Today's been a rather productive day. I tidied up the living room, took a lot of my stuff back upstairs, brushed then hoovered the floor, and now it's looking a lot better. Like, we seem to have acquired all this magical floor space out of nowhere. Hopefully we can keep it that way.

( Kelza's Tea, Swimming, More Tidying and The Riddle of the Missing Headphones... )

I'm currently sat in The Lemon Tree Cafe, which I've been meaning to check out for quite some time. I'm now waiting on vegetable soup and a jacket spud with beans, cheese and salad.

It's a nice little café! Cheery yellow decor accented with quirky diamond mirrors framed in sky blue, along with your typical blackboard menus on the wall - all very English.

Jason estimates that he'll be back at half five today, which means there's absolutely no point in going home then coming back to meet him. I might as well go straight from work to St Helens Central to meet him.

I can't wait to see him, though - it's only been a week and it's been too long! We'll be getting a KFC bucket to share around my family when we get back, and he's sleeping at mine. As I write, he's on the train from Exeter to Birmingham.

Ah, my soup's here! I'll write later!

I've been back from my lunch break for a while now, but I still feel stuffed. Yes, for once I got food.

It was around 11. I was flicking through my to-do list and one of the pieces I had was about a local charity having an event at their allotment on Windle Hall Drive. I remembered that Jason was looking for a suitable work placement that he could do while on his horticulture course and realised that he could volunteer at some of the various charity-maintained allotments about town.

I texted him with the suggestion, he said it was worth considering (I'm not sure if it's suitable for his course but you never know) and then he invited me to the Moonlight Grill, where his mum and stepdad were going for lunch. It's a new place on North Road, having opened about three months ago in what used to be a gay bar.

'Why not?' I thought. I was feeling peckish and I'd missed him yesterday - it would be nice to see him again, even if it was only for an hour.

( We agreed to meet at noon... )

Yesterday was awesome. Towards the end of the day I found myself suddenly quite busy so the hours rushed by. I found myself tasked with yet another interesting story about a bunch of medals, old photos and badges discovered in the shed behind the Kirkfield Hotel in Newton; this morning I went down there before work to have a look at them and get an idea of who they'd belonged to and where they were from so I could do a good write-up. I finished the piece this morning and I'll post it up as soon as it's out in the newspaper.

Anyway. Yesterday. I met Jason as usual in the reception of the Star office and then we went to - can you guess where we went? - The Glass House. It's a regular haunt of ours now, but it's such a nice place - not too loud, you can hear yourself think and make conversation, trips to the bar aren't suicide missions from which you never return... and the food and drink is pretty good!

( And so another awesome Monday continues... )

It's been another quiet day. I've managed to do the odd article, but a lot of today's 'work' has again depended on people getting back to me.

Slowly but surely my brain is shutting off. I had a really dumb moment before where someone phoned for one of the editors - I asked who it was and what it was regarding, put the guy on hold to see if said editor was available... and then totally forgot who had called and why.

I've been feeling a little fuzzy all day, really. I blame my lack of mental clarity on a combined lack of food (I've had sweet bugger all to eat today; breakfast and that's it), lack of sleep (I was dozing on and off all last night) and the fact that I've spent sections of the day distracted by thoughts about time spent at Jason's yesterday. What happened, what could have happened, etc.

Thankfully, only 50 minutes to go until home time. Tomorrow I'll bring in something substantial to eat - sandwiches, probably - cheaper than buying food around town! I'll have a few cups of tea as well; that's one thing today has been sorely lacking!

Now I'm just waiting on someone to e-mail me with details for another one of the stories from my to-do list. I hope she does so soon and gives me something to do. I think my brain is 90% dormant right now.

I've basically only just woken up. No sign of the postman yet (who should be delivering two CDs, a DVD and a vinyl some time soon), and I have one of those weird, dull early-morning headaches. I always get them after having the mother of all lie-ins.

So, the plan! First, I will have a glass of mango juice. Second, I will have a bath. Third, I will get dressed and dry my hair. Fourth, I will take that one hour brisk walk I said I was going to. Fifth, I will come home, stick a record on and tidy my room.

This, in essence, is my gap year. But at least I'm not being captured by pirates in Hong Kong or chased by Mexican banditos.

I've had a pretty neat idea for what we'll call 'the teatime dilemma' - the fact that teatime's the only meal that I don't have control of, as my Dad cooks it and he always cooks junk food. I'll just have cheese, tomato and lettuce sandwiches (the best sandwiches on Earth), and maybe a couple of Weetabix while I'm at it!

I forgot to mention that I've recently gone to war a bit on my diet. I've cut coffee out almost entirely now - and the one time I did cave and have a cup, I did so with sweeteners in lieu of my traditional four sugars. I'm now drinking mostly tea - without milk - with two sweeteners. As a result, my sugar and fat intake has gone down, and after getting over the initial post-NaNo caffeine withdrawals, I've started to feel a lot better.

Every morning, I've woken myself up with two chocolate Weetabix and a glass of pure fruit juice. Weetabix is packed with wholegrain and it's low in salt and fat, and a glass of pure fruit juice counts as one of your five a day. Cartons of said juice are really quite cheap from my local supermarket - between 60 and 80 pence, and one carton will last me three days.

For dinner, I usually have sandwiches. My problem here is I tend to go overboard on the margarine and cheese - so despite having tomatoes and lettuce on there, I'm taking in more fat than is probably sensible. Plus the cheese and margarine get used up stupidly quick. This is a problem that can be solved with moderation.

The killer, I think, is teatime. In our house, it's always been Dad who cooks the meals at teatime. And it's always been chips, with pizza or lasagne or pizza or processed meat rubbish or pizza. But this is the only thing my siblings, the buggers, will eat. Okay, so Nathan eats curry and spaghetti bolognese as well... but Ashley is the fussiest eater ever, in that he will only eat chips and pizza. Yet he is stick thin.

So, a lot of my fat intake happens at teatime, when Dad cooks fast foods. This needs to change, and that change needs to happen with Dad. Or with me; I could always start cooking my own tea. See, if Dad were to change his ways, then Nathan and Ashley would have to as well... and like I said, Ashley's a fussy eater. So the change probably has to be with me. Perhaps if I scoured the Internet for some cheap, healthy recipes...

There are two reasons for my sudden war on my diet. One: I don't want to get into my forties and then poof! I have a lifelong health condition because of my years of eating rubbish. Two: I want to lose weight, because I'm a size sixteen and there's no way I should be that big. I'm not huge, but I should be size fourteen at least, in jeans/trousers/whatever. Size twelve in tops, because I'm a odd-looking pear-shaped being from outer space.

One of the things I attribute my weight gain over the years to is the fact that Dad got a new car - which became The Toreador - when I was in Year 11, thus removing the need to walk to school like I had done every day for four years previous. I was pretty thin in Year 11; I could fit size 12 jeans, and that was after all the funny growing things had stopped happening.

What I need to do is start walking again, daily, just like I used to, come rain or shine. It doesn't matter if I just walk aimlessly - it won't be aimless, really; it's for the purpose of getting back in shape. At the same time, I can always take my camera out with me, snapping around Newton and all that. I still haven't used a single exposure of my colour film.

You do not need to starve yourself to diet successfully. Starving yourself, if anything, can increase the problem tenfold. Dieting is about targeting the problem areas with what you eat and your exercise regime, and then addressing those problems appropriately. And this is what I'm going to do.