Read this very carefully. I may be asking questions.

Diet-wise this week could have been better. That's a round-about, mealy-mouthed, politically-correct way of saying it has been a tad on the less-than-successful side. Okay, so it has been disastrous.

At the beginning of the week I was hoping to lose another two pounds so that I could officially say that I'd lost two stone. The way things are going, I'm busy praying that I can at least maintain the same weight as last week. I've been out to lunch, invited friends over, succumbed to chocolate cravings and consumed too much wine for any actual loss to have occurred. But hey, one bad week does not a diet wreck. It's a pause, not a stoppage. And besides, I'm thankful that I have friends with whom to sabotage my diet. Life without wine, gossip, chocolate and laughter would be a bit less fun. And this attempt at being healthier and more comfortable in my own skin isn't intended to turn me into a puritanical misery guts who can't let go occasionally.

So, what else has been going on? Kid-in-the-middle was accepted for tuition in the brass section of the band, and this week brought home a lovely shiny Eb Tenor Horn. It's noisy. How anyone is supposed to get a tune out of it that doesn't resemble bovine farting I really can't imagine. I guess I'm to have the pleasure of standing by with my fingers in my ears as she tries!

Also on the school front, this was the week that Kid-at-the-bottom-of-the-heap started going in for the full session. This means school lunches. We spent a good few minutes last week going over the menu options and carefully picking out things that I thought she'd like. I needn't have worried. School chicken curry? Yum. Tuna bagette and salad? Lovely. Macaroni cheese? Superb. By the end of the week, I'd forgotten what choices we'd made and had to ask her what she'd had. Apparently it was something "A bit like a sandwich, but not bread, more like a rolled up pancake and I think it had egg in it and it was hot and tasted a bit like that thing that's not lemon chicken that I sometimes have from the chinese restaurant only not chopped." (It was an omelette!)

Kid-the-eldest has been inventing a moon city. He is going to build a city on the moon and ferry tourists to his space hotel. I'm to get the blue presidential suite when I visit. Apparently, if he dies, he's bequeathing it all to Gordon Brown so that Mr Brown can have another go at getting things right. And they say kids with Aspergers don't have any imagination!

Also this week, our church has been busy raising money for a school in India. It was decided to hold a quiz night. This was a village affair, involving teams from the Guides, Scouts, School and Church, and the tagline for the event was "Are You Smarter Than The Sunday School?" Yes, as it turned out. They all were. It probably didn't help that every other group had at least four adults whereas The Sunday School consisted of me, one adult friend, her eight year old and my three. I think we were at a disadvantage even before you take into account the fact that I know nothing and can't recall the rest.

I felt like one of those elderly people who can witter on for hours about events that happened fifty years ago but who have no idea what they had for breakfast. The number of times a question was asked and I went "Oh, I know this, I really do. If only I could remember...." I did manage to delve deep and come up with a number of chemical symbols, retained from the days of cramming for O'Levels. And my maths was better than I'd realised. But music, drama and sport? Oh dear. What events make up a decathlon? Apparently my answer, (running, jumping, and throwing things) wasn't specific enough. I'd argue that the name of Shakespeare's wife might well have been Mrs Shakespeare, but that wasn't what they were looking for. And it took until midnight, as I was going to bed before I remembered the name of the lead singer of Pulp. It did cause me to ponder on how many other women snuggled under their duvets last night and suddenly screeched "Jarvis Cocker!"