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Our neighbour is still in Intensive Care but is holding his own and making progress, so I am feeling a lot more upbeat and hopeful. Yesterday, we visited my old friend and work colleague, B, and had lunch outdoors, somewhat battered by the breeze which whipped lettuce leaves off the table. Compared to today, though, that was merely a whisper of a wind. Today we have a screamer!

B is an 'Arsenal landlady', i.e. she is 'in loco parentis' to the club's teenage signings who come from all over the world. She has two at a time and yesterday bid a tearful farewell to one, who was going off to play for Yeovil, presumably on loan from Arsenal. He was a drop dead gorgeous lad and I can envisage his poster on the walls of thousands of young female fans - probably quite a few old ones, too!!!

Tomorrow lunchtime, though I have a load of work on, I am going off to meet Chinese and Malaysian friends in Bayswater for dim sum. You never know what is in those sticky, gooey parcels of pasta and batter and it always gives me indigestion, but I have wanted to introduce t's them to each other for ages, so it will be worth a Zantac or two if they find they have loads in common.

The fox is now visiting up to three times a day, begging for food to feed her growing family. So far today she has had an egg, a chunk of time-expired parmesan cheese, five broken biscuits and a large handful of doggy treats. Tonight she will probably get the chicken carcase. If it were down to me, I'd keep it to make soup with, but Mr G always slings it out before I get a chance to lay claim to it. I don't think chicken soup figures very highly on his list of delicious foods. He's a steak and chips man and the only soup I have ever seen him eat is Heinz lentil soup. In fact, the only vegetables I have ever seen him eat are broccoli and cauliflower (only frozen will do) and lentils in soup.

I've had other boyfriends who have also eaten a very restricted diet. What is it about these men? Could it be that they got used to the very few dishes their mothers could cook? I like to experiment when I'm cooking. Try new dishes and ingredients, throw fruit into curries, make soups featuring beetroot, or squash, but he won't even try them. This is why I have given up and sit meekly back while he does all the cooking (I must say he's very good at what he does and never suffers from inattention and burns the fish fingers, like I do!).

We give each other one day a week to do our own thing, and that's when my cookbooks come out. I may treat myself to Gwyneth Paltrow's new recipe book. I shall be flat-sitting for a friend from Highgate next month while she is at her son's wedding in Barcelona, so I can experiment to my heart's content and may even throw a dinner party, something I haven't been able to do for at least five years. That is, if my reputation hasn't preceded me and she bans me from doing anything more than boiling an egg: dry!