COCONUT with everything.

That’s how my youngest daughter happily sums up our culinary tour of Kerala, south India.

Our first lesson takes place in the kitchen of a colonial bungalow overlooking the Arabian Sea. Wearing a blue sari and apron, our cookery teacher, Faiza Moosa, stands next to 16 dishes of pungent spices, from fiery chillies to local cloves.

A fan redistributes the breathless heat. Sandalwood incense burns and a lizard crawls up the wall. We’re a long way from the sanitised industrial kitchens and cookery courses of Europe. “These coconuts come from our garden,” adds Faiza, Kerala’s premier cookery teacher. “They’re in most of our dishes.”

We are at Ayesha Mazil, our first gastronomic stop, in the town of Tellicherry. A colonial-style guesthouse with four-poster beds, it is also home to Faiza, 50, and her husband.

I’m with my two young daughters, Anya, 13, and Ella, 11, learning basic Indian cookery in three different venues ‹ without paying a fortune, and enjoying sunshine, too.

Before we start our lesson, we go to the market near the Moosas’ home, to buy our ingredients and discover endless varieties of exotic local fruit and vegetables: from banana blossom (like maize) and long green drumsticks to karela, with its gnarled skin.

Then Faiza’s husband, who likes to be called “Moosa”, whisks us down a crowded alley to the fish market ‹ for kingfish, stingray, shark and pomfret. “Fishing boats come in three times a day,” explains Moosa.

Back at the guesthouse, Faiza stands amid ready-prepared ingredients (there are nine staff in her home). Keralan cuisine is subtle, different from anything else in India, and combines alchemical combinations of spices with influences of Portuguese, Syrian Christian, Jewish and Arab cuisine ‹ introduced by traders over the centuries. Faiza teaches the Moppilah (Muslim) cuisine of her Arab forefathers.

We make Chemmeen Varattiyathu (tamarind prawns) ‹ marinading the crustaceans in coconut oil, orange chilli powder and turmeric. We squeeze tamarinds and sizzle onions, green chillies and mustard seeds for sauce.

Meanwhile, Faiza speedily produces a chicken dish with aniseed, ginger and garlic. A cinch. Afterwards, we whisk jaggery (unrefined sugar), coconut milk and eggs, steaming them in a copper “vanduchembu” for Moppilah crème caramel. Our lesson (producing one meal) takes nearly three hours.

The next day, after breakfast, it’s time to leave. Driving to Sultan’s Battery, we see our ingredients growing ‹ from turmeric plants to cardamom shrubs. Kerala is a lush land with abundant rainfall and paddy fields, spice plantations, coconuts and fresh waters.

We reach Tranquil, a guesthouse on a coffee plantation surrounded by rubber, fruit and spices. We sleep in a treehouse but cook on terra firma. Our hosts are former planters Victor and Jini Dey, newcomers at cookery courses but old hands at cooking.

Our classroom is a backroom with a corrugated ceiling and freestanding gas stoves. Here they teach old family recipes ‹ a mouth-watering fusion of styles. Servants wander in and out, giving us lime sodas.

Our lesson is with chef Sashi, Jini and her daughter, Neesha ‹ with Neesha translating the chef’s Malayalam. We cook Naadan chicken curry ‹ a Masala fish dish and spinach with onion flowers.

Various kitchen hands and dogs join us at different times. At lunch afterwards at a communal table, we eat our produce as monkeys play nearby.

Then we go by train to near Kanam.

Our final destination, Serenity, is a 1920s bungalow-style boutique hotel in Vazhoor, famed as much for great food as its pet elephant, Lakshmi.

On a hilltop with views over the Western Ghats, Serenity has colonial furniture and artefacts and an ayurvedic spa. The cookery demo room is equally elegant ‹ a dining room with gas rings atop its antique table. Our teacher is Rineesh, a fresh-faced young man wearing a tall chef ‘s hat, chef ‘s whites and an apron. It’s all very Swiss, like one of the hotel’s owners.

Before he’s finished teaching us to make local specialities of cashew nut paste and curried fish, we have an electrical blackout (not that uncommon in India) ‹ but somehow he talks and cooks through the dark. Afterwards we devour lemon and lentil soup, curry and stuffed bananas.

But our food odyssey doesn’t end here. Even flying home we eat delicious vegetable curry with warm nan bread. And when we get back, we manage to make our own delicious Indian feast.

There might not be any coconuts in our London garden but at least the children have learned to cook.

DETAILS KERALA

THE TOUR

Scott Dunn has eight nights from £1,957pp full board staying at Ayesha Manzil, Tranquil Plantation and Serenity, including cookery courses, return flights with Kingfisher Airlines and private transfers.

WE’VE walked past tiny hamlets and ancient stone farms, stopping only to drink water from a mountain stream. We strode in dappled sunlight through pine forests, then wandered up a hill, alongside verdant fields and cattle wearing cow-bells.

Now one of the oldest monasteries in the Western world – the imposing Monasterio de Samos – stands resplendent below us in the spectacula Ouribo River valley.

No wonder walking this, the medieval pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, northern Spain, is considered something to experience before you die.

It had never crossed my mind to do it. But then Nancy Durrell McKenna, film-maker and founder of the charity SafeHands for Mothers, asked me to join their six-day, 84-mile sponsored walk – the last leg of the 500-mile ‘French Road’.

Having never walked further than seven miles, it seemed an irresistible challenge. We were a motly group of 19 international ‘pilgrims’, all with our own reasons for walking, but united by charitable worthiness.

Lesley Nelson was a 40-something Aboriginal and maternity health worker taking her first-ever trip outside Australia; Sir Robert Naylor is chief executive of University College London Hospital, usually in charge of seven London hospitals and a budget of £750 million but was now our driver and gofer.

Events organser Michelle Laven had a poignant reason for participating: ‘I want to do something really difficult to alleviate my depression,’ she said. ‘My brother died in December.’ ‘It’s a privilege to follow in the footsteps of St James the Apostle,’ added Irish midwife Sally Griffiths, tears welling in her eyes. ‘I hope to strengthen my faith.’ For me, it had taken seven weeks of traumatic preparation for me to get to this point. I had all the nerdy essentials – from spring-loaded retractable walking poles and water backpack to fashion disaster Gore-Tex tousers (thereby facing the awful prospect that it often pours in northern Spain).

For relief I’d escaped to Sweaty Betty for voguish walking gear – but the shop assistant had suddenly produced a list of anorak pilgrimage must-haves: ‘Duct tape (to cover blisters), Vaseline for preventing chafing…’ With mouting horror, I read about the refugios (hostels) in which pilgrims sleep communally in rooms full of snoring people, if they can even get a bunk, and endure cold showers. Then came Ryanair’s demand for £250 on my excess luggage – so I emptied my suitcase, put on all my clothes at the check-in desk and waddled, Michelin Man-like on to the plane.

The first night we stayed in Casa de Labranza Arza, near Samos, in a 1720s, thick stone-waled farmhouse surrounded by spectacular scenery.

Next morning we started our pilgrimag at Igles de Camino in nearby Triacastela. We stamped our pilgrims’ passports in the church. Two Lithuanian monks wearing habits asked us to join them in prayer. We held hands in a circle, dew on the grass, mist rising. ‘Bless these pilgrims, our walk,’ intoned the monk. ‘Hallelujah.’ Yee ha!

We set off, following the yellow pilgrimage arrows. For more than 1,000 years pilgrims – including Louis VII and St Francis of Assisi – have undertaken the Way to earn forgiveness for their sins. Was I going to have a pilgrimage like the actress Shirley MacLaine famously had, with visions and meetings with angels? Or perhaps the opposite – as satirised in Luis Bunuel’s film The Milky Way – of encountering religious hypocrisy and human cruelty? Over the ensuing days we climbed gently rolling hills, followed tracks between stone fences and passed ancient pilgrims’ hospitals and centuries-old churches. We walked by smallholdings with private chapels, and sprouts and cabbages growing neatly for the family’s thick evening soup (caldo).

