Sunday morning, 8:26 a.m., and my eyes blinked open. So this is the life of a working girl: one week and my brain’s already wired to an office schedule, Sunday or no. CHEH.

Upstairs it still smells of lasagna from last night—minced lamb lasagna—which is not such a bad thing to wake up to at half-past eight in the morning. The lasagna story is only that I have been craving red meat for days now, and lasagna seemed like the kind of hot red-meaty thing where you just pop it into the oven, then you go about your business for an hour, then...mangia! I’d forgotten about the part about the chopping—oh, so much chopping, of carrots and small mushrooms and big mushrooms, of garlics and onions—and the stirring—so much stirring, and sniffing, and flavours mixing, and stomachs grumbling—and also that maybe if you start chopping at nine o’clock, mangia doesn’t actually bloody get to town till eleven.

You know who would have been aware of this? Suzzan would have been aware of this. Suzzan who taught me how to make lasagna some three weeks ago; except that when I say “taught” I mean that I’d said, “Oh! I want to learn how to make lasagna!” and then did who knows what I was doing while she made lasagna, while she chopped and grated and stirred—oh, okay, I know what I was doing, I was dancing about and e-mailing French boys—and then suddenly I was furrowing my brow and saying: “Wait, wait, how did we get to this point? ...and can I make the layers, please?”

The other night at dinner, John said to me and Hens, I forget how it came about now, but he said, “Well, I’d thought Susan would be there to help you out, and I’d thought, ‘Oh, good, there’ll be an adult, someone sensible.’” We laughed, we laughed till our eyes teared and we couldn’t speak for being doubled over, but I tell you, when the gula melaka sago pudding arrived, later, with two spoons, neither of them was for him.

Sunday morning, 9:26 a.m., and I don’t have to catch the Tube anytime soon. It’ll be a pot of fleurs d’oranger Oolong, then, and the comics.