Bridge and tunnel

Lo carbing continues with a breakfast of three marinated anchovies (H, a friend of the eldest believes anchovies to be extinct. At the same time he is slightly OCD about sell-by dates. Tinned and jarred variants are acceptable to him but we have to hide the marinated kind that come in a tub) and a piece of disembowelled cheesecake (about seven minutes on the plate-as-a-clock basis).

Lunch was half a bag of Mr Porky scratchings. Was there ever a less glamorous snack? And some stale cashews hoiked out of the groove at the back of the baking cupboard.

I have clocked members of the family sneaking out for rice and pasta, the scabs, but I'm determined to press on with it and lose the half a stone-odd I put on in December. To admit to overeating over Christmas and crash dieting in January is in some people's eyes woefully suburban, like panic-buying petrol, going out on a Saturday night and PVCu front doors. I personally enjoy panic buying, especially bread, and ideally from the garage. It heralds an impending catastrophe (I can only think of snow) that makes it acceptable to spend whole days in the pub.

In other news, the new garden hose has arrived. It is 40m long, a record length for us, even if you count two hoses joined up (fraught with danger, will always fly apart when tap is on full and you are stepping over the join). Why it was dispatched in a box that for all the world could have contained a Louis Vuitton Petit Noe duffel in ivory is anyone's guess. Life is cruel.

But in ivory

Only available in green