It’s not often I’m inclined to stare at myself in the mirror, honest. But on this occasion I simply had to, because this particular reflection simply didn’t look like me at all.

It could have been the 90-minute signature massage with camomile and lavender oils, the Thai cookery lesson which had me wanting to stuff myself silly; the snorkelling trip where we swam with manta rays, or maybe the daily 7am beach-side runs I’d managed to fit in since arriving at the Dusit Thani resort in the Maldives four days ago.

Whatever it was (maybe I should also mention the wine lesson from the resident sommelier) it had wiped the cares of the world from my face.

I don’t do sitting around on a beach, but I had needed to relax. An imminent move away from my family, a wedding in the planning, a redundancy and my partner’s new high powered job had left me so anxious my GP had prescribed me tranquillisers.

Thanks to the hospitality of the Maldivians, not to mention the gorgeous beaches and oh-so amazing cuisine (and yes I did do healthy and gorge on seafood fruit and vegetables all week) I had been able to throw the packet away.

Facing my fear, and greatest challenge though was the diving, which certainly took me out of myself. At the Vivanta resort we managed to encounter, though not at too close a range, reef sharks and sting rays.

I even managed to make use of the underwater camera lent to me by friends. As I marvelled at the colourful parrot fish and took in the coral preservation work by the resort’s reef I took stock of why this place literally seemed a world away.

From feeling literally out of my depth, I was now embracing the open ocean without a care in the world.

At the Four Seasons in Kuda Huraa (meaning little island) I even managed to become a surf groupie for the day; we watched an international surfing championship there.

My sunrise room –  great if like me you want a natural alarm clock but maybe not so good if you’ve over-done cocktails at the poolside cocktail bar the night before,  was simply amazing.

Lulled to sleep by the lapping of the waves, not to mention a very satisfied stomach courtesy of the  Four Season’s award-winning Indian restaurant Baraaburu, I was in some kind of heaven.

As I was packing to go home, an Eagle ray stopped outside my bedroom window; all the rooms are suspended over the sea. There’s not much that makes me gasp in amazement but that was it. Baby or no baby, move or no move, I was ready to embrace life’s challenges again.

Book at the Dusit Thani (www.dusit.com/dusit-thani/maldives). The Vivanta (www.vivantabytaj.com) The Four Seasons (www.fourseasons.com/maldiveskh/) British Airways (ba.com) flies three times a week from London Gatwick to the capital Male.

(A version of this article first appeared in the November 2012 edition of Zest magazine)

Kim Kardashian and I have one thing in common, actually make that two, no, no it’s three (there’s my baby brain again!).

I didn’t even know who she was till she announced her pregnancy, just that she seemed to be in the newspapers a lot. But as well as being pregnant Kim, similarity one, and having a girl, similarity two, she is determined to keep up the fitness regime that has won her fans among both men and women who prefer their celebrities curvy (i.e bigger than a size 6).

As with Kim my fitness regime appears to be attracting attention.  Not the paparazzi thankfully, but most certain not very welcome, attention.  I’ve lost count of the stares I get from older men (normally in their 60s/70s when women were supposed to go to ground when they got up the duff) and women (normally in their 30s/40s normally childless) while in the gym. Okay I’m being super sensitive, and I should ignore it but…

At 29 weeks I’m managing 4/5 visits a week doing the static bike or cross trainer for 20-25 minutes for my aerobics (I used to do an hour of either running of 45 minutes spinning pre pregnancy) then a resistance workout involving light weights (3-5kg) and using my own body weight on the stability and fitness balls.

One of my favourite workouts is using light weights on the static bike. I was given this workout by the fabulous Eva at the Nuffield city gym a couple of years back. It’s a 20 minute workout that saves time but doubles up because as well as using my legs I’m working my arms and back too, with all the benefits that it makes to my baby-tipped posture.

Obviously I checked the workout was safe before doing it during pregnancy, and was told as long as I used lighter weights and skipped the overhead arm movements it was a great way to keep fit and (hopefully) ease my labour and post-birth recovery.

That was until the other day when an older man started telling me how ‘dangerous’ my work out was. Nothing new, one of the reasons I stopped exercising last pregnancy was because I kept being told how I needed to take it easy. But this time round the midwives have pointed out that because I’ve worked out the best part of 17 years’ every week it would be just as bad for me to give up in pregnancy as for a non-exerciser to take up exercise in pregnancy.

