Tonight the heart has bought it. It really is its final appearance in these pages because, well, not to put too fine a point on it, I set fire to it and it’s now just a mass of ash on the slate path! I must say, I’m delighted with its swansong.

I have two friends whose hearts are burning with sadness. One with love and sadness and the other, I think, with sadness alone. Both I count among my best buddies. One has been my friend for a lifetime and the other has been a friend for a short while but that is no barrier to feeling her pain and her sorrow. I can't do anything to stem their pain but I can send a symbolic gesture to show I feel it.

For both of my friends, new and old, I am sending you good vibes tonight to bring your hearts back from sorrow and into a new, pain-free era. For one of you I am thinking of rejoining of two hearts that are right together and should be so forever. Positive thoughts, my friend, think them and will it to be so. Think and believe he loves you and you will look back on this anguish as nothing more than a fleeting glimpse of life on the other side of the fence. I believe that will happen for you.

The other, I actually hope, and I mean this with what I believe are her best interests at heart, that she’ll keep her head up as she walks away and that she won’t look back because she deserves a different kind of man. Do you remember the day I confessed to seeing someone too close to someone they shouldn't have been close to? Well, my suspicions were right and now my friend is alone. She needs a man who’ll share her interests and her passions. One who’ll be a match for her huge personality and capacity for friendship and love. A man who’ll bring her joy. I know he’s out there for her and I know she’ll find him because she has a generous heart and she makes friends easily.

This friend made me better when I needed help. She rescued me from the pit of despair and breathed the fire back into my own heart. In fact, she has been my saviour on more than one occasion – my friend, you know who you are and think not just the Yates Wine Lodge but also Twyford Station. I now try to do the same for her.

The closed gate is for one of my two friends, for the other it will swing open again soon.

As for DM, no, it’s not to do with us except to say I have a burning love for you…..still!

Last year I was eating rainbows - the weird and wonderful world of this corporate whore keeps on rolling!