I received some sad news just now, that an old friend of mine has died. And even worse, that she died in 2003 and none of us knew. 

It's odd, it's the second time in a year that this has happened - first the redoutable Phoebe Cresswell-Evans, who was an art editor at Dennis Publishing, and now Dominique Coughlin, with whom I worked 20 years ago at VNU. You lose touch with people, I guess, and then you never know what happened to them - you just assume that they're alive and well and it's a shock when you find they're not. 

Dom was my sub-editor when I was a production editor, and we got on like a house on fire. We hired her because her boyfriend recommended her, but within short order, they split up with mega recriminations, slashed clothing and all the rest of it.

Dom was the younger sister of Con Coughlin, a Telegraph journalist who specialised in the Middle East, and we both went through a rough time together when the first Gulf War broke out and my nephew was sent in with the army, her brother as a journo.

For a year or two we were close friends. Dom's love life was always a disaster zone (she was secretly in love with her flatmate and having an affair with another guy at work) and mine went through some terrible upheavals at the time, too, as I left my (then) partner for my (now) husband. We would hang out at her miniscule council flat, downing white wine spritzers, and we'd go on shopping expeditions together in St Christopher's Place.

We were both skinny chicks, but Dom more naturally so - rake thin, with long, wavy hair, a greyhound elegance, and a marked taste for expensive labels. I will always remember her shoehorning herself into a stretch purple velvet Moschino minidress in order to go to a cocktail party at her mother's where there would be lots of high-court judges present, whom she hoped to shock. 

Our friendship, sadly, didn't survive. We had a major falling out a year or so later, and her wrath was implacable. And oddly enough, it was after she had an asthma attack. Her asthma was something that she was very sensitive about - the whole time we worked together we could never have a fan on, as the moving air irritated her, and she said the nuns at her convent had tried to block her university application, believing she was too frail to undergo tertiary education. She would not have her asthma mentioned. 

And then one day she had a huge attack. It was the weekend, and the first I knew of it was when I got a phone call from her flatmate. She was in St Thomas's hospital for a week and then she left work without so much as a word. After she left, I followed her progress on magazines such as Period Living for another few years, but then she disappeared into the ether.  

It appears that Dom then built a successful career in interiors and fashion journalism, and she was covering London Fashion week for the Sunday Times when she had the asthma attack that killed her. It is terribly sad - she was always careful about her Ventolin, but perhaps on this occasion she didn't have it with her, or perhaps it just didn't work. Her brother Con informs me that she died in a taxi on the way to hospital and was pronounced dead on arrival.

I worry that an epipen might have saved her and simply feel astounded today that someone like Dom, who had so much life force, who was so difficult and funny and made me laugh my ass off, can no longer be with us. 

Since it's new year, it's a good time to make the odd resolution. 

For my sister, it's to take better care of her health and diet. On December 31st, she bagged up all the baddies in the house: crisps, salty snacks, chocolate etc - and took them to a new year party, then she spent New Year's Day cleaning out her store cupboard of all the out-of-date and unhealthy crap. 

I don't believe in resolutions - they're only made to be broken - but my wishes this year are to:

* do my yoga every day, even if I also do another form of exercise.

* get my weight below 9 stone and keep it there. I'm currently 9.6, which gives me a BMI of 24.1, while 8.3 (a BMI of 21) is the weight at which I look best, so I reckon 8.12 (a BMI of 22.7) is a reasonable compromise at my age.  

* stick more strictly to my SCD diet for ulcerative colitis, which makes me feel a ton better.  

* meditate every day.

* devote a bit more attention to my career - I've always been lazy and tend to prefer to coast.  

Well, Christmas is coming up, and my presents are all ordered, delivered, or have arrived already and only await packaging. This isn't because I'm well organised or anything, but because the DH and I don't buy each other much (and in this neck of the woods, nobody buys anything for friends as most people are too broke).

We find as time goes on that our tastes are so expensive that we can't afford to buy each other what we really want (I-phones, Ipads and Macbook Airs are reserved for business expenses), so it may as well be something token. Our holidays are really our birthday presents (I prefer to take mine in the dark months of winter rather than in April), and we sometimes go out for a nice meal, but other than that, it's usually a book or a magazine subscription. 

This year, the DH has treated us to the complete X-Files on DVD as our joint Christmas pressie. We'll start watching it in the new year, on 'X-Files night' once a week, when friends aim to come round, probably in their PJs, and we'll watch a couple of episodes. He also ordered his own present, handed the Amazon package to me and it's my job to wrap it. Romantic or what? 

Meanwhile, I strongly suspect he's got a book for me - possibly the one I sent him an email link to about six months ago, saying: "Get me this for Christmas or else..." As you can see, romance isn't my strong point either. I will also be treating myself to a bottle of perfume, probably from a niche perfumery.

When it comes to fantasy 'wants', however, that's a completely different matter. I asked the DH what his Top Ten Most Wanted objects would be (we're not going to include metphysical concepts like 'to see my dad alive again' or 'world peace' in this), and all he could think of was cars. Followed by watches. Clothes or art didn't figure among them, though at one time, when he still flew, he would definitely have had a Beech 18 on the list. 