One day, in a medieval scene, a pilgrim walked past playing bagpipes, with people following him. My James Bond-style Silva radio pedometer recorded things like: ’27km, 2,016 (calories burned), five hours 48 mins (walking), 36,273 (steps).’ Part of the interest of the journey was meeting other pilgrims. There was Lavinia Scrymgeour, 22, a Scot who’d been walking for five weeks. And Andre Barreiro, 32, a Knight of Malta and son of a retired admiral. He worked in a Knights’ hospital and had walked 1,864 miles from Rome, living on alms.

The Camino (‘Way’) is said to be a journey of the soul. Outwardly, the pilgrim faces the weather and terrain.

The inward journey is about encountering challenges and having the space to discover what’s important in life.

The first ‘test’ of my pilgrimage was living communally. One of my room-mates snored like an erupting volcano.

Still sleepless at 3am, my torch clenched between my teeth like some wannabe Girl Guide, I dragged my mattress into the corridor – only to be woken every 15 minutes by a chiming clock.

As the journey progressed, people became reflective, self-disclosing and authentic.

We were on literally and metaphorically on the walk of life – helping each other face obstacles along the way.

NORMALLY I’m competitive and have to be first – but on the Camino I challenged myself to arrive last every day. I learnt to dally and eat chorizo. When I walked alone, it was harder – just spotting the arrows pointing the Way.

Then I was more aware of minor aches – and just focused on taking one step at a time. (I discovered a team of Aussie midwives were winning by using haemorrhoid cream on their feet…) When we arrived in the splendour of Santiago, I felt both elated and deflated. We were staying in the beutiful San Francisco Hotel Monumento, a lovely old convent with thick stone walls and courtyards. Musicians played schmaltzy Ave Maria in the streets. Pilgrims wer lying on rucksack pillows, sunbathing.

The architecture rivalled Venice. But for the first time in my life it had been the journey, not the destination that mattered.

We reached the great Baroque cathedral, and joined the queue for the tomb of St James. Every pew was full for the daily pilgrims’ mass, wi th people standing and baggage and sticks piled high. I sat on the floor while an enormous silent incense burner was swung spectacularly and dangerously overhead on a massive rope.

As we wandered cheerfully to the pilgrims’ office to get our completion certificates, I surprised myself. I decided which stretch of the Camino I’d walk next…

TO donate to Safe Hands For Mothers, visit njustgiving.com/safehandswalkforlife

WEB WISDOM For more uplifting walking ideas worldwide,go to travelmail.co.uk

NOT heard of Lili TarkowReinisch yet?

Well, you soon will. She’s one of London’s hottest new songwriters.

Her lyrics are being promoted across the Atlantic to Grammy-award winning singers like Carrie Underwood, and to American Idol.

Not bad going, considering Lili is also a full-time psychotherapist, wife, mother of two, Aikido black belt and marathon runner.

And the sole decorator of her Ralph Lauren-meets-Louis-Vuitton-andAndrew-Martin-style apartment.

The entrance hall to her west London home sets the dramatic tone.

A Senegalese burial outfit hangs on the wall and the corridor is flanked with wooden African fertility symbols in museum display cabinets.

There’s an Art Deco ebony console table and, on the floor, zebra skin.

Even the nearby loo has walls of black oak planks that were used underwater as sea defences to stop enemy submarines during the War.

Lili greets me in Chanel, jeans and bling. Her hair is waist-length and her eyelashes almost as long. “Never underestimate the superficial,” she laughs.

Originally from St Louis, she came to England 15 years ago. “I came here to do a Masters in Economics at LSE.

My knowledge of the Maastricht Treaty made me the darling of every party!”

Afterwards, she returned to her private psychotherapy practice.

The apartment in which she now lives with her hedge-fund husband, Mark, and their children is stylish.

“Home” wasn’t always thus.

“When I was 12, my father left us in such penury that my mother had to apply for a special permit for me to work,” she recalls.

“Our neighbourhood was disparagingly dubbed ‘Indian Ghettos’.

“We got food stamps – which the Government give you when you’re really poor.

Our motto at home was, ‘If it ain’t broke, it will be soon’.”

Her “escape” came with a scholarship to Washington University, and she hasn’t stopped working since.

It was with a desire to put all this behind her that she tackled her décor.

The couple bought the flat five years ago: Mark liked it because it didn’t need any refurbishment.

Lili, however, had other ideas – for changing every room!

It took three years to get planning permission to knock down walls.

“For a year we lived with builders to save money.”

The experience was worse for Mark.

“I dusted him every morning before work.

He was initially resistant to the changes, so every time he travelled, I’d take a wall down!

Once, he went to his beloved steam room but it was already in the skip.”

The new look is bold, masculine, aesthetically harmonious and somewhat disturbing.

There are white walls and bleached lime oak floorboards.

“But everything has a dark side.

The flat’s full of creatures that have been captured.

Analyse that,” she says, surveying the sitting room with its reindeer rugs over sofas, old zebra skins and antler candelabra.

“That’s not just a picture of a rodeo,” she says, pointing to a wall-sized photograph.

“It’s a prison rodeo.

A sculpture, Missing Boy 3, by the Korean artist Ki June Park is purposely unsettling.

And Tim Shaw’s ‘Man on Fire’ bronze should make you cry.”

It’s also an oasis of brown, silver and monochrome.

“When the man came to design the fish tank in the TV room, he thought I was joking when I said, ‘Only black and white fish – anything with colour becomes a fish finger’.”

Underlying this order is a sense of hedonism. “There’s a bar you can dance on, and every room’s set up for a party.

A sound system follows you around the flat – anything by Shwayze, Wrapt-Up productions or Lo-Star.”

And there’s a wine fridge in most rooms.

“Yeah, pure class,” she laughs.

The sitting room is where everything happens, from seeing patients to recording music and writing songs (“with Jerry Meehan who tours with Robbie Williams, Ellie Golding who’s always in the papers, And Leo Whiteley, who signs stars for Notting Hill Music.”)

There are tribal artefacts, a yee-hah! Remington cowboy sculpture and vintage Louis Vuitton.

But also a grand piano, lead-lined acoustic floorboards and ceiling. Ceiling-height black oak cupboards conceal the kind of technical gear that warms her “trailer-park heart”. Like much of the furniture, she designed these cupboards.

“If I can’t afford something, I get it copied or hit Lots Road.”

This stylish thrift extends to the children’s rooms, despite their Ralph Lauren sleigh beds.

“There’s not a single thing they couldn’t take to their first flats.”

(The kids are aged eight and 11.)

And what of the master bedroom, an Asian enclave with Tang horses?

“Our heavenly Vi- Spring mattress is the star turn alongside my closet of car-to-bar vertiginous heels and Ruhlmanninspired tallboy.

The photographs of vintage cars are all Portobello Road finds.”

She pauses.

“Much of what’s here only costs a fiver.

But the cheap stuff’s beautifully lit, so looks expensive.”

It’s also a home bursting with love, laughter and style.

Now all she needs is a Grammy in the loo.

HOW TO GET THE LOOK

Lighting: All Square (020 7727 0606, www.allsquaregrp.co.uk) .

Handmade beds: Vi-Spring (01752 366311, www.vispring.co.uk).

