The sun is out, it’s warm but not too hot because there is a fresh breeze and the air is soft and delightful. We’ve come home from shopping early and our present guests (number two daughter and boyfriend) are out for the day on Exeter canal (possibly kayaking), so do I (1) Sit in my hot studio, open the windows and doors, and spend an hour writing a great story on my blog, (2) Take advantage of a Saturday afternoon with no children or visitors and make passionate love for two hours (like in the olden days), or (3) Change into my bikini, cover myself with sun-cream, factor 30, and catch up on some sleep on the sun-lounger?

I’m not saying but any moment now I shall be high-tailing it out of this hot studio. I went to bed rather late last night and I didn’t sleep for ages because of over-tiredness…

Whatever you’re doing, whatever your choices may be, I hope you all have a lovely afternoon.

“To say hello from an old friend”  – that was the heading of the email awaiting me in my e-mailbox this morning. “How intriguing,” I thought. “How fascinating and exciting…” I gushed to myself. “Who is it from?” I wondered. The sender’s name (a man, naturally) rang a bell…”Of course, Ian”, Gorgeous Ian, the swimmer and beachboy I used to know. I haven’t seen Ian for over 17 years – since before I was married. How did he get my email address? I don’t know. Do they give them out over the Internet? Was it even the same Ian? It had to be. It was! He wrote…

Hello Sally
I was looking on the net for “artist” and you came up, good to see again. So you are still painting, that’s good to see… and living in Dawlish.
I am still doing some painting in Acrylic & watercolours. Are you on Facebook? I am.
Love from a old friend,

Ian ……. x

Wasn’t that nice? Needless to say, we are now “old friends” on Facebook and I’ve quickly caught up with what has been happening to Ian in the intervening years. I’ve seen his photos. He’s still handsome, if a little greyer than when I last saw him, and very fit and sporty, by the looks of it. There was even a photo of Ian taken before we first met on Dawlish beach (I remember he wore an Australian t-shirt and he was brown and hunky). I saw photos of his friends and present girlfriend (not married then).

I rather dread what Ian will think if/when he looks at my Facebook photos because my nieces and nephews are apt to put vile photos of me on Facebook and I don’t know how to get rid of them! Thank goodness I’m already married and don’t have suitors trawling through those nasty Facebook photos. On a whole, I’d prefer that he went to my blog where all photographs are carefully selected by me. But if he reads my blog…

Dearest Ian, if you should find your way to my blog and read this, I hope you don’t mind that I’ve shared your private email with my huge readership – I just couldn’t resist. By the way, I’m not nearly as ugly as those photographs on Facebook suggest!

Hooray! The grey skies have disappeared and the sun is shining. Somehow I just don’t feel the real me on miserable grey days even when it isn’t cold. My happiness seems to depend on sunshine… and real food. By real food, I mean nice food with calories, as you probably guessed.

The Dukan Diet (my saviour) is most effective but impossible to stick to for long periods. The last week has been difficult, dull and boring – foodwise (I never let myself get bored in other ways). One of my good friends, who knows me exceedingly well, showed great surprise and almost disbelief when I let it slip in an email that I was off my food and had hardly eaten anything in the last few days (well, it’s all relative- isn’t it?). Chris and I had decided to be ultra strict with ourselves when we went shopping last Saturday. No bread, potatoes, biscuits, crisps, chocolate or anything really nice; in fact, we didn’t get much shopping at all owing to my suggestion that we should eat salads and whatever it was that filled (and practically overflowed from) our freezer.

The first few days were fine. Every time, on the hunt for food, I went to the fridge, I found I was quite satisfied by the variety of cold meats, crab sticks, chicken pieces and salad that greeted me; but the fridge became a less appealing place as the days progressed and the cold meats (what were left) dried out and curled at the edges, the crab sticks turned soft and tasted, rather disturbingly, of mint, the chicken pieces tasted processed and ersatz, the lettuce wilted, the tomatoes became softer (and less easy to slice thinly), the cucumber became green slime, and the strawberries from last week rotted (well, we weren’t eating fruit on the Dukan Diet).

By Tuesday I had turned to the freezer for inspiration and found four mouth-watering (if the packaging was anything to go by) Bird’s Eye fish fillets in breadcrumbs. The two frozen fish fillets inside the cardboard carton looked suspiciously unlike the ones in the photo but I thought they might magically transform during cooking. Sadly not. Worse still, the little pieces of grey fish (of a variety I’ve not seen before) covered in fake breadcrumbs (bread must be far too expensive for manufacturers to use for breadcrumbs) tasted as terrible as they looked. I took one mouthful of mine, spat it out and deposited the rest in the bin.

“Want something else?” Chris asked hopefully.

I thought of the curly cold meats, minty crab sticks, chemical chicken, slimy cucumber and dead lettuce, and I grimaced as I shook my head.

“No thanks, Darling. I’m quite off my food after that,” I answered.

“Well surely you could have half of one of those little chocolate puddings with me? It would take the bad taste out of your mouth,” Chris cajoled.

Things have looked up since Tuesday. We went out for dinner last night with Ron (a thank you for painting his balcony) – I had a small salad… with big haddock in beer batter! I’ve just made a fresh loaf in the bread machine – we had bread and jam for lunch, with lashings of salty butter, of course. We’re having visitors again, until Sunday. Now you can’t put your guests on a diet – can you?