Mount Up For The Festival

The Cheltenham Gold Cup Festival is here! Kicking off on Tuesday, this racing meet is a week of exceptional sport and exceptionally bad behaviour. The town is over run with half the Irish population making their annual pilgrimage, an army of tweed and lots of braying chins having an awfully good time. Bag an invite to a box or a table for lunch, pick up your Racing Post and head to the bar for a Bloody Mary (come race week it's OK to class these as breakfast and definitely on your five-a-day list).The only thing to concern yourselves with is how a Trifecta bet works and what on earth you're going to wear. Here's some inspiration and afterwards head over to Barbour Gold Label, Holland Cooper or Really Wild for some last minute shopping. Yes, it's in the country and yes tweed really is the thing to wear, but think more high fashion than high-on-a-grouse-moor.

Credit where credit's due: Tatler, The Telegraph, The Sun, Holland Cooper, Really Wild

International Women's Day

I'd like to write something inspirational and celebrate some of the world's greatest women and those who are personally great to me. 

But I'm drawing a blank as where to start. 

Any words just seem cliched and don't do justice to the wonderful, mad, dangerous and great things that any of them have done. From Emmeline Pankhurst and her suffragettes on the picket line to my mother being there for me unquestionably through anything; from Jessica Ennis being the ultimate sportswoman to Mary Quant putting us all in mini skirts; from Benazir Bhutto – read Daughter of the East it's incredible – to Beyonce for making us shake and pop and roll our hips like we're on stage in nothing but sequins; from love-her-or-loathe-her, Maggie Thatcher to Marianne Faithful who created the biggest rock n roll confectionary myth in history, there has and are some incredible women with incredible stories in our history.

As women, we're all inclined for a gossip and love nothing more than getting things off our chest (AKA for bitching like cats) normally accompanied by a glass of wine and a foul mood, but we do need to give each other a break. We should help, support and praise our women not slate them for their failures/mistakes/cellulite. We're all in this together and should celebrate our accomplishments as men do. 

After all, the fact that we can apply lipstick without a mirror, write a 1000 word interview, dance in stilettos, be compassionate, deal with bikini waxes and be ruthless when we have to be (all for a lower wage) then I think we all deserve a huge pat on the back. 

Here's to us.

Check out the International Women's Day website here