Audio: BOSE sound system (0800 1074999, www.bose.co.uk); integrated lighting and music from Lutron Homeworks (020 7702 0657, or visit www.lutron.com); and Redhorn Audio Visual (020 7486 8604/8605, www.redhornav.com).

Kitchen: Gaggenau appliances (0870 840 2003); units by Clive Christian (020 7349 9200, london@clive.com).

Antiques and artifacts: Ralph Lauren (020 7535 4600) for sleigh beds. Henry Gregory Antiques (Portobello Road, 020 7792 9221) for vintage Louis Vuitton. Sebastiano Barbagallo (020 7792 3320) for African art.

Display items: from Striking Displays, Brighton (01273 423623) for Perspex display cases.

Aquarium: designed and supplied by Aquatic Design Centre (020 7636 6388).

ONE woman has thrown away the wheelchair to which she was confined for two years. She suffered from ME (chronic fatigue) for 15 years and now, confounding medical orthodoxy, is symptom-free. Another patient says he endured asthma intermittently for 30 years – and is now cured. Improbably, both say their transformation is down to yoga. They are not alone, because many major health benefits are now being claimed for the discipline.

The number of people practising in Britain has tripled in the past decade and now the first NHS yoga facility in a primary healthcare centre has opened in London’s Kentish Town. “It specialises in yoga for diabetes, back pain and breathing difficulties,” says its founder, biochemist Dr Robin Monro, also founder of the Yoga Biomedical Trust, which runs clinical trials into yoga and offers lessons.

A recent study showed that yoga can significantly lower levels of triglycerides – the fats in your blood which if elevated can lead to heart disease. Another concluded that yoga can increase brain gammaaminobutyric levels, which when lowered are associated with depression, anxiety, epilepsy and even Alzheimer’s. It’s also known to lower blood pressure, cholesterol levels and improve memory, sleep, energy, gastrointestinal function and tolerance to pain. In some instances, chronic pain can be eliminated.

Jo Manuel is a practitioner who helps sufferers of illnesses from muscular dystrophy to Parkinson’s. In 2004, she founded the Special Yoga Centre and launched Yoga for the Special Child, a unique service in Britain for disabled children. For a small, charitable facility in Kensal Rise, it punches way above its weight – Jo’s techniques have been adopted by all New York’s special-needs schools.

It was to the SYC that Samantha Cameron took her and David’s late son, Ivan, who suffered from cerebral palsy and epilepsy. “Sam said yoga helped her son relax and find more peace in his body,” says Jo.

Last month SYC held a charity art auction and raised a whopping £100,000 – with artists from Marc Quinn to Sam Taylor-Wood personally donating works – to fund its work. Television presenter Gaby Roslin said: “I’ve watched Jo working with autistic children. I’m astounded by what she achieves with kids who can’t normally even make eye contact or sit still.”

The centre teaches several forms of yoga, from ashtanga to kundalini, in general classes and has 40 instructors. There are special classes for adults with everything from ME to MS and sessions for pre-natal teenagers. Jo’s speciality, a hathabased practice, is the one she uses to treat 350 special-needs children a week.

Jo believes yoga has a positive effect on even the most serious illnesses. Fiona Agombar, a former high-flying executive and author of Beat Fatigue Through Yoga, is one of the centre’s teachers.

“I had ME for 15 years, I was in hospital for months with appalling fatigue and muscular pain, and in a wheelchair for two years. The medical view is that after five years with ME, you don’t get better,” she says. “With yoga, I’ve become symptom-free. Last year I went trekking in Nepal.”

So can yoga cure any illness? “MS, for example, isn’t going to be stopped by it,” says Jo. “But it can slow the degeneration and help sufferers manage the pain. I also see Down’s children meeting their developmental milestones earlier than those who don’t do yoga.”

Dr Monro believes more investigation is necessary if yoga is to be accepted as a part of everyday healthcare. For Jo, however, success is measured in smaller steps, such as when the mother of one disabled girl who attends SYC told her recently that thanks to Jo’s yoga classes her daughter had slept properly for the first time in nine years.

Special Yoga Centre, The Tay Building, 2A Wrentham Avenue, NW10 (020 8968 1900, www.specialyoga.org.uk). Pamper Evening 26 June, 5pm-10pm, £5 entry fee, treatments from reflexology to Indian head massage. For donations visit www.justgiving.com/syc/donate

Ever since the tornado ripped through Kensal rise, north-west London, two years ago – damaging 150 homes and rendering 50 (including ours) uninhabitable – the area has become well known.

For more than a year, the streets most affected looked like building sites. Yet since disaster struck, the rise and rise of Kensal rise has continued unabated.

Whether it was due to some creative local energy being stirred up by the cyclone, the final “coming” of a formerly up-and-coming area, or prohibitive rents in nearby Notting Hill prompting the relocation of hip shops, much has happened since the storm. The biggest changes have been in Chamberlayne road, now dubbed by vogue magazine as “one of London’s coolest streets”.

For starters, Sally Wilton opened Pinkham Lighthouse, London’s first not-for-profit arthouse digital cinema and community venue, in an edwardian theatre. And Miro Davda opened Miro’s Grocery, London’s first seasonal, locally sourced, organic grocer.

Still on the foodie front, The Diner, with outposts in Shoreditch and Soho, has just arrived, offering well-priced classic American fare (burgers and shakes). And worth the detour for the décor is Paradise by Way of Kensal rise, with live music, poetry readings and ambitious food.

Indeed, Chamberlayne road is now considered the new Portobello, encapsulating the real flavour of the area.

Among other shops there is Howie & Bell for vintage clothes, lampshades and chairs, and Niche, which offers fashionable, shabby-chic French and english stock.

My family and I moved there five years ago from Holland Park, wanting more space for less money. Our house was badly damaged by the 2006 tornado but after a rebuild we have moved back into an area we love. We got 2,100sq ft of victoriana with a 100ft garden for the price of a threebedroom leasehold in the royal Borough.

“Despite the recession, there’s a huge demand and a shortage of property here now,” says Alan Isaacs, director of estate agent Queen’s Park Partnership. “Prices £ 460,000: three- bedroom NW10. Through Marsh & have dropped by about 20 per cent compared with 30 to 35 per cent in many parts of London,” he adds.

The leading Tricycle fringe theatre is close, Queen’s Park is nearby and the swish Notting Hill Harbour Club is but a quick jog away. Plus there are good transport links and a regular farmers’ market.

It has more than its fair share of cool residents. Jade Jagger has a pad in a groovy former telephone exchange, while the singer formerly known as Cat Stevens resides in gated splendour.

Nearby, emma Thompson has a victorian house, so, too, does vogue editor Alexandra Shulman, while Lily Allen lives just moments away.

Many of the area’s former inhabitants, Irish immigrants and Afro-Caribbeans, have moved away as Notting Hillbillies colonised the area, but Kensal rise remains authentic and ethnically mixed. It has a vibe: it is creative, energetic, bookish and home to writers, artists and media folk.

Delicatessens and BBC employees notwithstanding, the area still retains its appealing edginess and alternative flavour.

Alternative? Well, you can probably find more yoga here than in India. Indeed, little beats the Mother Nature Clinic with its world-class massage by Krenoula evripidou.

The Notting Hillified Gorgeous hair salon has relocated from Westbourne Grove and there’s a brocante-cum-tea shop opening soon in “one of the coolest streets in London”.

Factfile

Council tax: London Borough of Brent. Band D, £ 1,343.

Schools: Kensal Rise Primary.

Public transport: Tube stations are Kensal Green Queen’s Park, both on the Bakerloo line. Silverlink rail services from Kensal Rise station to Euston take 15 minutes and go to Richmond and Stratford.

