Reader, I didn’t marry him

JANE Eyre lives. Governesses are back in fashion. Bad luck for all those Mr Rochesters. Parents are so keen to keep their children at home and yet get them a decent education that they are hiring live-in tutors. Like au-pairs and nannies, the teaching staff go everywhere with the family – a summer at the Olympics, a winter ski-ing, life on the yacht...

Which makes them posher than Prince Charles, really, as even he was sent off to school.

Actress Camilla Arfwedson, who worked as a governess, described her work as to “encourage and advise”. She used to “spend a few hours a day reading plays, drawing, painting, writing stories”.

Well, we could do that, couldn’t we – in between the ski-ing or getting a suntan?

No wonder teachers are queuing up to get the jobs. The pay is said to be at least double what a teacher gets – and just with one or two children. Certainly beats trying to ram the national curriculum into 30 or more rampaging school pupils.

In books, of course, governesses were always the poor relations of the Victorian household. Being a governess was just about the only job available to a well brought-up young woman who had to earn her own living. But they were caught in a social trap – too posh for the servants’ hall, not posh enough to eat with the family. Not to mention having to cope with the odd mad wife in the attic. Amazing, really, that they ever got to marry the boss.

But now it’s a different world. An American family is apparently offering a tutor and governess salaries of over £100,000, plus a flat, a car and travel by private jet. Given those options, Jane Eyre would never have needed to marry Mr Rochester.

Reader, I didn’t marry him – I had a better offer in the States instead.

ADAY late, I know, but I still have to share this Irish prayer sent to me by Brenda Boyd to celebrate St Patrick’s Day yesterday: “Get down on your knees and thank God you’re still on your feet.”

And that’s before you’ve had a drink...

THE Financial Services Authority are taking us back in time.

After years of throwing money at us like drunken sailors, the banks and building societies are to be told to stop 100 per cent mortgages, to make sure that borrowers should have at least a five per cent, ideally a ten per cent deposit, and to limit mortgages to three times the annual salary.

Gosh it’s going to be just like being back in the Seventies.

All we need now is for pubs to go back to being for grown-ups, and the transformation will be complete.

BRILLIANT, brilliant achievement by Richmond swimmer Joanne Jackson in breaking the world freestyle record on Monday. She and Rebecca Adlington both broke the record – the first time two British women have done that since 1956.

Joanne was the tiniest fraction of a second faster – which makes it odd that at least one of the national papers devoted most of its report to Rebecca.

No matter. Both women seemed delighted not just with their own achievements, but also with each other’s. That’s what’s called sportsmanship.

Many congratulations to both.

DESPITE a great deal of money and a lot of government schemes, the health gap between rich and poor is widening. There are more plans for more schemes, especially to deal with healthy eating.

Easy. Put the money into cookery lessons from primary school upwards. Proper practical lessons with end results that children can take home and share. Get children interested in food, knowing how to buy it and prepare it and, above all, to eat it so that they know what proper food tastes like.

It will ultimately improve their health and their wealth and do more to improve society and save us a fortune than any of the previous expensive and ill thought-out plans.

We are what we eat. Proper food is the first and best medicine.

BECAUSE I lead such an exciting and sophisticated life, I have spent a great deal of time this year at the tip. And a very nice tip it is, too.

I thought it would take two days to clear out 20 years of junk from the attic. It actually took nearer two months, during which time I wore a little track between home, charity shops and the Richmondshire Council civic amenity site at Scorton.

So this is just to say that the men who work there are great. They’re very enthusiastic and very helpful about sorting things out into the recycling bits. Thank you very much. But I think I’ll take a few months’ break before I start on the garage...

Sometimes a little secrecy is sensible

AFTER the first day, the trial of Josef Fritzl will be heard in secret, despite strong objections from lawyers and press, who are especially interested in the failings of social workers and police over the long years of Elisabeth Fritzl’s ordeal.

The prosecutor’s decision to let jurors smell a cuddly toy belonging to one of her imprisoned children was a master stroke. They recoiled from the rank and foetid smell it held of the cellar.

The jury will listen to evidence for only two hours a day. That is deemed as much as they can cope with. This case is so horrific that the details will be just like pornography for Fritzl wannabes to slaver over. The fear is that it could be the worst sort of inspirational.

Justice has to be done. But sometimes perhaps a little secrecy is sensible.

This won’t change bingeing

FIFTY pence a unit? Serious drinkers won’t even notice. They’ll be too busy clinging to the bar for support.

Not since the days of Gin Lane and “drunk for a penny, dead drunk for tuppence” has it been so affordable to get out of your skull. So the Chief Medical Officer’s plan to increase the price a little is nowhere near enough to sober us up.

Closing pubs and bars a lot earlier – while drunks can still stand on their own two feet, however unsteadily – might be a better start. Remember how 24-hour opening was going to turn us into a civilised continental society, enjoying a quiet glass of wine after the theatre? Well it hasn’t worked, has it? The Europeans can sip slowly and savour their drinks while conversing happily with children and grandparents. The British way has always been to sling it down your neck as fast as you can and then have a punch-up and a kebab.

Once upon a time, pubs were for grown-ups, and teenagers knew their place – in the corner with a shandy and keeping quiet. Now bars are noisy multicoloured fun palaces aimed at youngsters.

It’s one endless party and like force feeding toddlers with fizzy drinks and endless sweets, the results are pretty much the same.

It’s going to take a lot more than 50p to change things now.