Tuesday: The dog and I have been sitting in a functions room at The Torch pub, at the top of the road where it breaks away from the Wembley Park new housing complex/stadium/London Outlet Designer Outlet nonsense and instead rises all the way to that murderous (IYKYK), foragey-rich apple and plum haven of Fryent Park. We’ve been here since 7:30am when we were contracted to leave the house for a shoot – our first shoot – from then until at least 8pm. Unfortunately it is also half term so the poor children have been sent out in inadequate hoodies and a clutch of banknotes to go find something to do for 12 hours.

That is less of an easy task than you’d think, particularly considering it is autumn and the clocks turned back and everything has the whiff of a killer chill about it. And where do you go? The movies only last a few hours, and 10 quid each at the Lego store will take about 7 minutes to blow, and lunch will only get eaten and the park might be windy and six year old boys will probably get whiny and big teenagers who are obsessed by the gym will have to go fit in a session leaving the two little ones to aimlessly push each other on the swings behind the Waitrose in the old hood and wonder when they might be allowed back into the house.

So. The dog and I have been pretty ok, stationed in the makeshift production office/function room at The Torch which is a bar within a bar separated from the main pub by saloon doors and a clear case of ‘let’s not bother with renovating because people will need a function room regardless of whether it has been tarted up’ – complete with damp bits on the ceiling and peeling paint and toilets that are beyond scrubbing and carpets that do indeed have that undeniably cartoony sticky dampness of a suburban non-gastro pub. I had never gone to The Torch before because it is on a main road surrounded by tarmac and a few sad looking squares of overgrown grass and sunken plastic tumblers and hosts millions of football fans on event days, the kind of which you picture in your head when you imagine ‘football hooligans’. If we haven’t established this yet, I am too fancy for such places. I am, in fact, too fancy for Wembley. But for todays it’s ok – and the dog seems to like it.

Set the scene, I hear you screech. Well, there’s a catering deposit in black polysterene boxes of bacon rolls and sausage wraps and croissants and bowls for chia seed puddings and custardy desserts. Coffee and tea in canisters, napkins and wooden utensils and a huge barrel of water that dribbles out after each extraction all over the floor and onto the carpet which is probably a good thing. Lunch was a fresh catering dump of vegan curries and salads and cheesecakes and a chocolate tart which got everyone back from my house and filled up the room and got Magic moving. He was on a long lead and kept getting tied up in chair legs and overexcited by the attention so I had to walk him outside about seven times and ended up buying all the rawhide chew toys that Asda had to keep him from barking which kind of worked but made him fart which I think was annoying the poor production people. I hope they didn’t think it was me.

Later in the day I got a call from the producer who said I could come and see what they were doing at the house. It looked like this – hi vis guy, art department supplies, more snacks:

People in my bedroom doing looking and sitting:

People on the landing doing looking and standing:

People in the TV room and various other rooms doing more of the same:

And a woman and a lot of pasta in our bath:

So my big big house that fits all eight of us plus dog was suddenly this swarm of 30 people and lighting and cables and cameras and makeup and art department and security and people all doing very specific but hard to define jobs. It was the most fun I have had in Wembley ever. I miss people. I miss camera crews in the neighbourhood. I miss people who have media jobs.

One thing I couldn’t help but notice was that the house felt very full – not just with people but also with our stuff. Like, ‘oh no we have filled up another house in a hoarding-type fashion’ which the producer confirmed was a bit true. He said we had missed out on a lot of other jobs because people need to believe a house won’t take a lot of work to get the sightlines clear and with ours, all that glass and artwork and stuff, it was a bit of a pain. And my heart sank, while simultaneously making plans to go charity shopping for interesting things on the weekend. You cannot stop a lifetime hoarder, I think. And I like our stuff, but I also like location shoots where they give you the equivalent of half the month’s mortgage payment in a day, soooooo…….one to ponder.

The first job we missed out on was in June – not for hoarding reasons though PHEW. It was a Friday, I was in Paris (wanky but true), and I got a call to see if we could exit the house on the next day for 12 hours for an artist doing a Vogue shoot. I was soon ignoring my cafe au lait and frantically calling Mark to demand he says yes and figure out something for him and the kids to do for the whole day without me there to project manage, screaming ‘I DONT CARE WHAT YOU DO BUT IT IS VOGUE SO SAY YES’. We ended up losing that job because someone knew someone else with an alternative house. But look at who the shoot was for – British Vogue November 2025:

I literally cannot cope. And our house is better, too many glass vases or not.

So, we also went to Estonia to say hi to Barnaby who is there learning Russian until December and to celebrate my 48th birthday because I just keep steadily moving towards 50, regardless of how many botox injections I have.

I bought that fur jacket while there, in the brisk Estonian autumn. Also note my new fringe:

On the way to Estonia, I saw this man on the shuttle at Luton and I did a mid life freak out and took his photo. Super creepy. That’s who I am now. I can only apologise (and keep gazing at him):

IN OTHER NEWS

I will be in New Zealand Nov 10-22 so if anyone is around to witness new fringe and hear me talk about insufferable things like location shoots at my house, please HMU. You know where to find me.

(Whangarei). Ahem. Hoping to find a kete or two.