The Marriage Proposal Formula

Francesca Beauman

I was leafing through a book called "The Woman's Book: everything but the kitchen sink" by Francesca Beauman. It's been in my library for ages, and I occasionally flick through it.

It's one of these books that is, essentially, filled with completely random facts.

The random fact I came across was "The Marriage Formula".

Apparently, and I quote; "a simple mathematical formula exists to help one ascertain whether or not to accept a proposal of marriage."

New Year's Eve party? Don't be daft; I'm a parent.

This year we didn't even pretend to go through the motions of staying up to see in the new year. We didn't watch any New Year's Eve specific TV. We didn't countdown. The girls, now 7 and 5, went to bed at 7.30pm. We wandered up to bed at around 11.30, only late because we had been independently pottering around on the Internet doing various jobs, reading up on news, shopping for hotel rooms and 2014 mini breaks.

When I was just dropping off to sleep, I heard the start of the fireworks and my only thought was, "so it's midnight then".

When I was in my teens and early twenties, New Year's Eve was a big deal. A HUGE deal. It was a special night when you got to dress up in your absolute best gear, dance the night away, drink slightly too much, and still end up in a beautifully romantic pose, at midnight, kissing the man of your dreams.

Of course that view was entirely the product of watching Sleepless in Seattle and similar films and has never ever, in my experience, translated to real life.

Truth be told, I can count the number of New Years Eve 'parties' that I have been invited to in my entire life on one hand. Not one of them was in a posh hotel in New York. Not one of them was in a posh hotel...

7 ways to NOT be late in the mornings

So there are only 7 sleeps until Christmas, and I don't know about you but time is really of the essence right now.  With nativities to attend, presents to wrap, parties to attend (alright, "party", let's not get over excited) and endless chores to get done saving a minute here or there can make a real difference.

Sometimes, it doesn't matter how early you set your alarm, or how prepared you think you are, the universe conspires against you to make you late.  It only takes a split second to miss your train, or bus, or tube and often that will make the difference as to whether you make your meeting, or gets the children to school on time, or make your first pilot-training session... Who knows right?

So how do you save time?

1. Reduce the travelling.  By this I mean, the numerous times you end up charging backwards and forwards through your apartment, or up and down the stairs of your house to fetch lippy, your purse, your phone.  It sounds obvious but have a place for everything that makes sense and always put things back where they live.

2. Pack your handbag the night before. It's like being back at school isn't it? But it works. If you mess about swoping handbags around in a morning you will be a) late and b) annoyed you left something in the other bag.

Online versus real life?

On 8 out of 10 cats the question "Would you rather communicate with your friends online?" was asked. Good grief, is that really where we are at?

In the space of 30 years we have gone from being completely amazed at the magic that is Bungle on Rainbow walking backwards through a door because we could record it on VHS for the first time and there was a magic button on the VHS machine called Rewind.

We've gone from sitting on our bottom stair for hours talking to our mates on the phone, because the landline was in the hall, and the only place to sit was on the stairs.

We've moved on from vinyl LPs, a dodgy stylus and the magic that was the record button on your tape deck to enable you to record the top 40 every Sunday.

And to where have we got?