Well, to be honest, not cooking, freezing! I’ve decided that I am very badly prepared for the impending winter. We have had a very cold night – I can be sure of that because before it was properly light, I was ‘suited and booted’ and on my way to ‘the smoke’ for my first milestone meeting of the week.

In fact, I was not exactly suited and booted – although I was in a suit, it is a lightweight summer one with no protection against the cold 7degrees that was showing on the car temperature gauge. I was also bare-legged and wearing sandals. NOT sensible, which I quickly realised when I’d been on the station for five minutes!

The trouble is, I don’t own anything sensible – no sensible shoes to wear in winter that don’t involve ridiculous heels and no coat other than a huge great wool thing suitable for snowstorms and freezing temperatures.

I need to shop but I am perennially averse to the task.

So, when I arrived at my home-from-home to find a new source of heat, I thought it an appropriate shot for the day! I love the spotty oven gloves, though I suspect they’d be much muckier than that if they’d been hanging on the rail in my kitchen. I am a completely messy, mucky cook and all of my oven gloves (all three pairs) are crusted and coated in gloopy old food. Tomato sauce, cheese sauce, oil, milk, wine – you name it, there are the battle scars all over my cooking tools!

This lovely shiny new oven has replaced a ghastly tatty old brown one.

These are Cath Kidston gloves too – very swanky!

Last year I was doing what I should have been doing today, if I’d not been so completely crap –making DM happy on his birthday!