This time round though I answered back at the guy and told leave me alone, firstly informing him that my workout had been okay-ed by three of the personal trainers at the gym. Still he seemed to think that going to the gym for 15 years (he was slouched over the cross trainer in a way that was probably more likely to injure him than make him fitter) qualified him to know what was safe and was not.

He’s not the only person to stick their oar in since I’ve got pregnant, everything from my parenting (or more like attempts at parenting in between bouts of exhaustion thanks to my average of 3 hours sleep a night) to my cooking, and even my work; although that’s another blog, have come under the eye of the critic.

Apparently I can claim maternity allowance from 29 weeks, and am seriously considering doing so. But one thing’s for sure – I’ll keep up the gym routine with my middle finger ready to flip the bird should another person dare to lecture me on exercise.

Last week, LA Live was alive with British voices calling out to one another on the way to a concert performance of The Who’s rock opera, Quadrophenia, by the band’s two aged survivors – Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend – and a string of younger backing players.

LA Live is the Los Angeles answer to London’s Leicester Square. In the midst of dowdy, neglected downtown, about 25 miles east of the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, Santa Monica, Venice Beach and Malibu, speculators such as Philip Anschutz, owner of London’s O2 Arena, have poured billions of dollars into a gamble that they can revive the city’s historic heart with bright lights and top names.

I have laughed at Ricky Gervais and Eddie Izzard in the Nokia and, as well as the Who, the Staples Centre has held shows by Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Fleetwood Mac, Britney Spears and Justin Bieber. It is home to the Lakers and the Clippers, the local basketball rivals, and the Kings ice hockey team.

With typical west coast boosterism, LA Live calls itself “the most entertaining place on the planet”. That is a big claim, but ranged around LA Live’s square are 20 fast-food joints and coffee shops, anchored on the north side by the 7,000-seater Nokia Theatre and the Staples Center arena, about the size of Wembley Arena and hosting concerts, ice skating, boxing – anything that will attract about 20,000 spectators. The 14-screen Regal cinema and the ESPN West Coast Broadcast Centre add media glamour.

In the middle of the space, instead of Leicester Square’s trees, is a platform for open-air events or, at least, audience-participation games to keep the crowds amused.

LA Live is officially described as the premier destination for live entertainment in Downtown Los Angeles. That’s because it’s about the only live entertainment centre in Downtown, which has never fully recovered from the shock of its wealthy residents deserting it in the 1920s in favour of Beverly Hills.

One of the LA City Council’s main preoccupations is how to get it back to where it was, but it’s a slow process. As in New York, it’s quite edgy to live in a loft space there – if you’re a lawyer or accountant who likes to walk to work. But the real money stays west.

Like most US cities, LA has created a passable miniature imitation of Manhattan’s skyscrapers, with banks, rents and fancy restaurants to match.

But the LA Live square still seems oddly out of place, like a party in a nunnery. Duck under the nearby freeway and you are in a different world, almost a third-world country with rundown warehouses and car-repair lots.

But Anschutz and his business partners seem determined to pull the area up by its bootstraps. They have persuaded Mariott hotels to take a tower, a few floors of which have been designated a Ritz-Carlton. It doesn’t seem like the right surroundings for a five-star hotel – you wouldn’t want to walk your dog down some of the surrounding streets after dark – but the big sporting and showbiz events do pull in the money.

Quite a few surrounding businesses make a decent living on the back of LA Live. If you want to beat the official $25 parking fee for an evening, there are plenty of office multi-storey car parks willing to let visitors in for as little as $5 when the pen-pushers have driven home. And there are some reasonable Italian and Indian restaurants within walking distance.

The next item on the to-do list is to bring professional American football back to LA after the Raiders and the Rams quit because they could no longer fill the stadiums. But the National Football League, which controls where the pro teams are based, knows it can drive a hard bargain and is doing so.

Daltrey and Townshend sound more like a firm of lawyers than a rock band, and they were looking their age after an energetic two-hour set that earned that what in LA is regarded as a mandatory standing ovation. Staying seated to applaud is an insult.

Then we joined the crowds streaming out of the Staples, walked up the street to our cut-price parking space – $7 in our case, no expense spared – zipped onto the freeway and we were home in ten minutes.