Restaurants: The Diner (020 8968 9033); Paradise by Way of Kensal Rise (020 8969 0098). Delicatessens include Miro’s Grocery (020 8968 2298) and L’Angolo

(020 8969 5757).

Market: a farmers’ market is held every Sunday in Salusbury Road.

SUZY Maas has bought, decorated and resold her homes, five times in six years, to make a handsome profit.

And much of her experience has gone into her house-doctoring company. She knows that certain simple changes do emphatically push up the price you can ask for your home, and that decluttering is more than just cleaning the windows and hanging up your clothes.

“It is worth spending a little money on getting rid of dusty curtains and replacing them with white, light-reflecting blinds, and putting fresh, white grouting into the bathroom tiles. Little things have a huge impact,” Maas says.

She has done it so many times that her contacts book is full of bargain warehouse addresses, wholesale shops and markets, where she picks up the accessories that save busy Londoners a lot of hassle, time and money.

Maas, 30, started the Final Touch, a housedoctor service for people wanting to prepare their home for rental or resale, in 1999. She offers moneysaving tips and is forever bargain hunting for clients. She charges £75 an hour or £475 plus VAT a day for her services.

She trained as an interior decorator and in 1998 went in search of her first home. Maas bought a dark, three-bedroom Battersea flat for £125,000. “It was like a train compartment, with all the rooms running off the corridor. I gutted and renovated it on a shoestring,” she says. She spent £12,000 on improving it and sold it a year later for £175,000.

Next came the three-bedroom house in Clapham that had been rented out for years. “It was damp and smelly. I put in a new bathroom, kitchen and redecorated,” she says. (Purchase price: £141,000. Spent: £22,000. Sold 18 months later for £240,000.) Her subsequent south London property required a loft conversion. “Cosmetic changes included repainting the kitchen units and retiling,” she says. (Profit made 18 months later was £69,000.) Then there was the four-bedroom house in Brixton in 2000. “I knocked through and extended to make one big kitchen, divided the huge bathroom into two – essential in a four bedroom house – and stripped acres of woodwork,” says Maas. (Purchase price: £275,000. Spent: £41,000. Sold 12 months later for £380,000.) She has learnt from her mistakes. “Before making decisions, it’s best to live in the property. I’ve also made the mistake of choosing colours from charts instead of painting samples on the wall. I’ve forgotten to keep fabric and colour references for touching up. I’ve dispensed with an architect after they have submitted drawings, instead of retaining them for spotting problems and dealing with builders’ disputes, which saves money ultimately,” says Maas.

But she has flair, targets her market precisely and has enjoyed a buoyant property market. “It’s getting harder. So many people are doing it that it’s difficult to find a wreck,” she admits.

Her current three-bedroom Victorian home is in Clapham. She lives there with her boyfriend.

“It hadn’t been touched for 20 years. I put in sash windows, rewired, renovated, redecorated, added a bathroom and extended the kitchen with a glass roof to the side return,” she says.

Thriftily, she changed the ancient nylon carpet for an oatmeal wool Berber for just £12.99 a square metre; made her chenille curtains (£5 a metre at Brixton market) in the bedroom, and bought a stylish oak refectory table with eight dining chairs – for £ 2,000 f rom The Collection in Parsons Green.

The cramped, dark kitchen had broken appliances, Seventies pine and severe damp. “It was like a dark tunnel,” she says. Now, measuring 15ft by 30ft, it is a light and contemporary Alternative Plans creation.

It has glossy tusk-coloured Hacker units, chunky brushed-steel handles, lime-white walls, a mushroom limestone floor, durable quartz/ granite work surfaces, a range cooker and modish Bisque floor-level radiators.

The bathrooms are equally stylish. Out went the migraine-inducing wallpaper, handheld plastic shower and rotten timber bath panels. In came fawns, ceramic limestone-effect tiles (£27 a square metre) and a double-ended Bette bath. She built another bathroom with Castle Grey walls, skylights, Bateige grey tiles on the walls (“£34 a square metre”) and a sheet of sturdy glass as a shower wall. Its elegant wall-hung Saneux loo, elongated Plan basin and star-shaped shower came from Bathrooms at Source.

The house is an eclectic mix. “I like modern with old,” Maas says. In the sitting room, the look is traditional. The walls are crisp calico and there is a Sixties American oval glass and perspex table. But there is also an 18th century French commode and a period Venetian mirror.

Similarly, her Dix Blue bedroom has modern nickel pedestal side tables, a funky mirrored fireplace and fauxfur bed throw. But it also has a Chippendale tallboy, Louis XVI armchairs and an ornate bedhead (“a junk shop find”) of mirror, gilt and turquoise-painted wood.

Maas has perhaps inherited her mother’s passion.

When she was a child, her mother relocated annually over six years. “For years we just moved to parallel streets,” she remembers.

Many people find uprooting stressful and hate renovating properties. “Every time I move, I swear it is the last. Then I get bored.” She has lived in her current home since 2002. It must be time to sell? “Oh no,” she exclaims. “I adore this place.” A week later, she calls with a confession: “I’ve just put the house on the market.”

HOW to get the look
The Final Touch, 12 St John’s Hill Grove, SW11 (020 7228 4233; www.thefinaltouch.co.uk).
Dining table and chairs: The Collection, 76 New Kings Road, SW6 (020 7736 1166; www.thecollection.uk.com).
Floor-level radiators: Bisque Radiators, 244 Belsize Road, NW6 (020 7328 2225; www.bisque.co.uk).
Contemporary Boffi and Hacker kitchen: Alternative Plans, 4 Hester Road, SW11 (020 7228 6460; www.alternativeplans.co.uk) and 160 Notting Hill Gate, W11 (020 7243 9747).
Carpet: Carpet Base, 190 Cavendish Road, SW12 (020 8675 2232).
Bathrooms: Bathrooms at Source, 128 Garratt Lane, SW18, (020 8870 0066).
Paint: Farrow & Ball, 249 Fulham Road, SW3 (020 7351 0273).
Bateige tiles: Granite and Marble International, Westminster House, 35 Pensbury Place, SW8 (020 7498 2742).
Limestone-effect tiles: Moores Building Merchants, 35 Bedford Road, SW4 (020 7737 3539).
Where to get paints colour-matched: Handyman’s Corner, 138 Acre Lane, SW2, (020 7733 1149); Homebase; B&Q.
Architect: Martin Reynolds, 14 St John’s Hill Grove, SW11 (020 7223 1420).
Architectural salvage yards: Bacon Street Salvage, 12 Bacon Street, E1 (020 7613 4672); Old Time Architectural Salvage, 217 Blackshaw Road, SW17 (020 8672 7205).
Fabrics: from markets such as Brixton and Southall, and large retailers such as Fabrics Galore, 52-54 Lavender Hill, SW11 (020 7738 9589), Fabrics Direct (0800 975 7296).
Second-hand/antique items: household clearance shops, junk shops or country antiques fairs.
Many large retailers have clearance shops selling discontinued lines and damaged stock: Sofa Workshop, 8 High Street, Ealing Broadway Centre, W5 (020 8579 0693); Ocean Furniture, 2 Trevelyan Road, SW17 (020 8672 2020); some large retailers such as Heal’s often have one-off clearance sales, ask in-store for details.
Furniture warehouses: Comfortably Off, 70a Silverthorne Road, SW8 (020 7622 9393).
Auction rooms: Lots Road Auctions, 71 Lots Road, SW10 (020 7376 6800); Criterion Auctions, 41-47 Chatfield Rd, SW11 (020 7228 5563) and 53-55 Essex Road, Islington, N1 (020 7359 5707).

When her father was taken to hospital last month after a car crash, Caroline Phillips prepared herself for an NHS horror story. What happened was very different.