For myself, the list is quite different, so I thought I'd share it on here. These are the 10 things I would like, if money was no object.

1 - Mompesson House, Salisbury

Mompesson House is owned by the National Trust and is one of those gorgeous houses you enter and you think: "Cripes, I could actually live here..." I love the Queen Anne style ('everything plain and simple, from a piece of wainscot to a lady's face'). The house is spacious but not overlarge like Blenheim or Harewood or one of those stately piles, and despite the gracious entrance hall, most of the individual rooms, such as the dining room and various studies, are quite small and cosy, with beautiful, elegant proportions: fires, fenders, high ceilings... It also has a gorgeous walled garden out the back, so maybe in my fantasy, the lovely National Trust old dears would also be there in their teashop, selling home-made cakes. If you want to 'experience' it without visiting, it features in the Emma Thomson version of Sense and Sensibility. Mompesson House, obviously, is not for sale. 

2 - a bowl by Lucy Rie

When Issey Miyake saw the work of Lucy Rie, he said: "My heart and mind were filled with the spirit of this woman," and when I see one of her works I simply CRAVE it. I don't know what it is about them, but they make me sick with longing: the biscuity glazes, the purity of the shapes. Aargh. They are the kind of pottery you want to put in your mouth, like a sweet. They are not completely out of reach, either, at about £1,800 a pop, but still totally unjustifiable on my budget. I satisfy my cravings with studio pottery with similar glazes and shapes, the latest being a peach-coloured raku bowl with applied abstract flowers by a studio potter from Locranon.

3 - an Aston Martin DB5 Vantage

This classic car was on both the DH's and my list, but we both want it in the reliable reworked version by RS Williams, as seen on Top Gear. A silver kestrel of a vehicle, these beautiful lines could be mine for a mere £355,000....

4 - Après le bain. Un femme s'essuyant la nuque by Degas

I can't tell you how much I love this picture. It leapt off the wall at me at the Musée d'Orsay and I wish wish wish there was a way I could own it. If you are ever in Paris, please go and see it - a computer image, or even a reproduction, cannot convey the depth of colour and feeling of the artist's hand in this pastel. I literally burst into tears when I saw it, but I - like everyone else - must make do with only a print at home. I don't know how much a Degas would set me back, but my guess is a couple of quid?

5 - Oxburgh Hall, Norfolk

Another National Trust property, I figure this one could be my country house while Mompesson could be my town house. Oxburgh was built in the 15th century from gorgeous pink brick and was lived in for nearly all the centuries since by the Bedingfield family. It's positioned exactly at that point where the castle became the stately home. I love everything about it, from the moat to the Spanish gilded leather hangings to the leaded glass windows. I remember sitting on the oak window ledges as a child, with the light growing dim and gazing out at the rain falling into the water. Bliss.

6 - Chateau d'O

Only up the road from here but sadly no longer open to the public, due to a family dispute, this mini-chateau is a folie de pleasance with everything a girl could wish for: pointy turrets, secret rooms, painted furniture, black swans on the moat, panelled boudoirs. Everything but Rapunzel, lowering her hair out of the window. This can be my French holiday home for when I get bored with my other moat.

7 -  a dress by Madelaine Vionnet

Any dress would do, but the best would undoubtedly be one of her architectural marvels of the 1930s - essays in 3D design that are not merely beautiful, but intellectually satisfying too. I have a feeling that this red and black one shown may once have belonged to Tina Chow. Failing that, I'd like Vionnet's 153-seam 1920s bias-cut shift made up of graduated green velvet diamonds cut so the pile falls differently on each, and outlined in silver cording. Or anything else she ever made. Or the magenta silk ballgown by Balenciaga in the V&A; or a Balenciaga jacket of any description; or a Fortuny stamped velvet cloak...See, I'm easy to please.

8 - an Issey Miyake coat

This bronze Origami one at far right is quite nice, isn't it? About $4,000 I think (just right for walking the dog in). I can't afford Miyake garments, which I think represent the best that modern fashion can offer, so I make do with collecting his patterns. Here is my version (in pink tweed with abalone buttons) of his brown blanket coat. 

9  - a Reverso by Jaegar-le-Coultre

The only watch I've ever really wanted, a Reverso - again - isn't entirely out of the question, just entirely out of MY question, at between $4,000 and $16,000. Reversos, as the name suggests, can be flipped over to reveal another face, which can be either plain or a timekeeper. I fancy the type with a white face one side and maybe black the other (usually a man's watch), or daytime one side and evening the other with rows of diamonds. Supremely elegant, this watch design dates from 1931 and the firm has rung variations on it ever since. Instead, I wear a one-cent Cartier Tank knockoff from Hong-Kong. 

10 - an opal necklace

The specific necklace I have in mind is in the Geological museum, London. I can't show a picture of it, as it's copyrighted, but you can see it here. It has three tiers of cabochons, with the colour shading from blues and greens through to fire opals and whites, all joined by the daintiest of gold chains. Failing this necklace, I'd love the 1820s neoclassical bracelet fashioned from Roman glass I once saw on the Antiques Roadshow. Some of the techniques still remain unknown as the knowledge was lost with the fall of the Roman Empire. Semi-precious stones are my thing, rather than diamonds, for instance, which are a bit bling-y for me. 

