoyed most about her holiday - sun? sea? cakes? - she replied that it was the sound of Sellotape from downstairs as her parents hurriedly wrapped up her presents the night before.

Back home now; the rain is tipping down as I write and the memory of Mediterranean savoir faire is fading even faster than my tan. There's plenty to celebrate about being back, however. I have taken up piano lessons, although I don't think Lang Lang has much to worry about yet. And my new novel, Marrying Up, a timely comedy about social climbing, is out in July. it's got a fabulous new cover look, which I'm thrilled about, and which you can see in the Books section. I've posted a chapter on the website, just click the link and enjoy meeting Alexa, a class-hopping cruise missile aimed at the very top of the social tree. Will she bag the prince of her dreams?

Here's hoping all your dreams come true too. Until next time!

Back and raring to go after a wonderful Easter holiday in Normandy. We stayed at a place so chic it seemed almost a pity that people were there to spoil the aesthetic. Our room was all exposed oak beams, eggshell walls in sage, acres of crisp white bed linen and casual, breezy deco touches such as a tall, full-length mirror framed in driftwood leaning casually up against the wall. Unfortunately in the middle of the night I mistook it for the loo door (it was propped up between the loo and the bathroom) and yanked it over; it shattered into a thousand pieces at deafening volume. Talk about edgy good taste.

We moved on to another hotel where the food was so rich and delicious you felt like Elvis the morning after (during his fried banana sandwich period). But these perils aside we had a marvellous time amid such joys as the Bayeux Tapestry (such good legs everyone had then) and the cathedral at Rouen, scene of Emma Bovary's naughty rendezvous with Leon. I had an Emma moment myself on the ferry on the way back; having partaken of a goat's cheese salad in a pizza restaurant not far from Caen, I spent the night heaving along with the ocean. Not quite as bad as what happens to Emma at the end, but the difference felt very slight as we lurched towards Portsmouth. I've rarely been so pleased to be home!

Now I'm back in Writer's Block going through Gifted and Talented, my pushy parent comedy out next year. There's a new cover look coming up, which I'm hoping you'll like; its first outing is Marrying Up, my social-climbing comedy out in July. I'll be working away for the next three weeks before going to Antibes for half term to catch up on what the beautiful people are doing. They're usually nowhere to be seen in my experience, but I love the South of France anyway – the food, the art, the wine, the warmth – roll on end of May!

There are a few new things up on the site: new pics of my garden in spring. And I recently wrote a piece about my slightly accident-prone honeymoon for the Sunday Express, which you might enjoy. You might also know I review books regularly for The Daily Mail, see Popular Fiction for the latest ones. Derbyshire Life, our local glossy, has also recently interviewed me. Until then, lots of love.

April is the cruellest month, although in my case it's turning out quite well.

I write this having signed off the proofs of Marrying Up, my social-climbing comic epic due for release in July. I have also finished the first draft of Gifted and Talented, my pushy parent comic epic to be unleashed on the world in January 2012. Phew.

Now I can go on holiday, so am hoping the weather in Cornwall over Easter will be fine – i.e. not wet – and we will manage some time on the beach. I am toying with the idea of surfing for the first time since 1897, which is when I vaguely remember scudding about on a polystyrene body board at Crackington Haven, aged about four.

I am also hoping to get some serious eating in at two of my favourite restaurants in Cornwall, 2 Fore Street in Mousehole and the Gurnard's Head up on the clifftops near Zennor, where the Tinners Arms, once patronised by D H Lawrence, serves wonderful crab sandwiches and chips.

Another favourite pub in the area is the psychedelic Admiral Benbow in Penzance, a weird wonderland crammed with bits of old ships painted crazy colours – you wander past figureheads and fo'c'sles on the way to the loo, even. The children are particularly obsessed with this last owing to the fact they have just been in the school play, Treasure Island; my daughter spends every spare moment staggering around on makeshift crutches with her leg bent up behind her and my son dashing about with English Heritage wooden cutlasses with hemp handles. The best moment of the play for me was the truly awful joke: 'Jim was hiding in the apple barrel when he heard something that shocked him to the core'.

After Cornwall we are heading to Normandy, courtesy of Brittany Ferries, where I am hitting the Conqueror trail on behalf of the Mail on Sunday. Last time I saw the Bayeux Tapestry was so long ago the piece had only recently been finished; it will be interesting to see how it has aged.

We'll be travelling back on the day of the Royal Wedding, so expecting completely empty roads/seas. My husband, who is practically republican, insisted on leaving the country during the shindig but I'm hoping to catch a few highlights on the news – imagine there'll be the odd moment. Speaking of highlights, I just hope PW's hair hangs on – I'm rooting for it, as is, no doubt, his trichologist. And will Kate/Catherine amaze us all and struggle out of the Prius in – ta da – an Oxfam wedding dress in this new age of austerity? But the person I'm really dying to see is Carole, the Home Counties' leading tiger mother, or, it being the home counties, perhaps tiger-skin-print mother.

Enough already. Have a great Easter and go easy on the Créme Eggs. I've already eaten all the ones I was saving for the children, as well as all the Mini Eggs their grandparents gave me to save on their behalf. Beast that I am.

Au revoir, as we say in Chesterfield.

It was yesterday that I remembered I hadn't updated my website for ages. I was flat on my back in sunglasses, a fizzy green drink near at hand Ð not on the beach, I hasten to add, but staring into the hi-res binoculars of the specialist doing my root canal surgery! The drink was the mouth rinse and the wrap-around sunglasses were to stop me being blinded by the powerful ceiling lights. "They make me look like Bono," I commented, realising too late that probably everyone makes the same joke.

What have I been doing since last we met? Launching the Gallery Girl paperback mostly, which involved lots of lovely shopping trips – sorry, signing sessions – in places like Manchester and Birmingham, complete with Yo Sushi lunches and lots of fun meeting readers and bookshop staff. As always, the enthusiasm of the lovely people who buy and sell my books was just wonderful to see; bless you all, everyone.

I've been in Writer's Block (my writing hut in the garden, see GARDEN tab) quite a lot too, and am now about halfway through Gifted and Talented, about the pushiest parent imaginable and due for release into the community next summer. Marrying Up, my next novel out, about a ruthless social climber who'll do anything to bag a prince, has now had all its finishing touches and the proof copies are going out soon.

The winter looks as if it's finally over at last; as I write the evening sun is slanting through the avenue of lime trees and striping the grass a brilliant green. My garden is full of sex-crazed birds – it's that time of year – they're so noisy it's like trying to write in an aviary. Pheasants with only one thing on their mind pace the woodland walk below my window, while the bush at the back is crowded with randy tits of all descriptions. None of them, the ungrateful beasts, are remotely interested in the modish black seed I recently bought in order to keep them in the loop with birdfood trends, but I suppose they have other matters in hand at the moment.

The highlight of recent weeks was a trip to Covent Garden to see Swan Lake with Carlos Acosta – "you've got to see him," a friend of mine gasped. "He's got thighs like dustbins!" This led to the children, who came to see the show too, referring to the Royal Ballet superstar as Ôthe dustbin man', which I'm not sure is entirely what Carlos deserves. I've always been completely fascinated by ballet; the beautiful people, the wonderful music, the sumptuous theatres, all that sacrificing and struggling for Art. Plus the contrast between what happens up front – all that control, discipline and glamour on stage – and what happens behind the scenes; there must be so much drama, and perhaps even comedy too. I'd love to write a romantic comedy about it some day – What's The Pointe? Tutu Much? The Jete Set?