The older I get, the more of a lightweight I become. Thursday night’s Guinness managed to affect a Friday morning headache, so I started the day right with a few ibuprofen, a bowl of Bircher muesli, and a bit of hot black tea with milk. It would seem I am back on the caffeine, or at least, back on the tea. I like it, but I don’t think I’m sleeping as well as I was without it.

Friday afternoon I was off on a train to Colchester for a friend’s baby shower. I got there early and we had a lunch combining the best of English culinary cuisine with the veg-obsessed tendencies of a vegetarian: baked beans on toast with a salad of cucumber, tomato, avocado, red onion and winter greens. Delicious!

We spent the rest of the afternoon baking a chocolate cake and catching up while we waited for guests to arrive. Dinner was pizza, champagne and beer.

Dessert was our homemade chocolate cake which was scrumptious. The cake was made of only three ingredients – eggs, sugar and cocoa. No flour! But to our amazement, it turned out moist and crumbly like a good cake should and negated any prior cravings for Halloween candy.