The earth moved. Meg and I were unaware of it.

The numbers that went out over my name were complete garbage. I didn’t prepare them but I should have checked them.

I moved straight through from one television studio to another in the same building. On my way back to my office, to do a pre-arranged interview with another company, the first company telephoned me on my mobile to ask if I would do a further interview. When a new story breaks, it’s pandemonium.

“My wife misses me. I need to leave treatment in order to be with her.”

I doubt that. Well, anyway, I doubt that she wants him home just yet. Last weekend I asked her precisely which role she wanted to be in her relationship with him and she gave me a very clear answer.

Yesterday Robin flew to Scotland to conduct an intervention and brought a patient back with him. My job today has been to try to help her to want to stay with us. I would rather do my work than his. I have my own skills but I certainly don’t have his. Nor Meg’s.

Eighty percent of all care homes looking after the elderly and other people with special needs are still in individual private ownership. They are not owned by corporations. Nor are they owned and run by the NHS. When the going gets really tough, it is the private sector – and the compassion and enterprise of individuals – that comes to the rescue.

I don’t like public urinals that have crotch level bowls that leave you to inspect other people’s cigarette ends, pubic hair and general detritus. They may preserve the floor from uriniferous splashes but that should not be the only consideration. Further, I would prefer them to flush automatically after use (as some do through light cell control). Today in the university, where I had been lecturing, I had to leave behind a splattering of blood stains until the automatic timer washes them away. That isn’t nice for the next person who uses the pissoir.

One cannot but admire the top Premiership clubs. To take three out of the four semi-final places in the European Cup is one thing. To play such entertaining and exciting football is quite another. We should be so lucky in England.

He blames me for ruining his life. Now that his wife (whom I have never met) has been diagnosed with a serious illness, it appears to prove to him that her judgement of him – leading to their divorce some years ago – was wrong and therefore that my judgement on him (as possibly having a problem with alcohol) was also wrong. At least, that’s what I think he’s saying. It’s difficult to get a clear picture behind the vitriol.

When our cottage was burned down we tried to preserve the inglenook fireplace. It had stood for six or seven hundred years so it deserved a chance. We loved it because it gave the cottage much of its character. The downside was that the smoke refused to go up the chimney. At times our supper guests would retreat with streaming eyes into the garden. Our architect designed a new, rather more attractive, replacement and the builders used old bricks taken from old buildings demolished when motorways were made. More specifically, vents and pipes now enable air to be drawn in under the floor and released under the basket in the grate. End result: a beautiful old fireplace and no smoke in the room. That’s what I call a result.