“The doctors and nurses in intensive care were superb – honest but supportive”

They say you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. Equally, with the NHS, you don’t know what you’ve got until you need it.

On May 9 this year, my 79-year-old father, Ronald, careered off the M4 at over 70mph. He hurtled across three lanes on a busy Friday at 2.30pm, down a verge and hit a tree. Miraculously he missed all the other vehicles around him.

It was an hour before emergency services were able to cut him out of his car; then a helicopter landed by the motorway and airlifted him to Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital. I only heard about it at 4pm. “Dad’s been in a major car crash,” sobbed my younger brother, Simon. “He’s got serious head and leg injuries …”

In the emergency room, we found our father: a frozen lump with a face the size of two footballs. He was on a ventilator, sprouting wires, bags and drips and tethered to monitors. He’d sustained fractures to his pelvis and one foot, a deep ankle wound and fractures to 10 ribs and his sternum – giving him a life-threatening flail chest [where the rib cage compresses, rather than expands, on breathing]. We were told he might also have had a heart attack, plus brain and internal organ damage.

“There’s only so much we can do,” warned the anaesthetist. “We’ll try to get him to breathe on his own later – but he has to want to help us.”

I’ve had a complex relationship with my father, a sometimes tricky, adorably eccentric and essentially kind family man. Now he was dying, with so much left unsaid. “You can talk to him,” said a nurse, sympathetically. “We think hearing is the last thing to go.” I whispered thanks to him for looking after me since I was 13 when my mother bolted; for my great education; and for being an incredible grandfather. I told him that I loved him. I begged him to live.

But standing amid the artificially ventilated bodies with my anguished half-sister, Dara, I was terrified – my fears fuelled by all the scare stories I’d read about the NHS. Weren’t these doctors exhausted and incompetent? Wasn’t Dad destined for a hospital-acquired infection? At his age, wouldn’t our father be a low priority? Wouldn’t these medics just leave him to die? Frantically, I phoned consultant friends in London, trying to engineer the best possible care.

Yet, while I panicked over the state of the health service, the John Radcliffe’s staff worked with professionalism and dedication. We were kept constantly informed. A doctor phoned and briefed my consultant friend so that I could discuss the prognosis with someone I trusted; the anaesthetist urged our family to eat: “You’ve got a long night ahead of you.”

At midnight, Dad went into theatre. I prayed that my elder brother, David, flying from New York, would see him alive.

By 2.30am our father was in intensive care (ICU), off his ventilator – to the astonishment of doctors – conversing intelligently and joking. It was a miracle. And surreal. He had, according to doctors, defied all odds by surviving. The nurse showed me a Polaroid of his car, a Toyota. It looked like a foil wrapper crunched in the fist of a giant. He had only been saved by his airbag.

He stayed in ICU for a week. For four days, Dara slept in the relatives’ waiting room. My father’s condition remained critical, his breathing difficult, his heart irregular. There was the possibility he would contract pneumonia. Then he would have died. “It’s far harder being a relative than a patient in ICU,” remembered David, who had experienced intensive care after a spinal operation.

For 17 consecutive days, I drove the round trip from London. (In order to fit everything in, Simon would get to his desk in the antiques gallery founded by our father, at 5am.) It was physically and psychologically exhausting. Illness aside, Dad’s occasional morphine-induced confusion was frightening. “Did you put my V&A invitation in the orange juice?” he asked. Another time he smiled: “I’m on a boat.” (He’d been on a bedpan.) With the stress, my hair started to fall out in clumps; when I told Dara she said the same had happened to her.

We became part of a hidden community, patients’ relatives riding a terrifying roller-coaster. The young woman, careworn after three days of waiting to see if her sister was brain-damaged. The Lancashire couple, living in their mobile home in the car park, and despairing for their son whose pancreatic operation had left him on life support. “You don’t expect people to get infections in hospital,” said his father, tears welling in his eyes.

But, despite all my preconceptions, the nurses and doctors in ICU offered superlative medical care. They were also psychologically astute, honest but supportive. They always went the extra mile. One day, attaching an oxygen supply and face mask, they put our father in a wheelchair to enjoy the sun on the terrace. A nurse also put up with our touching belief in alternative therapies – decrying it as anecdotal, while authorising our use of Bach Rescue Remedy.

It was a tough decision whether to take our children, aged 12 and 10, to visit their grandfather at a unit where one woman wailed as if in permanent labour and many patients were wearing contraptions (metal halos) on their heads that looked better suited to a carpenter’s bench than a hospital. But the girls, distressed at not seeing him, wanted to go. Sensitively, nurses shielded them from the brutal sights by pulling the curtains around patients’ beds.

The demands on us as a family have been high. We’ve divided our father’s affairs among ourselves – as if dealing with a death but without the funeral arrangements. Paying bills, sorting insurance, cancelling appointments, arranging visitors, researching future medical care, taking him food and tending his dog, Pingu, who’d been in the accident with him and had a ruptured spleen. (A witness whisked him to the vet’s where, unbelievably, they performed an emergency splenectomy. Pingu is 14 – 98 years old in human terms – but his old age did not preclude treatment either.)

And as we faced the possibility of parental abandonment, rivalry, stresses and strains came to the fore. “It’s a myth that dysfunctional families suddenly pull together in a time of crisis,” said one friend, a family therapist. Instead, events have highlighted our family’s maladjustments. Perhaps a positive way to look at it is that we’ve had a dress rehearsal for a parent dying and can make changes before the final curtain.

Our father remained for two weeks in the trauma ward, one of the best in the country, where overstretched staff are as attentive as possible, efficient and reassuring. His private health insurance policy with Saga Health Plan proved to be a saga: he’d paid thousands, but at a lower premium because of agreeing to accept NHS care if the state could treat him within four weeks – thereby effectively nullifying his access to private healthcare for this condition. So he had to wait to be “repatriated” (as medics dub moving a patient to their local hospital) to Chelsea and Westminster on the NHS, as there wasn’t a bed for two weeks.

Meanwhile I’m counting my blessings. Sixty years since it began, we’ve experienced the NHS at its best. And this episode has enriched my relationship with my father. There’s the chance to love him for longer. His dog visited him yesterday: one patient hobbling on four legs, the other unable yet to stand unaided on two. Above all, staff at the John Radcliffe deserve nothing but praise. So, too, our father who, thanks to the NHS, has foiled the Grim Reaper this time.

As Europe’s largest arts festival draws to a close, Caroline Phillips braves the mud and rain to rub shoulders with the clever, the famous and the passionate

‘Bill Clinton said Hay is like Woodstock of the mind’

The venue for drinks with the “man who used to be the next president” is Top Secret – for security reasons. Guests are to be taken (blindfolded?) by bus to an unknown destination. Given directions just minutes before it starts, I go by car. It’s easy to find. Outside the “secret” location flies a state-sized American flag and security men stand ready to prevent, er, blood and gore.

Al Gore, the former US vice-president and self-dubbed “recovering politician”, is on the lawn outside the Penrhos Court Hotel, an organic establishment where they serve nettle soup. He’s hotfooted it here from Cannes where his documentary about climate change, An Inconvenient Truth, was showing. Now he’s come to persuade audiences at the Hay Festival – Europe’s largest arts festival – of the dire consequences of global warming.

He could also be a presidential contender for 2008, despite assurances that he’s a “recovering politician”. “Are you planning a relapse?” I inquire. He grips his champagne glass tightly and then breaks into a smile. “Very unlikely,” he replies.

Gore is a large man – six foot three-ish with a girth to match – and sports a black suit and cowboy boots. “Cowboy boots!” I point rudely but as he and I are both Hay virgins, I feel we’re kindred spirits.