Where to start with my first blog as a married woman? Well at 25 weeks pregnant – and with my appearance changing week to week (and sometimes day by day) I thought I’d start with my next-stage survival guide.

The last few months have been tough, battling morning sickness and then planning a wedding, has left me feeling knackered. I’ve got two weeks till my final (and most uncomfortable) trimester starts. Yay!

The usual things – stretch marks, dry skin and massive weight gain – have so far evaded me this pregnancy. According to most experts there’s little you can do about stretch marks, so whether you get them or not tends to be a result of a genetic raffle. My mum didn’t get them which may explain why I’ve not got them. That hasn’t stopped me from slathering on the Body Shop coconut butter I got for Christmas though.

Hair-tales

Sitting in the waiting room to see my obstetrician at 22 weeks I had a moment -  many of the other pregnant ladies waiting with me, many of them dressed smartly were not bothering with their hair, leaving it long and unstyled. There were very few women with cropped or bobbed hair. Looking at my own mop (which I had grown to put up for our wedding) I decided a trim was in order.

Pregnancy is probably not the time to go for a really drastic hair cut, because it does shed after birth. Trims are good I told myself and used a 25% off Toni & Guy hair cut voucher in Grazia. I also had £30 worth of Toni & Guy gift vouchers to use, so I got £10 haircut. The lady at Bishops Stortford T&G, Dawn – was great. She also recommended a hair style for when I was feeling like something a bit more on trend (a long Gwyneth Paltrow-style bob, but I’ll come back to you on that one).

Now while I’ve made a personal decision not to dye my hair during pregnancy, there is no evidence that hair dyes can cause any harm to come to the baby but as pregnancy is the one time you can get away with going natural, I’ve decided to. During pregnancy you shed less hair (it does fall out after you have the baby) so your hair will tend to look thicker, and increased blood flow which gives you strong nails and that pregnancy ‘bloom’ also means I’m sporting a glossy full mane of hair at the moment.

So I’ve booked in to have another trim just before baby is born, and I may opt for highlights then. Remember if you are wanting to dye your hair when pregnant you will need a patch test first as the hormone flood that is pregnancy can mean you suddenly develop a reaction to hair dye.

If you must dye your hair, L’Oreal have a dip dye kit which means you don’t have to put the dye anywhere near your scalp. I did try this kit before I got pregnant and would recommend you only use it if you have mid brown or lighter hair, even the kit for dark hair can come out looking orange. And backcomb the bit where you want the dye to ‘join’ your darker hair for a more natural look.

Beauty writer ReallyRee has reviewed it in detail on her blog.

For the next three months dry shampoo (Klorane oat) a regular fringe trim, L’Oreal mythic oil and some Elnett  heat protect smooth should keep me from looking like the wild woman of Bishops Stortford.

Skin-tonics

I had my eye on a Clarisonic, but at £150 a pop, that’s not going to be part of my regime any time soon (but I can dream). However on one of my favourite beauty forums I was alerted that  Boots No7 had bought out a version of the electric cleansing brush, the beautiful cleansing brush, for £25, and was available at a special offer price of £15. But even better I could use one of the £5 No7 vouchers towards it. It’s amazing, but don’t use the strong setting, on sensitive pregnant skin it can be a bit strong. Your usual cleanser will do, as long as it’s a water based foaming one.

At night I’ve been using Clarins blue orchid oil and my usual Dermalogica regime. Dermalogica has bought out some new stuff, but as I only started working again this month I’ll leave that treat till later.

When I get the chance I’ve been dyeing my eyebrows and eyelashes with a kit, and have been using my very well used Shavata brow shaping kit (bought in Marks and Spencers about six years ago).

I’ve also got some Cowshed vouchers to use, I’m saving them up for week 38/39 as a pre-baby/last ditch mummy makeover.

Still fitness crazy

Thanks to my trainer Victoria Thompson, via the Bishops Stortford Nuffield gym. She gave me some great preggers exercises which have given me a more toned bum and legs than a six months pregnant is entitled to have. From 28 weeks (or if we have sudden warm spell) I’m upping my swimming and pilates. Yoga is just too sedate for me right now, I can’t do power yoga nor can I do hot yoga and pregnancy yoga sends me to sleep!  I do incorporate yoga stretches into my cool down regime. I’ve had to stop running as my hips are starting to ache (I got SPD in my first pregnancy) but for now I’m feeling fit, healthy and happy. Oh and I’ve been wearing some gorgeous pregnancy fitness gear from SportyBump. I’ve taken to wearing the yoga leggings around the house and out when shopping/doing the school run.

