Perth County is presenting us with the same stonking heat that Dorothy sweated through last week. I just hide out in our lovely (if grubby) air-conditioned house, no apologies. The world would not be improved by me coming out in a heat rash.

Stilly, what do you use your big stand mixer for? You write a fair bit about pickling, but I can't remember you discussing baking. Are you one of those people who brings boxes of cookies to the office, and fills up the freezer with cake?

I am crap at cake and pastry, probably because I so rarely make either. Bread is my thing, and I flatter myself that I can do pretty well anything I want to with yeast. But most modern cake recipes look to me like a chemistry experiment followed by a craft challenge: first, get the thing to rise properly, and then spend ages arranging ganache and butter-cream constructions to make it look like a building by I.M. Pei. (The Great British Bake-Off has a lot to answer for.)

I'm sporting a bunch of new bruises and ugly scrapes on my elbow and hand, the result of an ankle failure that dumped me on my own doorstep the other day. I put my foot down wrong and that was enough. It's embarrassing for me (not to speak of painful) and scares the be-Jesus out of Himself, whose mind immediately conjures up the worst-case scenario -- Oh, God, she's having a stroke! But no, it's just what happens when one's undercarriage should be subject to a product-recall notice from God. It'll be fun at the gym today, where everybody will have something to say about my Technicolour shins. Thank God, they won't see my butt.