Kaput.

I'm the walking dead lately, I really am. I looked for that excellent bit from Blazing Saddles where Madeline Kahn plays Lily Von Shtupp singing I'm Tired but sadly embedding was disabled and I'm not techie enough to know if there's a way around that, so if you'd like to enjoy Kahn's masterful comic performance I suggest you click here. Isn't she amazing? Funny and sexy and all grumpy and rumpled up. Who else could have carried that off?

For my part, since we can't all be Wild West hookers, there will be napping. And then I'll get myself to the doctor, who will probably think I am a malingerer and tell me I'm depressed. I don't feel depressed; I do sometimes feel sad, moody and weepy, but, you know, that's what happens when you are dragging your arse around like a ball and chain.

But holy hostesses Batman, today I girded my loins and got my pinny on and had my fabulous friend AC round for an impromptu lunch and blimey if she didn't bring a bottle of champagne. Friends, I have been teetotal for, ooh, nigh on two weeks, as penance for my last, terrible overindulgence. A couple of glasses of wine was surprisingly trippy and on several occasions during lunch I found myself speaking and wondering what point I was meant to be making. I daresay AC might have been wondering too.

In an attempt to cultivate an elusive kind of graceful hosting sprezzatura, I was determined to shrug off my usual neurotic foaming-at-the-mouth-with-added-hair-tearing efforts. I did a quick circuit around the downstairs with a broom and a cloth and a bottle of cleaner. Lunch was a sort of room-temp kind of thing: leftover grilled chicken, roasted beetroot, fennel and orange salad with quinoa. And, as an added bonus, no one mentioned the flipping election.