Food, glorious food

Well thank the Lord for Omeprazole, this little daily table means I can eat. I’ve not had any weird cravings – I did in the early stages when I was feeling sick – but being able to eat most food probably means I’m not too vitamin deficient. I’m sticking with the Boots Omega 3 and pregnancy multivitamins as a top up. My indigestion may be making a return soon, so I’m stuffing up now – all healthy food (she says, hiding the Cadbury caramel mini eggs out of sight).

LA is rightly proud of its theatre, from the majestic Disney concert hall to Theatre Row on Santa Monica Boulevard, from the 1920 Moorish architecture of the Pasadena Playhouse to endless little groups of players scattered around North Hollywood, Brentwood, Santa Monica and Venice Beach.

All those resting actors have to keep their hand in somehow.

North Hollywood, proclaimed on a street-wide arch as Noho, doesn’t feel like Hollywood at all, not like the tourist bit where Shirley Temple’s tiny feet are etched in concrete and Spiderman lookalikes charge to have their photo taken with ten-year-old children.

No Jimmy Savile lookalikes yet, thank goodness.

NoHo, north of the 101 freeway, is way cooler than that. It’s slightly shabby, with edgy clothes stores, the obligatory gym and a tai kwon do centre.

It suddenly goes corporate at the next crossroads, a big Hewlett Packard complex sitting opposite a luggage shop and a Starbucks. I sat outside sipping decaf skinny latte and looking indistinguishable from everyone else in sunglasses, black top and blue jeans. I know how to blend in!

I was in NoHo to visit the Antaeus Theatre Company, which does a neat line in classic plays, for its version of Macbeth.

Squeezed into a row of shops, the theatre doesn’t have much room but, practical as ever in LA, it has an agreement to let customers use the Citibank parking lot across the street outside banking hours.

Inside, no one bothered checking tickets and, as the seats weren’t reserved, anyone with a dollop of chuzpah could probably save themselves the $36 price of admission and just sit down.

The short, dark entrance tunnel led straight onto the front of the stage, which wasn’t actually raised. Steps led up the middle of steeply banked rows of seats, with room for 80 or so.

After an appeal for funds, the house lights went down and music struck up to start the action.

The director had decided that the play needed updating a little. All the men wore leather skirts and Doc Marten boots, which suited some better than others. The famous opening line, “When shall we three meet again?”, was agonisingly delayed because the opening scene was turned into a baby’s funeral.

While this could just about be traced to later dialogue, the funeral had to be played out in silence because Shakespeare had not written anything for such an event – and the Antaeus does not actually put words into the Bard’s mouth. Not knowingly, anyway.

While the tragic aspect of Macbeth demands that the title role be a confused, conflicted character, this one seemed a little too weak and indecisive to command armies and cruelly connive against rivals. His stock expression was wide-eyed panic. Banquo and one of the three witches was black, which won points for PCness but was stretching things a little for medieval Scotland. Come on, you can’t do Othello every week.

As this was a Sunday matinee, it came as a bit of a shock to emerge from the dark theatre into blinding sunshine at the interval.

In the tiny foyer, a volunteer sold water and muffins for $1. An orderly single queue took it in turns to use the two loos. Although the interval was supposed to be 15 minutes, in practice it was a long as it took the last patron to do the necessary.

In the second half the actors’ English accents started to slip. Most went outright American: one of the leaders called his troops into “baddle”. OK, I know that’s unfair. I would probably do far worse with a 17th century Salem accent if I were in Arthur Miller’s Crucible.

Nevertheless, it jarred as the bloody murders littered the stage. One corpse’s leg stuck out from behind the scenery and its owner had to discreetly pull it out of sight.

Unaccountably, the witches smartened up and took their seats at the banquet scene. Needs must when the cast is small. Macbeth looked increasingly harrassed, but Banquo played the Ghost brilliantly with his back to the audience, spinning round to speak his lines then spinning back again. Order was eventually restored, Malcolm claimed the kingdom and we all trooped out feeling that justice had been done.

