SATURDAY NIGHT, and I’m on the sofa, whiling away the evening with a book, jar of lime pickle, lump of cheddar and my own company.

AS WELL as being the most ear-pricking word I’ve ever heard, the Swedish word “Fartlek”.

I’M WALKING along a Cornish cliff-path. My brother, whose idea this was, is striding on legs as strong as Scottish cabers, half a field ahead.

SUNDAY, 10.30am. I’m standing in a café doorway, looking for my husband and his cycling companion.

I’M ON my way back to London from Suffolk with two old nursing friends.

IT’S 8am. I open my eyes to find a pair of perky brown irises staring into mine, a couple of inches from my own.

ON THE train, Somerset — and I’m heading down to my mother-in-law Anne, a widow of remarkable warmth, generosity and fixed opinions.

THURSDAY night and my husband and I are in bed. We’re both wearing reading spectacles for the first time.

IF YOU can say “pass the marmalade” in HTML, please feel free to turn over the page.

A PUBLISHED author — I forget who — once said that in order to write as honestly and naturally as he could he rinsed any thoughts of his readers out of his head by imagining them as a bunch of “orangutans, turning the pages with their feet”.