One Christmas build-up tradition, however, has totally bypassed me - that of going up to town and 'doing a show.'
— Julie Burchill
I didn't cry when I left free-booting, smash-and-grab papers that would have appeared to be far more natural homes for me and, at the risk of being vulgar, paid far better for my services.
Blakes Hotel in South Kensington was a particular favourite of mine during what I affectionately think of as my Restless Years.
I know that Brighton is famously a mixture of the seedy and the elegant, but in the summer of 2001 seediness swamped elegance hands down.
One of the few ways in which I feel I've actually matured is that as I've grown older I do find the concept of 'men' mystifying, whereas when I was a feisty young thing I was forever saying 'The most fun part of being a feminist is frightening men!'
The secret is not to care what anyone thinks of you.
The allegedly 'classy' magazines often seem to be in an endless, undeclared competition to see who can climb furthest up the fundament of Gwyneth Paltrow or Jennifer Lopez.
I've always thought of beauty therapy, 'alternative' treatments and the like as the female equivalent of brothels - for essentially self-deceiving people who feel a bit hollow and have to pay to be touched.
When I moved out of London 13 years ago, I found a whole other reason not to drive. This was because my new husband Dan, unlike my dad, did drive, and this became a great source of fun and adventure.
Surely being a Professional Beauty - let alone an ageing one - is one of the most insecure and doomed careers imaginable.
When actresses jump on the anti-Iraq bandwagon, they often combine down-home momism with an ignorance of Islamist intent which is truly awesome.
Families, generally, suck. And I say that as someone who, like my husband, had parents who proved the proverbial exception to the rule.
No matter how old and glorious the models, sad indeed is the woman who sees fashion as a means of self-expression rather than an agent of social control.
As a kid, I grew to define what I didn't want my life to be like by sitting behind moaning women on the bus, hearing them bang on about their aches and pains, both real and imagined.
I have experienced jealousy, possessiveness, verbal abuse and violence from men, but I have also experienced jealousy, possessiveness, verbal abuse and violence from women, usually when I failed to respond to their advances.
Graham Greene famously said that all writers need a chip of ice in their heart; Cusk can come across as the most beautiful ice palace of stalactites and stalagmites, and some people find her company, albeit by proxy, about as inviting as a long weekend in a walk-in frigidaire.
Being a monarchist, and fawning over those 'above' you, you must naturally despise those 'below' or on the same socioeconomic level as yourself, because that is how hierarchy worship works.
It may be a cliche, but it's true - the build-up to Christmas is so much more pleasurable than the actual day itself.
Amsterdam has more than 150 canals and 1,250 bridges, but it never seems crowded, nor bent and bitter from fleecing the tourist.
When I moved to Brighton from London in 1995, I was struck by what I thought of as its townliness. A town, it seemed to me, was that perfect place to live, neither city nor country, both of which like to think they are light years apart but actually have a great deal in common.
As a precocious teen I dreamed of being Graham Greene. Well, as it turned out, I never wrote a great novel, sadly, and I never converted to Catholicism, happily, but I did do one thing he did. That is, in middle age I moved to a seaside town and got into a right barney with the local powers-that-be.
I wouldn't know how to fool a man any more. My deceiving days seem so long ago.
These women whose antics we smirk at good-naturedly in the pap-traps put themselves out there at least partly on their beauty; they are in showbiz, and showing what they've got is part of their business as much as it is for male show-ponies from the Chippendales to George Clooney.
Make no mistake, most women are well aware that they've never had it so good; when they enter a spa or salon, it is purely a hair/nails thing, a prelude to an evening of guilt-free fun.
In my third husband I had discovered a blissfully laid-back type who thought it nothing less than hilarious when I misread the map on the way to Wales, so it took us an extra three hours, or when I was sick in a plastic carrier bag during much of the drive back from Devon - a bag that turned out to have a hole in it.
My dad didn't drive - the only dad I knew who didn't.
Knowing that the 'Sex and the City' chicks now rack up almost two centuries between them, why do some of us fuss and hiss about a bit of retouching on their forthcoming film poster?
Is the raggle-taggle Brangelina tribe any more bogus than that of the landlocked yummy mummy who believes that she can drop half a dozen brats and still keep a modest carbon footprint? I don't think so.
I believe, literally, in the God of the Old Testament, whom I understand as the Lord of the Jews and the Protestants. I'm a Christian Zionist, as well as a Christian feminist and a Christian socialist.
It is also interesting to note that the original supermodels are now making a comeback after being dismissed in the Nineties as being 'greedy' by a gaggle of male designers who lived like Sun Kings.
Sadly, a lot of what passes for feminism these days is just moaning about men, congratulating ourselves on nothing in particular, and mocking them for being big kids while doing everything we can to keep them that way.
Some say that Cusk has no sense of humour, but expecting giggles from this writer would be akin to expecting sonnets from Benny Hill.
Rachel Cusk's books are like pop-up volumes for grown-ups, the prose springing out of the page to bop you neatly between the eyes with its insights.
Monarchists frequently declare that without the royal family, Britain would be 'nothing.' What a woeful lack of love for one's country such statements express.
When I started at the 'Guardian,' though, I couldn't think of anything we saw eye to eye on, except feminism, and even this would soon be arguable as 'Guardian' writers queued up to drool over Eminem.
And call me a pig, but isn't it brilliantly refreshing how early the Dutch eat dinner? When they're still laying out the cutlery in achingly hip Barcelona, they're hanging the Closed sign on the restaurant doors of old Amsterdam.
The money I pay for my cultural experiences came willingly from my own pocket - they were not the result of bread being removed from the mouths of the poor so that Miss Thing here could mince off to the circus smelling of roses.
No one knows 'men' as such, any more than anyone knows 'women,' and if they do generalise they're probably trying to hide their own ignorance. You might know one 'man,' yes, or even lots of individual 'men'.
What men don't want, in fact what anyone who's any sort of thrill-seeking, intelligent adult doesn't want, is some crushing bore describing their emotions in real time every waking hour.
Nicole Kidman in particular seems to bring out the butt-kisser in the sassiest of hackettes, as they ceaselessly strive to portray her as some sort of cross between Mother Teresa and Marilyn Monroe.
'Stress' was the catch-all every pamper-pedlar I spoke to used to explain why healthy women feel the need to be regularly patted, petted and preened into a state of babyish beatification.
It must be said that Brighton, unlike London, makes driving seem very appealing. Instead of glowering faces and angry horns on all sides, we have the coast road in front of us and the Sussex Downs just 10 minutes behind us.
Most women are wise to the fact that lots of men love a cat-fight, and thus go out of their way not to give them one.
What sort of sap doesn't know by now that picture-perfect beauty is all done with smoke and mirrors anyway?
It's received wisdom that the English are uniquely child-unfriendly.
I don't have a spiritual bone in my body; but what I am, is religious.
As I get older I think, contrary to modern assumption but in line with the old Lerner and Lowe song, that it would actually benefit both them and society if - to quote Professor Higgins - a woman could be more like a man.
When did women whose looks are not their living start conducting themselves like the simpering inmates of an Ottoman empire seraglio?
We are used to female writers who use their private lives as unmitigated material being somewhat hormonal; this somehow 'excuses' what might be seen as a highly unfeminine ability to turn their personal upsets into money.
Being a monarchist - saying that one small group is born more worthy of respect than another - is just as warped and strange as being a racist.
