It’s still hotter than hell. Last night I could not face cooking, so dinner was a salad and water. Then a cold shower, and hiding in my bedroom, the only part of my flat where the temperature was under 30 degrees. There was no breeze, and as my bedroom window only opens four inches, it was pretty grotty. BUT great news is that I got a letter from Tesco and a £10 voucher! The letter acknowledged my trauma at finding a dingleberry in my quiche, and my blood ran cold (which made a nice change that evening) at the sentence ‘We could not identify the item, so we have sent it to our laboratory for testing.’ Eeeeeeerrrk.

Thanks to Therese for this great article. Germaine Greer isn’t my favourite polemicist, but she makes some interesting points about the Catholic church’s refusal to see women as anything other than wives and mothers, or potential wives and mothers.

Tonight I am looking forward to lots of food and various vodka-based cocktails at a Polish colleague’s house. Apparently she is a great cook (every Christmas she invites her department round for a giant traditional Christmas feed), so I am bringing gifts: a bottle of Zubrowka and an empty stomach.