My idea of healthy eating is to cut throw a couple of raspberries onto my Coco Pops, so when Hanan left a couple of days ago to go to Vancouver, I felt myself drawn as if by gravity to the coffee, pasta and crisps...but in a rash moment of insanity, I had promised her to start being slightly healthier AND to tidy up my desk while she was away. She had a rough journey ahead to see a friend of ours who is very sick, so I thought the least I could do was stick to my end of the bargain.

It went incredibly well for the first 45 minutes. Then, I realised she was actually away for 4 days and began to get depressed. Nothing like a big plate of pasta for depression...but pasta is for Robert de Niro in The Godfather, not for me, whose body was a temple (OK, one of those crumbling but character-filled temples). Manfully, I threw the tagliatelle back into the cupboard and had some rice, fish and vegetables. Now I was still depressed, but feeling virtuous too which got me through the next hour. Then I went to sleep, which got me over a whole seven hours. This was getting easier. Next morning I cooked a fry up for the boys, and got myself a bowl of cereal. With fruit on it. The phone rang. It was Hanan. Having breakfast with Lisa Ray, star of The World Unseen and I Can't Think Straight (in case you'd forgotten) over in Vancouver. Lisa, I hasten to add, is not the sick friend, but she happens to be filming there and so they connected. This was all wonderful, but I had just turned down fried food for breakfast and my attempt at a yoga sun salutation was aborted by a flying child throwing himself at me like a little extra from Crouching Tiger. The virtuous feeling was gone.

Not to be put off, I hit the office, where I found piles of paper hurling themselves off the edge of my desk in a desperate and futile bid to be noticed and dealt with. This had been going on for some time, so I brought them all into one big pile and started to work on them from the top. The deeper I got, the more I could FEEL things festering in the middle. It was like a horror film. Every time I turned my back, something rustled on the desk behind me. I slid along the wall, stealthily, so the papers wouldn't see me. Across the street, the coffee shop beckoned...I grabbed my keys and headed for the door...You can't get through that kind of thing with a cup of green tea and an apple. It's not healthy.