As your mother no doubt said on many an occasion. My tears are indeed caused by my own foolishness because during January – and didn’t I myself say ‘Don’t leave the house’ – I made the unforgivably novice mistake of using Public Transport. I can hear your jaws dropping from here. The journey between my lovely home and one of my places of business normally takes between 45 and 75 minutes, depending on how many points are on my licence and the time of year – school holidays heralding a trouble free spin along the A40 to God-forsaken Uxbridge. You won’t know where it is, you certainly won’t have been there and I strongly recommend that you keep it that way. Even I, Trip Advisor’s number one London reviewer, have yet to find anything of note there.

Regular public travellers will smile knowingly when I reveal that the journey care of TfL took I hour and 50 minutes. No leaves on the line. Not even passengers who had finally lost all hope. It just takes an eternity. At least I had a seat all the way as, unsurprisingly, very few people make the voyage into the unknown. The result of this lengthy exposure to the Ordinary British, and they are extremely ordinary at the far end of the Piccadilly line, left me with a cold and hence the streaming eyes. And nose. I obviously won’t be doing that again.

Anyway, in an attempt to cheer up the end of the month I decided to host Burns Night for my quiz team. We try to celebrate all major anniversaries with gusto and strong drink. After some discussion it was decided that as none of us was Scottish – in fact half of the guests were Irish, as it turned out – we would hold the event on a more convenient date and serve the roast beef of Olde England, no-one have revealed a secret longing for haggis and disgusting swede. I believe there was a smoked salmon starter to make it a mildly Caledonian evening and whisky was drunk, but Jameson’s as a gesture to our friends from the Emerald Isle. We drank English champagne as part of Brexit and all would probably have been well if we had left the port for another day. Clearly it had been poisoned by the foreign makers in a spiteful Euro revenge attempt and several people were suffering from unexpected side effects the next day. Or two.

After all this I decided to extend my January ‘Treat yourself like a Princess’ plan until the end of February. Oodles of self-cosseting, possibly wine and no getting out of bed again. That way lies misery and pestilence. You have been warned.