Going through my son’s pockets today before putting his trousers in the washing machine I found three things; a small wooden Father Christmas, an even smaller plastic tyrannosaurus rex and a lip balm. I think this says a lot about him. Aged three he is aware of the importance of Christmas, history and luscious lips.

It is amazing having had three children under very similar circumstances and with the same man how very different they are. Olivia, for example, couldn’t care less about her lips, she is much more interested in perfecting her forehand and beating us all at, well, anything. Bea spends most of her time upside down doing handstands and cartwheels. I guess there is no reason at all they should be similar just because they come from the same gene pool and background but what is it that makes the difference?

Wherever they come from, the differences are there from the beginning. Bea was a breech baby, and has never stopped being the wrong way up. Olivia, even as a small baby, hated going to sleep. We would try the ten-minute rule time after time, my husband spent hours reading poetry to her in the hope that it might send her to sleep. It worked for me, but Olivia would stay awake, wide-eyed and listening. I don’t think I’ve ever heard her say she’s tired. As I write it’s almost 10pm. Leonardo is fast asleep, clutching his lip balm. Having carried Bea to bed (upside down) she is dreaming happily about her next gymnastic feat. And I can hear Olivia fiddling about upstairs, probably plotting her next move for world domination.

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to listen to more music. When I say music, I don’t mean Take That’s latest album (although I do have it and jolly good it is too) but classical music. I have this romantic idea of the children growing up with classical music constantly playing in the background. Luckily this resolution of mine coincided with my finally working out how to burn music from my laptop onto a CD. This summer when I was staying with my friend Rachel in Corsica I copied a recording of a piano concerto played by Daniel Barenboim onto my machine. Last week I burnt it onto a CD and have been playing it non-stop ever since. It is like an angel has taken up residence in my CD player and is gently, gracefully tapping out these incredible sounds. We tried to guess who the composer of this angelic music was. Chopin was my suggestion. No, said my husband, it’s got to be Mozart. The minute he said it (swot that he is, but can he tell Take That from Boyzone? – I don’t think so) I realised he was right.

I have had one other such magical musical moment in my life. I was lying by a swimming pool in Kenya watching a series of delicate clouds make their way across a wide blue sky when my husband (who was then my boyfriend) put a walkman on my head (shows how old I am) and said: “Listen to this.” It was Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto. I had never heard anything more beautiful in my life. It was like a seductive yet loving caress slowly working its way over my mind and body. I am sure it contributed to my falling helplessly in love with my husband-to-be.

My father once said to me; “If you have a problem, ask Bach.” He didn’t mean try to gain access to the great man in the land of the dead, he meant listen to his music and your problem will resolve itself. A sort of oratory solvitur ambulando. So if any of you are suffering from the January blues here’s my top tip for the day; listen to Mozart. Listen to him all the time, while you’re washing up, when you’re in the bath, when you’re cooking, as you’re falling asleep. He is the master and after listening to him you can’t help but feel refreshed and restored, even if you’ve had the worst Christmas and New Year in living memory.

I switched on my computer this morning to check out the news. What is one of the lead stories on the BBC website? The improbably named singer Donny Tourette has escaped from the Big Brother house by jumping over a fence. This is news? Hellloooo? Who cares? I read on and learnt that this is not just any Big Brother, it’s CELEBRITY Big Brother – so the house is still full of people I’ve never heard of, with the possible exception of Leo Sayer, bless him, who can forget a man with a hairstyle that bad. How did this happen? How did we suddenly become a nation obsessed with the trite activities of a bunch of less than interesting adults caged together like monkeys in a zoo?

Orwell got it all wrong. The nightmare vision of the future is not that Big Brother is watching you, but that everyone is watching Big Brother….

When I was in Italy researching my book Ciao Bella I met the author Tim Parks. At the time I was still planning to write my book about Italian women but I told Tim the story of my Italian family. “Now that’s a story I want to read,” he said. I asked him how he got around writing about people who are close to him without upsetting them. “As a writer your first responsibility is to your book,” he told me. “Basically as long as you don’t get anyone in trouble with the law or their wife, everything else is fair game.” A few days later, encouraged by Tim and my husband, I abandoned the book on Italian women and started to write Ciao Bella.

As those of you who have followed the blog will know I gave a copy to my aunt (pictured here with Leonardo) two days ago. I never imagined she would ever read it, it’s in English and she rarely makes the effort to read English. Or so I thought…..my father has just called and says she is furious. No, she’s more than furious, he described their conversation as “ugly” and I got the impression he was pleased he had phoned her and not dropped in.

There is plenty in the book for her to be irritated by, and I was always aware of this. But this book is not a eulogy to my gorgeous relations, it’s a truthful memoir. She is a great character, partly because of her faults, but as one reviewer said, despite these we still like her. I like her and of course I am sorry that she now hates me. I suppose this fury won’t go on forever but knowing her it could go on for a very long time.

So was it worth it? I agree with Tim that my first responsibility is to the book. If I had been soppy about my aunt and written a book she would have liked it would not have been as good or as honest (or as funny). And as Nora Ephron’s mother used to tell her every day: “Everything is copy.” I suppose there may come a time when no one will dare to speak or hang out with me for fear of ending up in one of my books. I already get countless people nudging each other and saying; “Ooooh, be careful what you say, you’ll end up in the paper.” To this I smile benignly but my silent response is one I heard from Peter McKay, the Fleet Street legend and possibly the last proper hack alive. “As if ANYTHING you could say, could POSSIBLY be of ANY interest to ANYONE.” Unluckily for my aunt, this was not the case….

Of all places Two Lipsticks and a Lover is about to be published in China. This is very good news. China has a population of 1.3 billion. Of those 49.2% are women. So if only 0.1% of them buy it, I’m quids in. It’s an exciting thought, being published in another script, all that stuff I wrote at my desk here being translated into characters I will never understand. I once went to China and I have one friend there. Maybe she will be part of the 0.1% to buy it. I suppose I should tell her, perhaps she is a member of a book club and could get the whole thing rolling. I guess once you gain momentum somewhere like China or the US you’re off.

Anyway, talking of writers in various countries, I came across a brilliant quote today. It is from a man called Geoffrey Cottrell whom I can find nothing out about from the internet. “In America only the successful writer is important, in France all writers are important, in England no writer is important, and in Australia you have to explain what a writer is.” And in China? I’ll let you know……