It is raining, in a monsoon-like fashion, and the light has gone – a peek out the window into the murky darkness reveals oily dampness and  – bugger! The pushchair. Which will still have bits of food stuck in various folds and crevices, and these will mash up into unidentifiable greyish stinky pastes to be discovered over the next few weeks. The pushchair will slowly dry over time but will retain the persistent whiff of wet dog, and maybe some attractive mildew spores. What a big bore a washout summer is.

On Monday we got another letter from Woody Allen’s film lackeys, to tell us that they will steal our parking spaces a little longer and just one terraced-flat away from us  – where they are to film yet more WASP 09 scenes – they will be turning on the Fake Rain Machine. No. 25 is close enough to our flat at No. 23 for me to see rain out of my basement window, whether from God or Woody Allen, ALL WEEK. And it is the middle of summer. The only consolation is that:

a) the film lackeys by that stage will have passed on to Woody tales of my stylishness, adorable children and loudly-voiced, savvy and humorous quips and will be insisting that Woody screen-test me as I will actually make the film the masterpiece it was always intended to be; and

b) either Josh Brolin or Antonio Banderas (or both, come to think of it) will have had a brief but delightful love affair with me, and will leave a parting gift of Tiffany Celebration Rings so I do not forget what we shared. 

It is only these things that will keep the rain despair from overwhelming me. I am quite, quite fragile, you know.

And if anyone recalls the ancient Twirl bar I accidentally hoovered up after walking past it for so many YEARS as it sat all ignored on Mark’s desk, well, it turns out that Mark had been saving it for YEARS to eat one night when it took his fancy. And that he liked to walk past the Twirl and give it a nod and just KNOW that one day it would be his. When he decided. So all this time, he was having a RELATIONSHIP of sorts with this Twirl, one of desire and delayed gratification and self-congratulatory-ness. And then his dear wife (that be me) just TOOK it and ate it and didn’t even rate it. 

The SHAME! Apparently, it was that bar that he wanted. So I can’t even placate him with Dairy Milk. This is what my face would have looked like when the enormity of my folly was brought to my attention (if I had been two years old and was a small boy):