My left eye is bloodshot, painful. My contact lens is firmly glued to my eye. Ian, my optician, removes it while I yelp and tears run down my cheek. He sends me to the Western Eye Hospital in Marylebone Road. I'm seen almost immediately. They're wonderfully efficient there. A nurse says, "Cover your right eye and see how many letters you can read on this screen." I stare ahead, say [...]

I need to lie on the sofa for a bit and think about men. Perhaps someone could pour me a drink. I've just finished David M Friedman's riveting book A Mind of Its Own: a cultural history of the penis. In my head, I see rows of willies swaying to verses of "Nobody Knows the Troubles I've Seen". Heaven knows the penis has had its up moments, but it's lived [...]

Last September, strictly in the course of research, I ordered a large number of sex books from Amazon. My shoulders sagged in despair as boxload after boxload arrived at my front door. I figured if anyone hacked into my Amazon account, they'd think I was a sex addict, or desperate.

Friends, the occasional dinner date and passing workmen would pick up books from my desk discreetly entitled A Hand in [...]

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 [...]