“I came prepared,” he responds. “Bill [Clinton] said the Hay Festival is like the Woodstock of the mind. There was a lot of mud at Woodstock.”

The festival, brainchild of the energetic and clever Peter Florence, artistic director, started in 1987 with 15 speakers meeting for a weekend in the tiny Brecon Beacons village. Now it attracts megawatt guests – aside from Clinton, Paul McCartney, Susan Sontag, John Updike and Donna Tartt have all been lured here. (When the late Arthur Miller was invited to talk, the response came: “Is Hay-on-Wye a sandwich?”) It is now a scorchingly hot social event – a sort of Serpentine Gallery summer party in Wales.

My first discovery about Hay is that it takes 700 hours to get there in half-term holiday traffic. Some put the time to good use: Bloomsbury editor Bill Swainson bought the UK rights to Gore’s latest book by Blackberry while sitting in a layby.

I was unprepared for the sheer scale of Hay, a Glastonbury for colour supplement readers. Two years ago, the festival moved from the village to a vast tented metropolis in a field. This year, there were more than 80,000 visitors and nearly 400 events with guests including Seamus Heaney, Simon Callow, Zadie Smith and Sebastian Faulks. Virtually everything sold out.

One rule of Hay is that it always rains. There’s a tractor to help vehicles out of the paddy fields. On site, even the Guardian came with a pac-a-mac, which pre-empted jokes about wet liberals. If there are any inaccuracies in this article, it’s because most of my scribblings were washed away. “Being in the mud and rain brings out the best in Brits,” Margaret Atwood told me. At least, I think that’s what my notes say.

Mostly, the weather dictates the dress code. Anoraks and boots. Boots and anoraks. Literary agent Caroline Michel went a little further in waisted lime-green coat dress and, minutes later, a pale silver outfit with heels as high as the Brecon Hills.

Meanwhile, Tanny Gordon, wife of John (he’s the grand fromage of achingly fashionable Intelligence Squared, which runs university-style debates for London’s chattering classes) stepped into the mud in satin Marni pumps. The couple were accosted every step of their regal way with offers to speak in John’s debates.

Hay is a melting pot for political, socio, economic, arty and literary ideas, and its audiences are super-informed. Scary. David Hare gave a stimulating talk on theatre and politics while a few muddy steps away abstract painter Howard Hodgkin “talked” to Simon Schama. Hodgkin answered in monosyllables. Antony Gormley stayed for two minutes then joined the throngs walking out.

In another tent, professional contrarian Christopher Hitchens was in mid-brilliant discourse on Thomas Paine and the rights of man when someone’s mobile rang. “Who the f— is that?” he asked the thousand-plus audience. “We know where you live. We know where your children go to school.” Then he lit another cigarette, drank yet more whisky and donned sunglasses. The line worked less well in his afternoon gig. Ring, ring. “We know where you go to school,” said Hitch, staring unsteadily at the offender.

This ideas fest was punctuated with a visit to Giffords Circus, a psychedelic, bohemian annual spectacular. Even the audience was surreal. Paul Rusesabagina, the hotel manager whose experience of genocide was powerfully told in Hotel Rwanda, sat beside Joanna Trollope and Sheila Hancock. Germaine Greer arrived late, with steam coming out of her ears.

Channel 4 held its elegant party in the grounds of Hay Castle. Security was tight because Gore was on the guest list. But the circus troupe crashed it disguised as “distinguished authors” – all elected to come either as Rosie Boycott or Atwood. Inside, there was a buzz about Nick Broomfield’s Ghosts, a film inspired by the Morecambe Bay cockle-pickers’ drownings.

I’m very glad I lost my virginity. Just like Gore, I can envisage a comeback.

When Christian Constantine was born, the doctors at London’s Portland hospital had never seen such severe cranio-facial deformities. They didn’t, and still don’t, have a name for his condition, but he is believed to be one of four people in the world with a combination of so many rare and serious defects. At 23, he has endured more than 35 operations, including highly risky major reconstructive ones. He has also faced the possibility of blindness, had his kidneys operated on, gone deaf in one ear and suffered life-threatening illnesses such as meningitis and hydrocephalus (fluid on the brain that causes compression).

Yet Christian’s is a story of hope, determination and extreme bravery, which he has chronicled in a memoir for which literary agents Curtis Brown are seeking a publisher. We meet in the central London apartment belonging to Christian’s mother, Mina, and father, Adam, a company director; who are both Greek but were raised in London. With his scarred forehead, slightly drooping right eyelid and somewhat distended cheek, Christian is now taken by most people for an accident victim rather than someone born with a rare combination of disabilities. He talks from the back of his throat, with a nasal tone: speech that, owing to therapy, is vastly improved since he was at nursery, when only his family understood him. (“At the time, I thought that was normal,” he says later.)

Mina, 52, offers me biscuits, chocolate, fruit and tea. “I didn’t know anything was wrong until Christian was born and I saw my doctor’s eyes,” she says. “Then they put me to sleep again immediately. I didn’t see him for three days. Not until the nurses said, ‘First we’re going to show a Polaroid picture of baby to mummy.’ That’s when I insisted on actually seeing him. He was very wrong-looking indeed. But I felt love at first sight.”

The doctors were mystified. The bones of Christian’s face had stopped forming prematurely, he had hypertiliorism, which meant that his eyes were too far apart and his eyebrows abnormally high, and a severe cleft lip and palate, leaving the roof of his mouth open and the top gum exposed. (“That thing protruding from my lip is the roof of my mouth, I think,” says Christian later, showing me photographs, including one of his mother holding him adoringly, and another of him aged three and wearing a bow tie with his father.) “They didn’t even know whether he was going to live,” says Mina, who had him baptised in intensive care when he was three days old.

At the time, the doctors were particularly concerned that the frontal lobe of his brain had been damaged by the cleft, which went up to his forehead. “They mentioned putting him in a home and also said, ‘If he gets ill, we won’t try hard to save him, all right?'” says Mina. “I said, ‘I agree.’ That’s the only time I ever felt that, when I thought he might be brain-damaged and not have a quality of life. Happily, he was fine. He had his first operation at six weeks, to repair his cleft lip. But nobody had any idea that we’d still be operating nearly 24 years later.”

In the intervening years – from Chicago to Houston, London, Paris and Los Angeles – Christian has undergone a series of radical procedures (including moving his eyes and building a nose) as well as operations to create eyelids, to put bone grafts in his mouth to support teeth implants and to prevent urinary reflux (when urine flows back to the kidneys). In 1985, he had surgery at Great Ormond Street to correct his compressed head bones – his brain was growing faster than his skull would allow. Surgeons opened his head from ear-to-ear to release the bones. Shortly afterwards Christian got meningitis and hydrocephalus.

In 1993, Paul Tessier, the “grandfather” of cranio-facial surgery, performed a massive procedure on him in Paris to bring his eyes closer together and lower his eyebrows. Before the operation, Adam overheard Tessier saying to his anaesthetist in French, “We’re entering a patch of fog without a compass.”

“They had to remove the entire bone from my face and reshape it and my brain was ‘shrunk’ to allow more room for the surgeons to work,” says Christian, straightforwardly. “Blindness was a risk, as was exposing my brain after meningitis.” Afterwards, he threw up a lot of blood. “Obviously, I couldn’t see anything because my eyes were stitched together.”

Was this his lowest point? “I’ve often woken up and thought, ‘This is physically unbearable,'” he says. “When I was 19, they had to correct a forehead defect by applying pressure to it. The only way to do this was to staple a bandage onto my head. To remove it, they had to yank it out. Excruciating.” Once he had tissue expanders (which are similar to balloons) placed inside his head and then inflated with water to stretch the tight, scarred skin. “They put water through a needle into a tube inside my head and then the expander got bigger and bigger under the skin. It was agony.” Another time, when the upper lip was being improved, his lips were sewn together for two weeks.

