A biography for Arabella Weirhasn’t been written yet.
“I cry at everything, even the length of the queue at Sainsbury's.”
“Society prizes a girl for being thin more than anything else she might bring to the table.”
“I'm the co-chair of the PTA at my kids' school, Ashmount Primary, in north Islington, London.”
“Both Plockton and the Isle of Muck in north-west Scotland are incredibly beautiful. Sadly, Plockton has been discovered by tourists because it's where they shot Hamish Macbeth.”
“Success, in whatever form it takes, is a tricky thing - once you've achieved your goal, then what? Where do you aim?”
“Sending your child off to school for the first time in their life is terrifying.”
“My parents' generation's benchmark was simple: Fat Equals Bad.”
“If one's honest about it, spending time in a car with children is pretty ghastly.”
“My mother, father, stepmother and surrogate mother have all died of cancer; my best friend has got terminal cancer and at least five of my other friends have had cancer but survived it.”
“I wish my parents hadn't made me feel that how I looked was linked to how much they loved me. But I do also see how hard it must be to see your child pile on the pounds and trust they'll find their own way back to a healthy weight.”
“I don't understand boys - just ask my husband.”
“The real me now may not be thin but she's got the cake and, if she likes, can eat it too.”
“I know a lot of people fear the rougher types who might be at a state school, but surely it is better to know who they are and how to deal with them than for that kind of child to appear as a completely different species to yours.”
“With a diplomat father, for whom foreign postings were a fact of life, my siblings and I were expected to attend boarding schools in Britain.”
“If I'm hunting down gifts, I like to buy locally.”
“I spent my entire childhood living abroad because of my father's occupation, so we were on long-haul flights all the time.”
“My theory is that one needs to be loved completely, unconditionally, and unfettered by parental disapproval, if one is to get happily through life which, after all, presents its own hurdles.”
“Statistically, if you have ever dieted you are extremely likely not only to regain any weight you lose, but to go on to gain even more. Dieting makes you fat.”
“I have never done a package tour in my life. It appeals in a way, but then I remind myself that you can't control the other people with you, which could turn out to be ghastly.”
“Why has everything got to be about feelings these days? In the old days, no one knew what anyone was feeling and, what's more, they weren't expected to.”