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Christina Patterson: Why negative thinking makes the world better

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

Some years ago, I went on a "positivity" course. My sister had died, my father had died, and I'd had cancer, and a broken heart, and I wasn't, quite frankly, feeling that cheerful. Perhaps, I thought, I could brainwash myself into feeling a bit better.

Christina Patterson: My boss is discriminating against me

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

Newspaper offices waste quite a lot of paper. So, in fact, do newspapers, as yesterday's splendid pine tree becomes (depending on your point of view) today's finely crafted chronicle of our times, or semi-literate showbiz goss, and tomorrow's guinea-pig toilet.

Christina Patterson: Why we can't resist a little dice with death

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:01 GMT

There are certain oppressed minorities that most of us don't rush to defend and among them, it has to be said, are the Royal Family. Charles: I'm sorry, but ghastly.

Christina Patterson: Why politics isn't just a game for the boys

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Here's what I remember about women at the party conferences. In Brighton, Sarah Brown begging us, in extremely expensive clothes, to be nice to her husband, and Harriet Harman denouncing a Californian website about prostitutes.

Christina Patterson: If you want to be adored, just shut up

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 23:00:01 GMT

So, poor old Hollywood's got its knickers in a twist about Twitter. The biggest, slickest marketing machine in the world can't keep its hands off a medium that's all about youth, and being plugged in, and being hip, that's also, like, instant, and, more importantly, free, which is totally cool, but there's just one little problem. The stars.

Christina Patterson: Art, money and a marriage made in hell

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 23:00:01 GMT

So it's business as usual. In the City, the champagne is flowing, and the foie gras is flying off the plates, and the lap dancers are sticking thick wads of notes into their bras (do they wear bras?) or G-strings. It's BAB, babe. Bonuses Are Back. Staff at Goldman Sachs might just as well be paid in sacks of gold, as the company, bailed out by the US taxpayer to the tune of $10 billion, talked, earlier this week, of record bonuses.

Christina Patterson: Energy, drive, decisiveness – and knowledge of libel laws

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:00:01 GMT

"The culture of our company has been built around the qualities of the markets in which we work. We encourage our people to be energetic; driven and decisive and pursuing opportunity; respectful both of the significance of what we do and of the individual needs and qualities of our customers and suppliers."

Christina Patterson: The night a thief stole more than just a handbag

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 23:00:01 GMT

To the person who nicked my handbag from the Archduke Wine Bar last Thursday night, here's what happened next. Frantic phone calls, of course, on borrowed mobile phone, to police and bank and directory enquiries, for anyone who might know the one person in the world who has my spare keys.

Christina Patterson: Let's preserve the dotty, dying don

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 23:00:01 GMT

If I were rewriting Dante's Inferno, I'd ensure that the catalogue of punishments included a PhD. Perhaps for the bankers – the men in Armani, seeking instant fortunes from hot air – a seven-year sentence, in corduroys, in libraries, on semi-colons in Finnegans Wake. There'd be no Starbucks. No Blackberries. No shrieking or baying or bragging. Nothing except piles and piles of lit-crit, time stretching out to an invisible, distant horizon, and silence.

Christina Patterson: I've reached a tipping point with tipping

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 23:00:01 GMT

It starts the minute you arrive at your hotel. The suitcase that you dragged for miles to the bus stop, and then up and down the stairs on the Tube, and then down endless corridors and broken travelators at the airport, and then to the information desk at the other end, and to the bus stop, or the train, or perhaps the taxi, is, the minute you arrive in reception, whisked away from you by a man in a uniform, who carries it (but it's got wheels!) to the lift and then a few yards to your room. He opens the door, waves at the room as if he had, like God, just that minute conjured it from the air, and pauses.

Christina Patterson: Let's ditch this gold-diggers' free-for-all

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 23:00:01 GMT

I've always felt a bit sorry for Mrs Bennet. It was all very well for Mr Bennet to cast his eyes to heaven, and sigh and sneer over her fluttering, and her whittering, and her desperate, all-consuming, excruciating desire to get her daughters married off. But what was she meant to do? She had five daughters and no money. Their market value was waning by the day. And he wasn't offering any helpful solutions.

Christina Patterson: Society isn't broken, it's just become self-centred

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 23:00:01 GMT

This week, a politician gave an inspiring, almost poetic speech about the audacity of hope.

Chrisitina Patterson: Lessons on drink and la dolce vita

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 23:00:01 GMT

In my first week at university I discovered that I came from something called a "gin and jag belt". "Oehuuw!" said the pixie-booted 18-year-olds, in the protracted vowels of a Penelope-Keith-come-Abigail-pissed-at-her-party. "Guildford!" There weren't too many jags on our estate (we had a Morris Marina) and there wasn't much gin either. Once in a blue moon, my father would dig out a bottle of Blue Nun for guests, which he would serve by the half glass. The bottle would last all evening.