After that, at five o’clock in the afternoon, what better than a curry? A short walk from the theatre is Salomi, one of LA’s best Indian restaurants – at least to English taste buds – with Kingfisher beer and a chef willing to make the dishes as hot as we liked. Shakespeare would have approved.

It’s our first Ella Mag Christmas and it really would not be complete without a gift guide. Okay – this less a gift guide, more a not what to buy guide, except of course there are a few suggestions.

Smelly things

If you are going to buy anything that involves a lotion or body cream then make sure it’s a decent brand- Clarins/Boots No7/Cowshed and Sanctuary are all good ones to go for. Supermarket-own brands have their place, namely on the bathroom shelves of grannies and aunts. In fact one of our favourite beauty buys of the year is No7’s body exfoliator, but you don’t want to buy this alone (she may be insulted!)  opt for a No7 gift sets with body lotion and your lady will not only thank you for it, she’ll think you’re a genuis. We also love Aveda gift sets, you can’t go wrong with some gorgeous-smelling shampoo, or even a candle.

Underwear

Don’t make the mistake of buying ill fitting/scratchy/tasteless bras and knickers. Instead buy your loved one vouchers in the nearest posh underwear shop, and let your lady do the choosing. And it’s a great excuse to shop in the sales. Carols in Bishops Stortford is our local underwear boutique. Alternatively go online and get vouchers for sites such as FigLeaves.

Gadget no nos!

Much as us ladies love gadgets Christmas is not a time to buy vicariously. So as much as your lady might show an interest in a gadget that measures her body fat/sleep patterns/loo habits etc – she’s probably rather you bought her something cool like a pair of fluffy headphones that double up as earmuffs – fashion and function can’t go wrong with that.

Perfume

Do not buy anything you are not sure about. Even if you know that she loved Chanel No5 when she was a teenager she may not like it now. For example I went off a bunch of smells when I was pregnant first time round, including a perfume I’d loved for years. Even now some of them still make feel feel unwell.  So unless you know for sure what fragrance she likes – don’t buy at all.

Books

Chances are she owns 50 Shades of Grey already. If you are going to buy her book buy a coffee table book Nigella’s Nigellissima is great because it shows you think of her as a domestic goddess or at least have the potential to be one.  Anything by Bobbi Brown is always cool. If you want to go the extra mile buy her a book with intelligence,  (Personally I’d like to read Naomi Woolf’s Misconceptions, it’s been on my must read list for ages – Sam, ed)

Let us know if you have any other suggestions – we’ll be aiming to update this list in the run up to Christmas.

A very warm welcome to  Lemon House Life a  new blog from Ruth Osborn, you might remember her  Our Lady in Italy.

Well she’s now set up her own blog Lemon House Life to share her thoughts on fresh life and fresh food in northern Tuscany. Ruth moved to Italy with her partner James last year and she’s been enjoying Italian life ever since.

Read her latest blog – where she shares her recipe for beef with spiced wine and roast roots.

It could be the Sea Bands Mama acupressure wristbands (had to link to these as they are that good and no I don’t get paid for any links on this site) or it could be the fact I’m nearly 15 weeks pregnant, but the fact that I’m actually able to write this at nearly 8pm (8pm!!) feels like a miracle in itself.

The bands, which are used to help with seasickness, have a small button which applies pressure  on the P6 (Nei-Kuan) point between the two central tendons near the wrist. No I’m not 100% sure what this is either but it appears to have worked. For now anyway. That and the Gaviscon I’ve been glugging down.

I might even have a curry for dinner?! Although  maybe that might be chancing it a bit too much.

After the  CVS I’m still taking it easy but it  appears my work mojo has kicked in again. After a month spent doing virtually nothing but the odd article I suddenly found myself feeling more like the Samantha of old.

It helped that a fellow freelance  asked me to talk him through the content management system of a website he was working on and one I was very familiar with.

We met over a quick coffee in the city and during the conversation I realised while helping him that I actually have amassed quite a lot of knowledge from the 13 odd years I’ve spent writing for/helping launch/design etc media websites that a lot of other people simply don’t have.

I realised that I’ve let myself get into a bit of ‘pit’ during my morning sickness period, and realising I still have  lot to offer the corporate editorial world was a huge boost  I really did need.

