The DH was away in England recently and while he was gone, I made some valiant efforts to get the house somewhat tidier. 

We are both messy people, and living with a dog and five cats doesn't help. With him, it's robot parts, bits of computer equipment and books. With me, it's clothes, hobbies like beading, and more books.

Add to that the fact that our surfaces are covered in mud on a daily basis, courtesty of our cat Rockwell, who sleeps on the living room buffet and drinks from the kitchen taps; the fact that at least one of the cats will be sick each day, and on a bad day there can be 6-7 lots of vomit to clean up; litter trays for the 18-year-olds (three of them); woodburners and the general filth of country life and it's quite a potent cocktail.

I lugged eight sacks of rubbish, eight sacks of recyling and seven sacks of charity stuff to the various depots over the course of the week, set up a 'station' for shredding paper; cleared a proper space in the office to work on my beading, and generally got the place looking pristine.  

I then decided to practise some better daily habits.

* Bring breakfast in on a tray so that I can carry it away easily afterwards and clear the crockery into the dishwasher.

* Plump the sofa cushions after breakfast.

* Keep the kitchen island unit clear (of catfood, crockery, stuff that hasn't been put away yet...) 

* Dry the bath after using it and hang the bathmat over the side so the floor is clear.

* After getting dressed, make the bed (which has been airing since we got up and by now has a sleeping cat on it).

* Keep all surfaces clear, especially the pine buffet that divides up our living room, and the coffee table (remotes are allowed).

* Vacuum the hearth, where there is always an ash spill.

* Spend 10 minutes tidying up after breakfast, lunch and dinner, to stop the mess from building up during the course of the day. When you work from home and cook all your meals from scratch, things can get pretty chaotic.

So far, it is working well. Walking into a clean, neat room whichever room it is, is raising my spirits, and - like exercise - doing housework in small tranches doesn't feel too burdensome - important when it takes an hour to vacuum our 70sqm living room. 

Is it official that AA Gill is a cunt?

I assume it's not only my opinion...

The DH and I watched the third episode of Meet the Romans on our DVD recorder this lunchtime, and I fired off an email to Mary to say how much I'd enjoyed it. And only then did I find out about the 'AA Gill insults Mary Beard' controversy.

Nasty little shite that he is.

I've only read selected quotes from his article because I'm not about to subscribe to anything owned by Satan And All His Works, so the Sunday Times has long been out of my orbit. But what I've read is both nasty and cruel.

Well, AA Gill can go fuck himself, frankly.

Aside from the fact that it's utterly irrelevant to the job in question, personally I have always loved Mary's car-crash style, especially as I'm a bit of a fashion queen myself. Thirty years ago, she had the same fantastic dress sense she has now - I remember her once turning up to college in a gold disco skirt and blue striped rugby socks. She always gave the (accurate, I think) impression that she'd just picked up the nearest things she found lying around. And always the trademark flat shoes (for riding a bike), long hair (brown in those days) and no bra.

Fag in one hand and quite often a bottle of wine in the other, she was foul-mouthed, erudite, witty and as far removed from my preconceived notions of a lecturer as you could hope to get. Exasperated beyond measure by my idiocy (she once told me I couldn't organise myself out of a paper bag), she introduced me to retsina; the beaujolais nouveau cure for incipient flu; and the concept that I should never fuck anyone less than 25 years older than me (in the latter case we had to agree to differ...). 

All of we students loved her, but Mary's finest attribute both then and now is her thundering intelligence - something with which Gill is perhaps unfamiliar in women. It is a delight to see her again on TV after all these years, still erudite, still fascinating, still pulling Fuck Me Rigid moments out of a hat. And I am heartened that so many people have spoken up in defence of her. Documentary programmes should be presented by experts, and Mary is one of the best in her field - a return to the golden age when TV was informative and not just mindless entertainment. We NEED more women - and men - like this on television. Where is the wonderful, cigar-chewing Maggie Hambling these days, for instance? Can we have her back too?

Mary's programme, while it lasted, was one of the few hours of TV per week that I had permitted myself to indulge in: I hope that she makes another series too. 

Well, my decluttering continues apace. 

Having been held up briefly by the gorgeous reference books in my fashion bookcase, things proved much easier in the kitchen and I now have 36 cookbooks boxed up, ready to go on the vide-grenier stall for the local horse sanctuary.

Ornaments are flying off the shelves thick and fast as well, mainly courtesy of 'things I don't collect any more'. And cheap glassware, such as the 30 bog-standard champagne flutes that we bought over a decade ago when a bunch of flyers came over for the Beagle Pup Club annual jaunt, and we seem to have hung onto ever since even though I don't actually like them.

Gifts from others are also a category, I notice. Gifts are lovely things, but when it comes to household objects, very few people share your exact taste, and in any case, your taste changes over time. Also, some things just aren't suitable for our life, like the lovely Galileo thermometer bought by friends, which is always wedged in a corner somewhere because of our destructive cats - I like this thing but simply can't display it, so I hope it will now go to a good home. One good tip I read recently, incidentally, is to keep a donation box on permanent standby somewhere (mine's in the kitchen), where you can instantly put gifts that people give you, so they don't take up permanent residence (as some old calendars, mugs surplus to requirements, a wine coaster, etc, have in our house). 

It is a very liberating feeling, freeing up this space. I gaze now from my bed across the room to a clear surface on top of my drawer unit. Formerly a junk site for my perfume collection (now housed in a couple of deep drawers, safely out of the light), it is now topped only with a big silver vase I hand-painted, a little zen garden that I rake each day and the singing bowl that I use for meditation, which also contains my Serenity Runes. Just looking at it makes me feel calm and ready to start the day. 

