Summer's almost come and gone and - to be honest I'm not sure how it happened really. Last time I looked it was half past May and I was revving up for long flowery dresses and straw hats. There were great expectations of hot days and long balmy summer evenings spent outside - spending time in amongst the flowers, creepers and climbers, spraying for green fly while the vegetables I'd tended were being lovingly barbequed by the man in my life as he turned and basted slices of dead animal and we both sipped wine like people on the TV ads.

Ah well - I suppose there's always next year.

Talking of next year and the year after, I'm starting on the new book . I've got one coming out this week called 'Lessons in Love' , one early next year called Mum's the Word and have just started the one after that, due for publication some time in 2010 called 'Mother of the Bride'.

The research for M.o.B is making my live-in man anxious - us living in sin an' all - currently the bathroom is littered with bridal magazines and today I was overcome by a sudden urge to tell him that you - meaning 'one' obviously - could get married at a chapel in the Ice Hotel in the far reaches of the snowy north, the price to include reindeer. I think this may be some kind of a pick your own scheme where having been taken to the chapel in a reindeer powered sleigh you're able to select which one you want microwaved for the wedding feast -

Or you can get married in the zoo - what a great idea - fill that boring gap between the ceremony and fist fights breaking out between the relatives by looking at penguins and feeding the lemurs, I said.

Alternatively there are castles in Scotland - by now He has glazed over and is looking longingly at news that the cold war is about to begin again.