So, that's my modest little Christmas sorted. How about you?

Back from Brittany, I am suffering the post-holiday blues. 

Oh well, what can you do? It's the same every year. In contrast to our trips to the UK, from which I cannot WAIT to get back, and run screaming into my house, relieved beyond belief to be home, I prefer Brittany to Normandy (where we live) and would willingly move if only we had the money. 

I love the sea, the sound of the surf, the white cottages with blue-shuttered windows, the friendlier people, the wilder landscape. But above all, I love the light. 

We were lucky on this trip, of course. It was sunny nearly all the time, and at times the light was blindingly bright. We came home, in contrast, to the usual Normandy 'grisaille' - the greyness, fog and drizzle that besets this region most of the winter, but in fact it had been equally sunny (and warm) while we'd been away. 

We had also been staying in a modern (1960s), well-insulated, double-glazed house with hard ceramic floors that were easy to clean, and huge windows and French windows that flooded it with light. We came back to our medieval pile, with its impossible-to-clean terracotta floor in the living room; shattered parquet that's coming up in the kitchen; bare chipboard in the office; tiny windows; energy-saving bulbs that are like turning on the darkness; and central heating that we can only afford to use for a few hours a day December-February, and which currently can't be used at all because it turns our hot water black.

Before I even took my coat off, I cleared out the cat litter tray, along with the five deposits of poo the little sods had left me. Emptied the dog towels into the laundry (proceeding to do three washloads a day for the next several days), cleared up eight lots of cat sick, stripped the sofa, which they had vomited on (three washloads: main cover, cushion covers and throw). The next day I vacuumed the ground floor and washed the floors, phoned the plumber to come look at the heating and did the shopping for the week. Back to normality then. 

My Dad, bless him, was both a killjoy and a skinflint, and one thing he simply wouldn't do was holiday 'abroad'. It would be too nice, he said, and it was better to have several rubbish holidays a year that you didn't really enjoy than one nice, expensive one that left you feeling miserable when you got back.

Was he right? Of course he bloody wasn't. And as soon as I can get warm again (or rather, get used to being cold again), I'm sure I will be as glad to be back as the cats are to see the return of their heated furniture.

But that doesn't mean I'm not still secretly checking property prices in Finistere... 

Today is the tenth anniversary of the attacks on America.

Like everyone else in the world, I have no trouble remembering September 11, 2001. Here in France, as in the US, it was a beautiful day - a bright blue September sky with crisp air and sunshine. 

I had been working, but couldn't get Internet access so eventually I phoned my friend R to ask if she had no internet either (the lines here run above ground and coverage is patchy). 

"Turn on the television," she said. 

"What is it?"

"It's, it's awful - just turn on the television..."

I did so just before the second plane went in and for the rest of the day, the DH and I watched, transfixed as the events of the day unfolded. 

The attack on the World Trade Centers remains the worst thing I have ever seen. Not by any means the most deadly - the Asian tsunami and the Bangladesh disaster killed infinitely more people; the Balkans conflict was horrendous; the killing of James Bulger and the crimes of the Wests were the stuff of nightmares.

But this was murder on a grand scale. It wasn't a natural disaster. It was the desecration of a beautiful day, full of hope and promise; the vile use of graceful, birdlike passenger aircraft turned into weapons of war; the inducement of panic in civilians, of every race, creed and colour who fled the scene in their tens of thousands; the destruction of glittering buildings - symbols of human achievement, science and engineering - collapsing in a  cloud of ash.

"Jesus Christ, how many people were in there?" I remember asking the DH. At this point, the French Air Force jets were screaming overhead because, with news of the Pentagon attack, and several other aircraft not responding, no-one knew if other capitals might be next. 

We thought at that point that there might be 20,000 dead in New York. Certainly, the trade centres would be full (as indeed they were - mostly with young, able, high-achieving men - the kind that any country can ill afford to lose). What's remarkable in retrospect is how FEW people were killed. Half an hour later there would have been far more people in the buildings and a truly surprising number got out and away before the buildings collapsed - almost all of them below the points of impact. The evacuation was, by and large, orderly. Many people stopped to vote on the way to work, so were late at their desks, and many were taking their young children to kindergarten for the first day of term, and avoided trouble altogether. 

The biggest nightmares, for me, remain the anguish of those trapped in the buildings, phoning home to say I love you or plunging out of the windows as the fire took hold, and those on the aircraft, knowing that they were about to die. The aircraft looked lovely in the morning light, and it is still hard to accept that they were full of screaming passengers - some of them babes in arms. 

Today, then, will be a day of remembrance and the unveiling of the WTC monument. Like all American monuments, it is beautiful - the quiet reflecting pools that mark out the footprint of the lost buildings, the endlessly plashing water, the trees, and the list of names, etched in bronze - with those who died together grouped together for eternity.