Despite all this, he recalls junior school as a “happy” time. “He was so cute and outgoing when he was little,” remembers Christian’s 21-year-old sister, Isabella. Aged 12, Christian played the lead part in the school play, and loved it. “I was dressed as a woman in a bright red wig and skirt,” he says. And what of unwanted attention? When he was nine, he tells me, the children at a party ran up laughing, “Look at his face, he’s an alien.” Another time a boy taunted, “That must be a mask you’re wearing.” “Once,” says Christian, “somebody was staring so much that he tripped and fell over in the street.”

“His being stared at was the worst thing for me, more upsetting even than sitting in hospital waiting rooms,” says Mina. “It doesn’t matter how educated people are, they can be awful.” In the street, his parents and sister would stand in front of Christian to block him from view. “I’d talk loudly to him,” says Mina, “so people would know that just because he didn’t look right didn’t mean that he couldn’t understand what they were saying about him.” At first, Christian wasn’t aware of the attention. “When I was young, it didn’t affect me that much because being stared at was all I knew,” he says. “But once I got into my teens and went to secondary school, it was terrible.”

Schoolwork was hard because he was off sick so much, sometimes for more than a term at a time. (He scraped through his GCSEs, but failed his A-levels.) And once his adolescent peers started partying and chasing girls, Christian withdrew into himself. His problems were exacerbated by his stunted growth. Aged 13, he wasn’t even 5ft (he’s now 5ft 7in). “By 15,” he says quietly, “I’d lost my confidence. I hated my looks, felt deserted by my friends and avoided social activities.”

He developed feelings for a fellow student. Did he tell her? “Of course not,” he smiles.

“I used to tell myself, ‘Who’d go out with someone as bad-looking as me?’ Then one day some boys started jeering, ‘Who do you think you are? The way you look, you don’t have a hope of

getting a girlfriend, ever.'” He looks down momentarily. “If I saw them today, I’d break their legs.” Did his parents consider therapy for him? “I didn’t tell them what was going on.” Mina nods. “I only heard about a lot of this recently. But anyway there weren’t

support groups that I knew of,” she says, “and he didn’t ever want to be grouped with people just because of having deformities.”

When he was 16, his closest friend since childhood, George, died. “That hit him really badly,” says Mina. “Not least because it shook his faith in medicine. Until then he’d always thought doctors could fix anything.” He started skipping school to drink beer at 11am. “At night, I’d wait until my parents were asleep, then drink a bottle of wine,” Christian says. Depression took hold and he’d sit listlessly in the waiting room on the floor where George’s bedroom had been in the Royal Free Hospital. “I’d go there after midnight and sit there for hours just looking straight ahead.”

“I knew he was devastated about George, all his friends were, but I didn’t realise anything else was going on,” says Mina sadly. “He hid it so well from us.” At his GP’s suggestion, Christian had counselling in 2001. “It wasn’t much help but I never wanted psychiatric care,” he says. “I’m not very open. I don’t talk about my problems.”

His difficulties came to a head when he was studying shipping at Southampton University in 2004. “I’d thought everything would be different there,” says Christian, who took a year out in 2005 to have an operation to lower his eyebrows and hairline. “But after a few weeks, I’d hardly talked to anyone. I’d just go to lectures, then back to my room. I was drinking to escape my problems. I didn’t even dare go to the common room. But I told mum and everyone that I was loving it.”

One evening in October 2004, he walked back from a bar resolved to take his life. Back in his room, he grabbed 20 Panadol Extra. “I didn’t even know if it would be enough to kill me,” he says. “But it wasn’t really a suicide attempt. I didn’t even try.” It was seeing a photograph of his family that stopped him. “That brought me to my senses. Whatever I’d been through, they’d suffered too.” He was hysterical when he rang his Uncle Basil, who calmed him down. “It’s the first I’ve heard of a suicide,” says Mina, with surprising calm. “I think he’s shielded me from lots of things.”

Unsurprisingly, the impact of his disabilities on the family has been great. “I adore him now,” says Isabella. “But for obvious reasons he got most of the attention when we were children. I was very jealous.” Often when the family went to operations, Isabella had to stay with relations.

Adam and Mina’s stable 26-year marriage has inevitably suffered. After giving birth to Isabella in 1987, Mina terminated two further pregnancies for foetal abnormalities similar to Christian’s. In 1988, after her first termination, at 22 weeks, Adam walked out. “Only for a few weeks,” says Mina. “We both wanted another child and were coping with Christian, but another abnormal baby was too much to bear.” She pauses. “I also had a sort of breakdown after my second termination. Things got progressively worse and culminated, finally, in a nasty bout of pneumonia, for which I was hospitalised. I’m sure it was psychosomatic. I always felt that I didn’t have anywhere to go and cry.”

The high financial cost of Christian’s treatment is also clear. Their health insurers, PPP, underwrote most of the early procedures that were carried out in the UK, but the Constantines have had to pay for other operations, plus their worldwide travel and hotel expenses. “We had to. They just wouldn’t have been able to do things like the nasal reconstruction and lowering his eyebrows here,” explains Mina. “They made sacrifices,” adds Christian simply. “But they were always clear that they’d do whatever was best for me, whatever it took. And, frankly, plastic surgeons are light years ahead in the US.”

Christian’s immediate family has been ceaselessly supportive and protective of him. “I think I helped him psychologically with my positivity,” says Mina, who has dedicated her life to making things better for him. “I also taught him to be a bit arrogant, as a defence and protection.” Isabella says she still “babies” her brother and always keeps her eyes and ears open for him, “although he’s more than capable of doing anything himself”. Meanwhile Adam has worked tirelessly, researching the best doctors, paying for and attending operations. (“Adam is intensely private,” adds Mina, “but he’s had his dark moments. Once they stuck a massive skin graft on Christian’s face and it looked like a croissant under his nose. I think that’s when Adam wanted to pitch himself out of the 46th floor of our hotel.”)

Christian also has a close extended family (he has 20 first cousins). “He was treated as normal by them,” says Mina. Many would fly to lend support at operations. (The Constantines travelled 14 times to Chicago in two years, and spent two months in LA at a stretch, for operations.) “Adam’s siblings, their partners, my in-laws, my mum and granny, about 20 of us, went to Paris for Christian’s operation in 1993,” says Mina. “I’ve only ever attended minor operations alone.”

The doctors still have no idea why Christian’s problems occurred. Last year the Constantines saw geneticist Prof Raoul Hennekam at Great Ormond Street. “He’s still researching,” explains Christian. “He says there are only four similar cases in the world.” If the defects appeared in Christian’s children, what would he do? “I’d want to terminate,” he says. “I don’t want to sound arrogant, but I can’t imagine anyone else surviving what I’ve been through. I couldn’t let my child go through what I’ve suffered.”

There’s a sense, however, that Christian is coming to accept his lot. Step by step, he’s confronting his problems. He feels he has his drinking more under control. “Sometimes I don’t drink for a week,” he says. “If I drink, I can’t stop. So I have to be careful. I’ve thought of trying AA. I think I’m doing it now because I’m addicted to alcohol rather than to escape problems.”

“He seems to have come to terms with things more,” confirms Mina. His appearance and self-esteem have improved radically. Now, in the rare event that someone stares, he stares right back. He has also made good friends at university. “Not just relations and Greeks!” he laughs. He’s finishing university this year. “For a change, it looks as if I’ll pass my exams.” After graduation, he’s thinking of living in New York. And he hopes one day to marry and have children.

