Hats off to Louise Mensch for taking the decision to move to New York to live with her new husband and her young family. There are the grinches and the naysayers out there rubbing their hands in schadenfraude-like glee, but hey, you've got to hand it to her, the lass has balls.
She may have an unhealthy attraction to Margaret Thatcher, but other than that Louise Mensch has got fire in the loins. She bashed out various chick-lit bonkbusters under her former name of Louise Bagshawe and worked for EMI. Anyone - myself included - knows that a lot of 'hospitality' goes on with this kind of PR job. I would say, get over it.
Much of the past press seems to have been forever dwelling on whether or not Mrs Mensch has had a face lift or not. She looks great. Who cares? Has she taken drugs, or not? All this fairly pedestrian interest surely takes away from the key issues surrounding the stepping down of the Minister for Colby and East Northampton, and the unfortunate, as yet still unresolved state of affairs, that women cannot be in two places at once.
Combine this with the fact that time travel is dragging its heels, with a husband in New York she came to the 'devastating' conclusion that something got to give.
But this is because she has the choice. She has the children. She is not having a nervous breakdown having put children 'on hold ', whilst she waits until she is virtually incapable through age and stress of having them. Of having them at a dignified age where she can be an active, engaged parent to have fun with.
A bit of a babe, with young children and a successful career, which is not the first one she has had, Louise Mensch seems more than a little inspiring. I can think of times watching a daughter's choreographed dance on stage, a son hit 50 runs on the cricket pitch, where I could have been nowhere more significant in my life on the planet.
That is the stuff of being a mum, as much as a whole pantheon of silent, unmentioned, fairly exhausting work that you wouldn't actually call work, because its just part of being a mum.
Of course clever women, talented women can be very good mothers and through their intellect can teach their offspring a lot. We seem to forget this. As if it's a sort of pretty crappy sideline that someone else can always do.
And maybe by taking this decision Louise Mensch will become a poster girl for this kind of woman. Not the woman having IVF at great expense and who is forever mapping out her little world. For the woman with the bigger picture. We wrote a book for this kind of woman; Dangerous Women; A Guide to Modern Life and it's for the woman who can live a little, with the subtitle Live as Well as You Dare, encouraging just that.
Mensch by her nature seems adept at change. Westminster can be a very beguiling place, and is a pretty big deal to give up. At the end of the day though Louise Mensch fell in love. She met a new man after a divorce. Let's just clear up this not-so-little issue. Any women who gets divorced, for whatever reason, feels a failure. In her heart. Deep down there's this little bit of you post divorce that says, "you do not have the perfect family and will never recover." It is not all saucy divorce triple vodkas and nights of free love the singletons and Bridget Jones ladies like to depict.
To decide to follow her husband to New York sounds pretty sexy to me. It's a grand place to live and the education for small children in New York schools is really very good indeed. I was
reading poems with a nine year old in her Greenwich Village classroom a few months ago and would say it was an impressive set up indeed.
So let's praise the mother. Let's say actually it is one of the most important jobs in the world. You are important in this and not merely a baby machine. You should be the kind of mother you want to be and free to make this choice. That is the issue. It's not a given, but sometimes you do get a second chance. You might fall for someone who lives in another world, another life and that is just life.
You might fall for someone who is pretty sexy and great and you just want to be with. As Mensch herself says, "Sometimes life throws you a curveball that you didn't expect." Let's drink to that. Negroni anyone?