In my humble opinion neither a lady’s age nor weight should be bandied around freely… so I won’t begin to do so now; anyway, it had nothing to do with my little weight gain during our visit to Brittany last  weekend. And also, I ask you, how much difference could be made by imbibing of a couple of bottles of wine (twice daily) and partaking, overall, of several loaves of French bread, half a slice of hard German rye bread, a kilo of delicious salty Brittany butter (a speciality of Le Conquet, which, heaped on a half-slice of rye bread, makes the aforementioned almost bearable), a nibble of goat’s cheese and a taste of ricotta – sheep’s cheese (I always follow the crowd), fish and chips from the Irish pub, and one healthy oyster?

Thankfully, I was spared the agony of discovering any weight gain for a full five days after our arrival home because our “old faithful” bathroom scales, perhaps a little delirious following the euphoric effect of not being trodden on from Thursday to Monday while we were away, had decided to fluctuate its readings within a range of one and a half stone (about 9 kilos); this depended on which tile it rested on, which way I leaned, which foot I put on first and whether or not I breathed in or out, none of which effects were unusual in themselves – it had always been possible to assuage the figures using these methods – but hitherto the range had spanned between a less remarkable, and more believable, one to three pounds. Thus  Chris and I reluctantly abandoned the ritual morning weigh-in and promised ourselves a new set of scales from Trago Mills on Saturday, which was yesterday.

“I’m not going to use those scales again!” I cried, throwing myself onto the bed and kicking my legs in a similar way that I did as a two-year-old.

Now I know you shouldn’t weigh yourself in the evening but, honestly, would anyone expect to be twelve pounds heavier? It had to be the scales. Who says that a new set of scales has to be right anyway?

After my tears I noticed that I hadn’t put away the big box of winter clothes I had brought down from the upper cupboard in the morning (luckily, the jeans still fitted – I couldn’t be that fat!). The slight problem was that the filled box was heavy and the cupboard was high; also, the step-ladder was upstairs and it wasn’t very tall anyway; I would use the same Queen Anne chair, with the spindly legs, that I had used earlier.

Funnily enough, I managed to replace the weighty box without mishap (so it wasn’t my increased weight to blame). Maybe I put my foot a bit too far forward and too far to the right on the seat of the delicate antique as I mounted again with six hats in my hands. It all happened so quickly that I can’t tell you what happened first; was it the tilt, the wobble, then the crack, followed by the hats being thrown into the air, then the fall, the scream, the pain in my rear, the abrasion on my back, the sore knee… the groan? It seemed to happen all at once.

Chris was a dear. He let me swear a bit without telling me off – guess he thought that meant there wasn’t much harm done, not much more than wounded pride and a bruised bottom. And this morning he delighted in telling me that he had fathomed the secret of the new scales (he had read the instruction leaflet – he, too, must have hated those scales):

“You see? You just have to tap the centre of the scales with your foot, like this, and it re-calibrates it back to zero.”

So I waited until he was out of sight and gently tapped my foot; and holding my breath, stepped on… Unfortunately for you, I don’t hold with ladies giving out personal information willy-nilly so you will just have to take my word for it that the reading wasn’t quite as shocking or bad as yesterday. Nevertheless, I’m no longer drinking alcohol or eating bread or fish and chips; and the closest I’ll get to butter is the nice butternut pumpkin soup that I’ve made for dinner.