Importantly, his major surgery is now over. “I may do a few more cosmetic things and have an operation to improve my speech.” He pauses. “Some people think I’m obsessed with looking perfect. But if anyone told me I couldn’t ever have another operation, I wouldn’t be terribly upset.” Really? “Honestly. It’s taken me a long time. But now I really do feel that it’s what’s on the inside that counts.” Which is someone funny, energetic and resourceful. And, of course, incredibly brave.*

*Some names have been changed.

THE MOST important beauty issue for women approaching 40 is how to reverse the ageing process. Increasing numbers of Londoners are opting for surgery to banish wrinkles and sagging skin but there are less drastic options if you want to look 10 years younger.

The natural path involves using creams and trying holistic health treatments to improve the appearance of skin. Or there is the scientific approach ‹ cuttingedge anti-ageing technology such as oxygen treatments and chemical peels.

So is natural or hi-tech more effective? We asked Liz Hoggard and Caroline Phillips to try the latest rejuvenation treatments and report on the results.

NATURAL ANTI-AGEING PROGRAMME, NEAL’S YARD

The problem: It was being photographed in direct sunlight at 8am that did it.

Last summer I did a shoot outdoors for this newspaper and the results were terrifying. For years I had battled oily, teenage skin but now suddenly I had the ravaged complexion of Rider Haggard’s She. I knew I’d been overdoing the fun but I hadn’t realised quite how washed out I looked.

What is it? Neal’s Yard tailor-made me a six-week anti-ageing programme, based around its holistic treatments and remedies. Aimed at the more “mature” woman (euphemism for anyone who feels their skin may be losing its bloom and needs to shed a few pounds), the programme sets out to boost your energy and vitality over six weeks using herbal remedies, essential oils and other therapies, thereby rejuvenating skin and perking up sagging muscle systems. In short: no Botox, no bullying.

Who does it? Initially I went for a consultation with homeopath Susan Curtis, director of medicines at Neal’s Yard. She quickly identified that I have quite a bonkers lifestyle, which was probably contributing to signs of ageing, so it was a question of making subtle changes that I could manage.

This meant dropping the quick fixes ‹ caffeine, alcohol, tobacco ‹ which rob your body of key stress-busting nutrients ‹ stress is a key factor in the ageing process.

She also gave me practical advice on everything from diet (cut out soya to avoid bloating) and joints (take up yoga) to eyesight (eating blueberries offers major benefits in preventing and treating eye disorders).

The treatment: I had a detox aromatherapy massage, where essential oils are applied to your skin to alleviate stress and eliminate toxins. Emma the therapist spent time finding out my mood and background, before making up a blend of neroli (to soothe), cardamom (to comfort) and mandarin (to refresh).

On my second visit, she did a facial diagnosis to check for any signs of inner health problems, then applied Palmarosa Purifying Mask to my oily T-Zone and White Tea Enriching Facial Mask on cheeks and forehead (to counteract the crumbly effect spotted in the photos). For daytime she recommended using Orange Flower Facial Oil, which reduces fine lines and balances moisture levels.

Both treatments leave you feeling fantastic. But learning to relax was trickier. Emma teased that just as she was still saying, “So if you’d like to get up slowly,” I was already upright in my shoes, raring to get out the door.

Does it work? Being listened to and pampered is incredibly good for you. And Neal’s Yard has just the right combination of tact and insight. When women spend a terrifying £539 million a year going under the knife, it seems a far more humane alternative. No, of course I haven’t done the yoga. But I am trying to relax and burning organic essential oils at night.

But the real find is the Organic Beauty Oil (£8.95 for 200ml), which you take internally as a supplement.

A cold-pressed oil made from flax, hemp, pumpkin, avocado and evening primrose oil, it is the most disgusting thing I have ever tasted, but my skin seems clearer and less sensitive after a month. Hardcore fans suggest you sprinkle it as a salad dressing if you really can’t bear the taste.

Neal’s Yard Remedies, Covent Garden, Blackheath, Richmond and Foubert’s Place (www.neals yardremedies.com; 0845 262 3145).

£65 for an hour’s holistic massage including consultation; £50 for an aromatherapy massage; £160 for a tailored anti-ageing package.

LH

CARBOXY THERAPY (CO) AND THE ULTIMATE FACE LIFT LASER TREATMENT

The problem: I wanted a face that looks 10 years younger than its 48 years. I’d always believed laughter to be the best medicine but that’s left me with unamusing crevices beside my lips. My brow looks like the “before” ad for Botox. And too many summer holidays have left me with sun spots.

What is it? Two treatments that require a degree in rocket science to understand. Carboxy Therapy (CO2) and the Ultimate Face Lift laser treatment (UFL).

Claiming to be the biggest breakthrough in beauty therapy since Botox, CO2 is said to eliminate cellulite, stretch marks, fat, psoriasis and scars and fight age, by rejuvenating wrinkly, loose skin. In the US, predictably, they’re even testing it to remedy impotence.

And the UFL? It helps reduce thread veins, sun spots, laughter lines, open pores, sagging jowls, wrinkles, zits and eye bags – stimulating elastin and collagen and plumping up the skin.

Both treatments act on the collagen and the tissue beneath the skin’s surface ‹ in effect giving a face lift but rejuvenating the skin at the same time.

In CO2, natural gas is administered ‹ great for those scared of Botox.

Who does it: Parisian Dr Daniel Sister, a man with a French accent and Dolce & Gabbana suit. The first doctor to practise Carboxy Therapy (CO2) in the UK and a grand fromage in “the happiness business”.

The treatment: “Ha! You’re having the needle today,” laughs Dr Sister, after gleefully showing me photos of clients’ faces and chicken-wing upper arms that he has turned into spring-chicken ones with his magical needles. I’m a wimp so I’ve opted for carbon dioxide (invisible and odorless gas that’s in the air) being injected subcutaneously into my face with a weeny needle ‹ the latest weapon of Hollywood A-listers.

The gas apparently improves blood flow, bringing a rush of oxygen, helping the body’s drainage system, promoting the renewal of elastin fibres and collagen and mechanically breaking down fat cells.

The doctor sticks 10 needles into my face in as many minutes. These injections sting, like mosquito bites.

Then gas bubbles through my skin which the good doctor massages to distribute the gas. I have five sessions of CO2 (twice weekly) for 15 minutes.

Sometimes I end up with tiny bruises on my jaw, as if my children have pinched me.

This gentle torture is combined with four 90-minute monthly sessions of UFL. This involves three different types of laser therapy for different layers of the skin. With the Aurora part of the treatment, which reduces surface blemishes, a headpiece is pressed against my face for 20 minutes. It throws out a flash of red light and heat, and feels like a slight electric shock or being pricked with hot needles.

In Act II, the ReFirme part of the treatment, RF (Radio Frequency) and IR (infrared) heat the dermal tissue to 55 degrees to stimulate collagen production and tighten the skin. Next anaesthetic cream is smeared on my skin and I walk up the corridor for Polaris treatment with Dr Sister. This uses a RF laser light which works even deeper into the dermis to stimulate more collagen and “rub out” my remaining wrinkles.

Does it work? Brilliantly. Although it takes seven hours 15 minutes (less than the average working day) in total, results are seen almost immediately.

My skin looks brighter, fresher, smoother, firmer and younger.

Forty-two years old, perhaps. My nineyear-old scrutinises my face and, unprompted, tells me my “wrigglies” (wrinkles) are disappearing. But my husband still hasn’t noticed.

Notting Hill’s BeautyWorksWest (www.beautyworkswest.com; 020 7221 2248). Five x CO2 at £100 per session, four x UFL at £450 per session, grand total: £2,300. Top-up is recommended after six months.