Our neighbour’s dogs got another of our sheep – as they would – once having experienced the sport and tasted the spoils. Silly man for letting them loose. He has now made them pay the price for his stupidity.

A month ago I was struggling to pay the bills. Now the overdraft barely exists. Our income is totally unpredictable in the short-term. In one month it can be either halved or doubled. I would like it to stay doubled – but it won’t. I hope the bank is understanding on the next occasion it is halved.

Come to see the outstanding natural beauty of east Kent before the Deputy Prime Minister concretes over it entirely in order to provide affordable homes, accommodation for immigrants from other European countries and asylum seekers from elsewhere and also nursing homes for mental patients from London boroughs. Hurry, hurry, hurry, while the grass lasts.

I remember her well. She had such a battle with the booze. It cost her a great deal: her job, her husband and now her life. That’s very sad.

Her sister told me of her death when she herself came into treatment this evening. It’s interesting that neither her sister’s nor their mother’s experience with the demon drink turned her off it. In fact, she isn’t off it voluntarily even now. Her husband put her into our care with the threat that he wouldn’t take her back until she got sorted out. Her sister drank herself to death: she valued her drink more than she valued life itself. I can only pray that we can give our new patient something more inspiring to live for than that.

I’ve got an Apple Mac, a very fine computer, versatile and expensive. It’s by me right now – but it isn’t plugged in. I\’ve got a carrying case for it but I don’t take it to work with me. Robin tells me that it is high time that I joined the 20th century and, I must say, I am very impressed with all the things he can do on his many and various computers. In fact I am probably the only member of three generations of my family who is computer illiterate.

I am a creature of habit: Pens and dictaphones do everything I actually want to do. I’m lazy: I have staff who do all I need that requires computer facilities. I am a real doctor: I listen to patients and observe them rather than bury myself in a keyboard and screen. And, as an addict, I am a real expect in rationalising when I know I am in the wrong.

That’s good. He made the sensible decision and is therefore much more likely to stay married and be able to provide an emotionally secure environment for his children. He let his wife move on into secondary care while he stays on in primary. He is sicker than she is – his addiction is more widespread and more intense – and he needs more help than she does.

The government has granted the Mayor of London the powers the force London councils to bend to his will on planning and some other local issues. The inevitable consequences of this is that Socialists can now control areas of London where they have rarely – if ever – won an election.

I tend to have two reading books, one light and one heavy, on the go at the same time. At present I have got two heavies, George Mombiot’s The Age of Consent and Roger Scruton’s The West and The Rest. I find George Mombiot’s arguments facile and irritating and Roger Scruton’s clear and convincing. But I still find it difficult to get into them: the latter doesn’t fully compensate for the former. I need a third book, something light. The problem is that my bedside tables in London and in Kent have both already overflowed onto the floor.

An enormous bale of hay was on the side of the road halfway up a steep hill. I stopped the car to inspect it in order to find out whether Providence was being kind to me. I don’t need any hay. We have enough and the grass is growing again so the woollies won’t starve. The grass was growing on the bale of hay as well. It was sodden from the rain. It must have been there for ages. I guess it weighed over a ton. No wonder whoever had dropped it left it there. Providence clearly has something else in mind for me.

Our daughter Nicola’s youngest son Henry keeps bantam chickens and he brought Meg and me four eggs. They were delicious, but why? Surely one free-range egg is the same as any other. Maybe I treasured each morsel precisely because they were so small. Maybe in general I gobble too much.