Now I’m feeling better I’m determined to make sure I use this knowledge to keep myself in the game, after all (Andrew does have a full time job by the way) we’ll have another mouth to feed soon, and if that isn’t enough to get me off my (slightly larger) backside, I don’t know what is.

So the ludicrous 18-month hoopla of the US election process has left us pretty well where we started – with the same leader of the free world facing pretty much the same set of head-bending intractable problems, from the recession to China to whether American Idol will ever be the same without Simon Cowell.

I was in line at 7.15 in the morning, a quarter of an hour after the poll opened, at a polling place – not a station, here – in a backroom of the local Assistance League. Selection of suitable venues is, shall we say, more varied than in Britain’s normal reliance on schools and churches. Branches of McDonald’s are sometimes used and, bizarrely, even private houses.

Americans often think nothing of queuing for hours to vote. I often wonder why they don’t simply open more locations. I waited about 20 minutes before first my name and then my address were carefully crossed off by different officials in return for my signature – without asking for any ID.

Then I was given the voting card, about three inches wide and maybe 18 inches long. In the booth the voter slides it into a black, plastic frame and it is held in place by a couple of red pegs.

Then the real business starts: choosing a President and Vice-President as a pair, plus a Senator, Congresswoman and state attorney-general.

Those are fairly predictable in a Californian city, all of which are solid Democrat. Less predictable are the votes on State-wide propositions and County measures, 11 questions this time, ranging from the death penalty to compulsory condoms for porn actors. You show your choice by punching a hole – nothing as simple as marking with a cross.

I was out by 7.45, awarded my “I voted” sticker and off to Starbucks for a well-deserved coffee and instant porridge.
It doesn’t matter where in the world you are, there are basically three ways of spending an election night watching the results come in on TV: at a party, in a town square or snacking and drinking at home with like-minded friends.

In the Los Angeles area there wasn’t much going on in town squares that I knew of, and I’m sure the smart crowd had their discreet parties at the Beverly Wilshire or the California Club in Downtown LA, but I went for the third choice – just like millions of Brits do when the UK polls close.

We’ve become regular friends with three other couples, all of a similar age and political outlook, who we see over a meal or in a book club, so it was an obvious plan to congregate at Pat and Elaine’s elegant Spanish-stye house for what we thought we going to be a nailbiter of an evening.

Nachos, hummus, guacamole, grapes, goat’s cheese and biscuits got us started before I and the other three guys were packed off to the local branch of Chipotle to collect takeaways of beans, fajita, chicken, salsa and lettuce – all very healthy and the identical menu to the chain’s British branches.

Then we trooped into our friends’ version of the family room. They don’t have children, but that is no barrier. This is a curious Californian housing custom that we had never come across until we bought and then sold a house of our own.

Every home aims to have a family room, a den with some easy chairs and, crucially, a TV. It has to be separate from the sitting room, which has a formality that harks back to the “Sunday best” room in northern working-class terraces. The sitting room is where people sit and talk over a drink. The family room – with or without family – is where they lean back and watch TV.

We have found houses where the most inconvenient corner – maybe part of the kitchen or just an enlarged cupboard – is dressed up as the family room for selling purposes. We don’t have one in our house, but I suppose we’ll have to fashion one if we move.

Unusually, Pat and Elaine’s family room is upstairs and it was a bit of a squeeze for the eight of us, but our hosts gallantly sat on the floor.

After a grinding election campaign, and what from the Democrats’ point of view had been a worrying surge in popularity by Mitt Romney since the first of the televised debates, the end came surprisingly early, and easily.

The three-hour time difference between the east and west coasts is more of a factor than Europeans often realise, whether planning a trip or watching World Series baseball. What’s more, several east-coast states closed their polls as early as 6pm, which is 3pm in California.

So by the time we gathered at 6pm – evening events start much earlier here than in London – the exit polls from across the country were beginning to trickle through. The first states went their expected way, and there were delays in the key battleground states of Florida and Virginia. North Carolina, which Obama won in 2008, duly returned to the Republicans.

We were watching the left-leaning MSNBC, but all the TV stations had impressive statistics and graphics, keeping a running total as Obama and Romney crept towards the clinching 270 electoral college votes. Americans still do not directly elect their President.