Here are some beauty trends you're going to see in the coming year. 

By trends, I don't mean new collections - that's a given, from those firms that produce two a year, to the firms that produce something every month, such as Yves Rocher. What I mean by trends are the real changes that are taking place behind the scenes in beauty, at the manufacturing and distribution end of things, which ultimately will affect everything you see on the shelves.

* First up, is own-brands. This is a strong French trend and has been caused by this seemingly never-ending recession we're all in - manufacturers and retailers need to find a product base that is competitively priced in order to keep people buying. The major supermarkets and perfumeries in France are now releasing seriously well-thought out own-brand ranges, some of them offering 300-400 products. One notable one is Carrefour, which this month is launching own-brand skincare, suncare and makeup ranges, all very modestly priced. It's important because it means your favourite brands may start to disappear from the shelves, so I would say, buy now while stocks last. The perfume chain Nocibé is also releasing its first own-brand range of makeup, which will be lower priced than many of the other brands on its shelves.

* Acrylic packaging will start to replace glass in high-end products. The new generation of acrylics look exactly like glass, being hard and transparent, and they reduce weight for manufacturers and transporters by as much as 30 per cent, which is crucial in such an age of fuel costs. This drive to acrylic is for their benefit, not yours - it won't reduce costs to the consumer.  

* Coloured mascara brushes. Why? Because they can.... There are only so many ways to skin a cat, and there's a limit to what the public will believe when it comes to the actual ingredients of a mascara, but having a lovely yellow brush might just make your day when you're using it. You'll also see more brushes made from natural fibres, due to advances in manufacturing, particularly from the Scandanavian countries, which have formulated eco-friendly methods of manufacturing fibre brushes from waste.

* Natural replacements for chemical preservatives and emulsifiers. This is partly due to new EU regulations, but also because the buying public is gradually becoming more aware of certain issues, such as the suspected link between parabens and cancer. Parabens and a host of other compounds are due to be removed from cosmetic and medical products by 2013 and manufacturers are gearing up to find replacements - parabens are very useful preservatives and the original ingredient laboratories are working hard to find naturally derived preservatives that do the same job. The same applies to ingredients such as shark-derived squalene (due to be completely trumped by a new compound made from sugar cane); palm oil and silicone, all of which are falling out of favour with the public for ecological or health reasons. 

* Airless packaging. This is one trend being driven by the need to find ways to preserve the contents of cosmetics products once the paraben ban comes into place. Expect more and more of your products to come in airless packaging - good news for the consumer because it means things last longer. 

* Polysensorial products. This is a just a way of saying products that change their feel when you apply them: wet to dry eyeshadows, mousse to cream skincare, etc. It is a way of increasing the value of the product to the customer, often without changing the actual ingredients.

* More gender differentiation: ie: men's brands launching women's ranges and vice-versa. This was most recently seen in Lynx (Axe), long-known as a men's brand, which is now lauching into the women's market. The truth is there's no real difference between men's and women's products - it's all a question of packaging and which smells you prefer. 

* Fruity everything. This is a worldwide trend but driven by Brazil, which is THE growing market for body products (soap, shower gel, deodorant, etc). The Brazilians sure do love fruit, so you'll see it in everything from soap to perfume - mango, mandarin, grapefruit, pineapple... 

* Recyclable and recycled packaging, even on high-end products. Again, mainly driven by the need to cut costs, but also by advances by the Scandinavian packaging specialists. The little carboard nest that used to sit inside high-end packaging, to keep the product from breaking if it was dropped, is also disappearing - it costs a lot to produce and makes little difference to the strength of the package, especially if the interior bottle's no longer made of glass. 

While the DH was away recently, I decided to pretty much stop watching television - that is, only turn it on for programmes we really want to watch. I found by doing so that I seemed to have a lot more hours in the day and I enjoyed the quietude of not having chatter in my ear all the time.

The thing that flipped me was switching to Radio 4 one morning to avoid the sport on BBC1 and hearing the words: "Since the collapse of the Dutch Government yesterday". This was an event that had not been mentioned on the television news and I suddenly thought Balls to it. They're not even telling me the bloody truth. I don't even live in Britain any more, why do I give a stuff about Jeremy Cunt and what he's up to? I know they're all thieves and liars; I wouldn't vote Tory if you stuck pins in my hands, so why am I aggravating myself listening to their doings? If I want news, I'll get it from the Internet, not have it pushed at me in my living room. I also hate the breakfast show's new setup, with the presenters squeezed together, and no Sian. So, the hell with it. 

It's not as if we ever watched real rubbish - game shows, reality TV, talent competitions or any of that crap. We were pretty discerning watchers, but we did have a habit of leaving it on in the background, muted, between the programmes that we really wanted to watch.

So, when the DH got back, I suggested to him, courtesy of an idea in the book Organized Simplicity (review to follow) that we each pick three hours a week of TV we really want to watch and other than that, we switch it off. We can watch DVDs if we wish (currently on Series 4 of The Wire, which is brilliant), but we will be more circumspect about general television.

We both chose The Good Wife. We're also watching my old friend Mary Beard's new series, Meet the Romans, and have recorded Bettany Hughes' series on goddesses. And to be honest, that's about it. We struggled to get to our three hours. I no longer watch Mastermind or Only Connect, Bang Goes the Theory or Horizon - they don't quite pass that badge of quality. They're OK but they're not unmissable. So, period dramas and history documentaries it will be, plus Alicia and Will once a week. 

That leaves a lot more lovely time for reading, hobbies and listening to music. Our morning seem much quieter and more restful, with the sound of birdsong from the garden and Bach or Beethoven on the stereo, and our evenings now seem incredibly long, even though we go to bed at 10.00.