Sussex columnist: Marking 100 columns for this website – and all the embarrassments I've shared!

No, it’s not my birthday, it’s better than that... That’s right, it’s my 100th column for this newspaper and its website – woo hoo!

That’s 100 times I’ve sat down and thought ‘what on Earth am I going to write about this week?’. One hundred times I’ve contemplated whether or not I should tell you things like how I once cried at a One Direction video and the time I almost got lost forever in Mid Sussex with my children, when the sat-nav kept sending me on an endless loop of a B-road.

I’m now in three figures for the amount of times I’ve contemplated whether or not sharing stories of my imperfect parenting, love of a good cocktail and my inability not to overfill my diary with fun family activities is of any interest to anyone out there.

It’s a funny thing, writing a column. It’s like having a one-way conversation, because you don’t know what the other person is thinking. Here I am, putting my waffle out into the world, but who knows what anybody reading it is actually making of it.

Perhaps the things I write about on a weekly basis ring true for some of you. Perhaps my often-embarrassing tales just make you feel better about your own life. Either way, I’ve really enjoyed putting fingers to keyboard each week and hope my bosses will let me keep doing it.

This little slice of my life, a diary of sorts, will probably serve me well when senility comes knocking (may well be sooner than I’d like if recent events are anything to go by – just a few highlights include forgetting to pick up my daughter’s friend from school, forgetting my daughter’s middle name, going to Tesco Express twice in one day and still forgetting to buy the main thing I went in for, and increasingly frequently finding myself upstairs with no idea why I’m there).

So, thank you to anybody who has endured (probably the most apt word) my ramblings so far. I’m almost certain I have more ridiculousness to come…

And, as if by magic, here’s a little bit to get you started before we get onto the next century of columns next week.

Not content with just filling up my weekend with events near to home, I’ve been away for the whole weekend!

I didn’t realise this until I got there (and, yes, this is coming from a woman who actually did one term of a geography degree), when I started seeing signs suggesting I was in this famously picturesque part of the world, but I actually went to the Cotswolds. To be precise, I was in Witney, Oxfordshire, for my niece’s christening, which was absolutely fabulous (dahling), thanks for asking.

Not only was it a beautiful part of the world (if they haven’t filmed a Christmas movie here, why not?!), but it was also brilliant to spend time with my wider family. Well, it wasn’t quite as brilliant as it could have been, as the night before leaving to travel up there, my son had a temperature, so we had to make the heart-breaking decision to leave him at home with my husband while my daughter and I went.

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It wasn’t anyone’s fault, it was just one of those unfortunate things, but the parenting guilt levels went into overdrive as he stood at the door, with the backpack he had packed on his back, with his eyes watering as my daughter and I left. The silver lining was that it was lovely to spend some quality time with my daughter. She loved the fact we shared a hotel room, just the two of us.

We spent time with my family, my brother’s wife’s family and my adorable baby niece in a lovely country pub. My daughter loved spending quality time with the family so much, and it made my heart happy again to see her enjoying herself. The fact I was able to do it while drinking wine and eating baked Camembert was just the icing on the cake!