I'm on the beach in a bikini. I'm sick of being "good for my age". I want to be good for someone else's age

I remember surly weather, when we shivered with cold at a party at the Saatchi Gallery, and I scrawled "Vile, raining, eight degree day" in my diary. A survey said 30 per cent of Britons want to emigrate. Bugger being the world's fourth-largest economy. It's the weather, stupid. Hague and the Tories droning on about race, asylum-seekers and the euro - and Blair and Co droning on - finally did it for me. I booked a ticket to Malta. I could stay with my friend Ulli, see friends, go to the beach and read - and I could get back in time to vote. If women chained themselves to railings, went to prison and died, all for universal suffrage, it's my duty to vote. That's how I feel about being Jewish, too. I don't do anything about it - except buy Rakusen's matzos in Sainsbury's sometimes. But six million died. Jews, I mean, not matzos. So, I'm definitely Jewish.

The rosy dawn of a Mediterranean sky, viewed from Ulli's terrace overlooking St Julian's Bay. Birdsong and scarlet geraniums. I wince at the monstrous, tall, shiny- blue, Hilton hotel building nearby. Later, I lie by the edge of the water at the Reef Club under a white umbrella. It's peaceful, uncrowded. The sun is defiantly hot on my skin. How many more summers will I spend in small bikinis? I'm sick of being good for my age. The trick is to be good for someone else's age.

I think of my first love affair, in the south of France. How often in a lifetime do you get to share summer sounds, scents, sights with someone? Sometimes I get wistful. Friends who are in love seem to be tormented in a way I've long forgotten. God knows where I'd find sex and intelligence in one package. Well, there was D.

One married man says: "But Marce, you don't understand the pleasures of marriage."

"I grasp concepts," I say. "List the pleasures in your marriage."

"You know what I mean," he says.

"I don't know what you mean," I say. "Tell me."

Silence. I'd rather eat iron filings, keep snakes, live below ground in central Australia, than stay in a bad marriage. Yet they stay. Fear of being alone? Tolstoy said: "If you don't want to be lonely, don't marry."

With marriage, it really is about economics, stupid.

I tire of thinking about all our collapsed lives, smear on more Factor 30, adjust my battered straw hat and read The Human Stain by Philip Roth. He is writing with such brilliance, insight, power and fury that I keep rereading passages. (You wouldn't write a love song now with the lyrics "I'm mad about good books . . .") I fantasise about e-mailing him. What would I say? He appears in the book as the narrator - rather like Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby. Didn't I read that Roth is now a recluse in real life? He used to live with Claire Bloom. Her side of the story, Leaving a Doll's House, shows you can't retaliate in print if you've been married to a man who writes masterpieces. It's wise not to shack up with writers, lawyers or anyone called Pablo.

Tea with Grace, who's been in a wheelchair for more than 30 years. She devours the Times of Malta, wants to discuss the EU, enlargement and the euro, and is impatient with the Maltese Eurosceptics. "You have to think long term," she booms. She has the largest garden in St Julian's - about the size of ten tennis courts. The jacaranda tree is in glorious mauve bloom and Grace gave "hundreds" of arum lilies to the nuns. Now she finally understands that I don't want to marry her son, she is wonderfully hospitable. "You're a spiritual person," she says over lemon cake. "Why don't you think about becoming a Catholic?"

"Er - Grace," I say, "I'm Jewish. Why would I adopt another religion? Jewish is easy. Ten Commandments, you don't covet your neighbour's goat, that sort of thing. Also - though I admire Catholicism - I don't believe Mary was a Virgin, or that Christ was the Son of God. And I'm pro-choice on abortion."

Grace stares at me. "You really don't believe Jesus rose from the dead?"

"No," I say. "I don't believe the Red Sea parted. And I believe in life before death."

She shakes her head. "And you're so intelligent about some things."

Cool, cloudy London. I watch two Americans wrestle with a trolley at Paddington Station as they try to insert a pound coin. I help them. I'd just asked for help myself. Who understands these things? I join the longest taxi queue I'd seen since Kennedy airport at Christmas. I vote at St James's Church: 18 per cent turnout so far. They're not expecting a rush. I barely glance at the television, then turn off - I'll wait for Rory Bremner. The Evening Standard headline next day says: "Hague resigns". The only Tory who makes sense is Michael Heseltine. You can't believe they'd elect Portillo.

My worries are: how to work the new video so I can tape BBC 2's History of Jazz series; should I embark on a serious project; who's going to make the case for the euro now; and should I invite friends on Wednesday if my guest Michael Bywater cooks. The flat's a mess. Housework isn't the new black. Nine for dinner, bound to argue about Portillo. It's going to be a late and noisy evening.

The Times today says British men are the most unfaithful in the world. And 30 per cent of British women "behave in a similar way". I wonder if it's the same 30 per cent that want to emigrate. For some reason, I feel idiotically contented. Life's good.