Christina Patterson: No, children don't need happy endings

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 23:00:01 GMT

On my first day at primary school, I came home and told my mother that my teacher had a stammer. "She says a-a-a-apple, Mummy!" I said, my voice dripping with contempt, "and b-b-b-basket, and c-c-c-cat!" "Just wait and see," said my mother, and I did, and soon the hieroglyphics on the blackboard metamorphosed into apples and baskets and cats, and soon Janet was telling John to see the boats and John was replying that he could indeed see the boats.

Christina Patterson: At least sport keeps men busy

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 23:00:01 GMT

It would be something of an understatement to say I'm not interested in sport. I ducked out of the primary school netball team when I discovered that matches were played on Saturdays and, since then, my sporting interests have been limited to the following: Wimbledon on telly in the days of Bjorn Borg, half a match "in the flesh" on one of the side courts (can't remember the players, do remember the picnic), a single flash of speeding brown horseflesh at Ascot (the Pimms was lovely), and a football match at White Hart Lane, for a feature I was writing on a poet in residence at Spurs.

Christina Patterson: Politics is dirty and difficult. And a noble calling...

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 23:00:01 GMT

If Alan Duncan and his ilk think it's tough to be a politician, they might give some thought to Morgan Tsvangirai. Put the 51-year-old son of a wing commander, who has made millions out of oil, in a room with the 57-year-old son of a bricklayer, who spent 10 years working in a mine, and he might discover that some politicians have a little more to worry about than the fact that they're condemned to live on "rations".

Christina Patterson: Lessons in fashion and the female brain

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 23:00:01 GMT

When I was 13, I was obsessed with fashion. I spent boring car journeys with my boring family dreaming of the outfits I would save up for and acquire, the outfits that would shock and dazzle the world into knowing that I was someone.

Christina Patterson: The big problem with the NHS isn't funding

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Since I don't twitter or tweet or cheep, I can't, alas, add to the patchwork quilt of warm, cosy feelings to which Sid_Goon, LimeJellyTeddy, Flopsydaisy and a certain Gordon Brown have contributed lovely little crocheted squares. But it's hard not to be a little bit touched by the British response to the Americans who will fight to the death to preserve the right of 40 million of their neighbours to die without medical treatment because they are – spit the word – poor.

Christina Patterson: Predicting the perils of predictive text

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 23:00:01 GMT

At a packed audience at a London theatre last year, Seamus Heaney announced that he was a big fan of predictive text. The Nobel laureate who has, for nearly 50 years, been "digging" (according to his most famous poem) with his "squat pen" now, it seems, taps away at his handset like a bored teenage boy. C u 2moro! GBT! 4Q m8! Well, perhaps not that.

Christina Patterson: The price of this war keeps going up

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Fighting on the frontline is tricky, of course, but if you want real stress, try working for the MoD. Actually, if you want real stress, just try speaking to them. When I last phoned them up, about casualty figures in Iraq, I thought I was going to explode.

Christina Patterson: The hangover that women can't shake off

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

"It is difficult," said an official report to the director of the Australian Trade Commissioner Service, "to support the appointment of women." It was difficult, apparently, because although a "relatively young, attractive woman could operate with some effectiveness in a subordinate capacity", the appointee "would not stay young and attractive for ever". And that could well "become a problem".

Christina Patterson: Oh, the delights – and dangers – of charm

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

On Monday night, a contemporary sex symbol celebrated the life and loves of a spiritual brother. Byron, said Rupert Everett in a Channel 4 film, In Search of Byron, was "the first modern sex symbol", the "first international celebrity" and "one of the earliest practitioners of PR". He was also a rather good poet, but the poetry, it soon became clear, was not Everett's chief concern.

Christina Patterson: Thank God for the Church of England

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

The other day, by accident, I went to church. I was in Sussex with my mother and we were on our way to Glyndebourne. We'd already visited Charleston, home of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant and shrine to middle-aged ladies aspiring to Bloomsbury Bohemia in loose linen frocks. We decided to pop into Berwick Church to look at Grant's Christ in Glory and Bell's Annunciation. A service, it emerged too late, was in full swing.

Christina Patterson: What Americans want is not what they need

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

It had to happen. Barack Obama has been ousted by Susan Boyle. Let me say that again. The President of the world's only hyperpower has been pushed from the TV schedules by a plump Scottish spinster with quite a nice voice.

Christina Patterson: Self-help books don't work, but I love them anyway

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 23:00:01 GMT

When I was 14, my mother bought me a book called A Year of Beauty and Health. Boy, did she regret it.