Hola from Barcelona

I know, I know, how lucky can one girl get? A meeting with an agent all planned for two weeks from now, a night out last Friday with a gorgeous man and a trip to Barcelona, all within a few days of one another.

I'm glad it's all finally here; that's it's all finally happening. I've been waiting for the shift in my life for several months now. I could feel it beginning to move but it seemed to be taking its own sweet time. I need a few lessons in patience - it's never been my strong suit.

I joke that I allow myself to be bad when I'm in Barcelona but now that I think of it I'm really not as bad as I could be. I arrived at the house of my very good friends Xavi and Mara and he'd specifically bought a bottle of Rioja for me. I don't usually drink at home during the week, but hey, I'm on holiday. I even had a glass with lunch today! I do, however, always smoke when I'm here. Smoking is a guilty pleasure that I only partake of occasionally in England but here it's just so much more acceptable that these days I plan to do it before I even arrive.

I will have to limit my bad behaviour being here this time with my six-year-old daughter. It's her fourth trip to Barcelona if you don't count the fact that she was conceived here. It's my fifteenth trip, or seventeenth or something like that - there's too many for me to remember now. I met my Spanish friend Monica on a school exchange trip in 1990 and over 3am discussions about our virginity (okay hers, mine was gone by then) we bonded for life. I'm aiming for three trips here this year rather than the usual two.

So aside from a little indulgence in fantastic Catalan food, a little too much Rioja and the smoking I'm being quite a good girl really. My real bad behaviour is going on in England; having to confront myself doing things that I never thought I'd do. I'm going with Elisabeth Lesser on this one. In her book Broken Open she says - I'm paraphrasing - that we have to confront and fully integrate the shadow side of our personality in order to release its energy into our life; energy that we were hitherto using to repress that side of ourselves.

Now that I'm going to spend some time allowing myself to be bad or at the very least not seeking the approval of others I can probably think of some really creative ways to make some trouble. Now where did I put the number of that babysitter...