The mood began to change when Obama won Pennsylvania, a Republican hope. The reporter at the Republican HQ in Romney’s state, Massachusetts, was saying that the atmosphere there was going quiet and no one would talk to her.
Then, suddenly, it was all over.

At 8.13pm west coast time the TV networks projected that Obama had won Ohio to give him 274 votes. It took another two hours for Romney to concede, and meanwhile the tension went out of the TV coverage – and our room.

All that remained was Obama’s statesmanlike, Lincolnesque victory speech and, instead of the all-night vigil we had expected, we were saying our goodbyes soon after 11pm.

Ominously, though the futures market was correctly predicting a bad day on Wall Street as worries shifted to the so-called fiscal cliff. It’s business as usual in Washington.

If someone asked me which part of the world my favourite wines come from, I would almost certainly say Bordeaux. If they asked me where some of the most captivating wines originate, I might say Burgundy. But if someone asked me where they can find the best value for money while also delivering great complexity and flavours, I would say the Rhone.

France’s Rhone region is home to some of the greatest wines in the country, the most famous of which is Chateauneuf-du-Pape. But while the likes of Chateauneuf, Condrieu, Cote Rotie and Hermitage command the highest prices in the region, there are plenty affordable wines to choose from in this corner of southern France.

And this isn’t a straightforward region either. In the northern Rhone there you find Cote Rotie, Hermitage and Crozes-Hermitage along with many other appellations like St Joseph and Cornas, while in the south you find Cheateauneuf-du-Pape, Gigondas, Vacqueyras and a lesser-known one like Tavel, including many others.

But while all those appellations are wonderful – and are at the higher-end of quality in the region – what I’m talking about here is basic Cotes du Rhone and Cotes du Rhone Villages. These two appellations are the most basic in the hierarchy but can offer enjoyable drinking for very little cost.

Wines from the southern Rhone make up about 90 per cent of the region’s total production and, while Cotes du Rhone and Cotes du Rhone Villages wines (of which 19 communes can be named on the label), makes up the majority of all of the Rhone region’s output.

That’s a lot of wine. But while the quantity is high, this isn’t to say it should be ignored as a wine. If you are after spicy, peppery wines made principally from grenache, but in some cases they can be blends that syrah and mourvedre.

Two of the best-known and most enjoyable Cotes du Rhones come from E Guigal and M Chapoutier, among the largest producers in the region, but there are plenty more great offerings to choose from. As Jancis Robinson said, Cotes du Rhones is “one of the best-value appellations in the world.”

With that in mind, I’ll get straight to the point and tell you which wines I rate.

Wines to try:

E Guigal Cotes du Rhone 2009 (£10.99, Majestic, but widely available in the UK)
One of my favourites, this is often considered to be among the best wines in the appellation vintage after vintage. While other wines are made mostly of grenache, this tends to feature syrah very highly. For the 2009 vintage it contains 50 per cent syrah, 45 per cent grenache and 5 per cent mourvedre. With plenty of spice and structure, this goes nicely with food.

M Chapoutier Cotes du Rhone Belleruche 2010 (£9.99, Majestic, but widely available in the UK)
Again, this is one of the best of the lot and a consistent performer each year. Made mainly of grenache with a little bit of syrah, it displays cherries and black currants as well as the spiciness you come to expect from Rhone wines. A good one for lamb.

Domaine Andrew Brunel Cotes du Rhone 2009 (£10.99 but on offer for £9.99, Virgin Wines)
From a famous Rhone producer comes a cheaper, more accessible wine that, despite costing around a tenner, offers a great deal of enjoyment. With lots of spice, dark fruits like cherries and currants, this is great for an everyday drinking wine or even to go with lamb or sausages.

Cotes du Rhone Perrin Reserve 2010, Perrin & Fils (£13,95, Roberson Wine)
The Perrin family is renowned in the Rhone region, but this is mainly because they make one of the finest Chateauneuf-du-Papes in under their Beaucastel label. This, however,  is an old-school Cotes du Rhone that is fresh, straightforward, no-nonsense and expressive of its fruit. If this seems a bit expensive compared to the others, why not try the Meridion Par Pierre Perrin Cotes du Rhone 2010 for £10.99 at Laithwaite’s? From a member of the famous family, this is exclusive to Laithwaite’s and displays all the classic characteristics of the region.