before the knife - an everyday tale of sublimated control-freakery in Upper Street

I tried, I've tried I've tried. But my concentration is strangely shot. My sister arrives at the crack of dawn tomorrow and I'm under the - well, you know... the day after.

So today it was no use. I tried to do my MacNeice - still flushed with the editor telling me I was the only contributor to that issue who had even thought about what they were going to write - but it was just little ants marching across the page. I tried to read Jane Holland's review of Jacob Polley's new book, Little Gods; I even had Little Gods in my bag (sadly, unsigned; I did see Polley read from this and was so useless at remembering my book that I had to ask him to sign a Selected of Donald Hall. Hey: I like to live on the edge). But no; couldn't do it.

Instead, I found myself thinking that to buy some meringues at Ottolenghi would be the most useful thing I could do, so I got on the bus for the Angel. (My hair looks much better, btw; they are darlings at the salon. Lara who does my colour had a fantastic hairdo today, all hairspray and little quiffy bits, and when I commented on it she said she'd been watching Dita Von Teese on something-or-other last night and that inspired her to pull her socks up. I mean put her hair up. They're so great in there, we all kiss each other goodbye. It's like a party.)

So I kissed Lara goodbye in the street and went on the bus to Ottolenghi. Via Past Caring - no furniture in there I needed - and then Flashback, where I bought some Mozart piano sonatas for my recuperation (it's all second-hand) and two videos for ditto: Cyrano de Bergerac, starring the ineffably curative Depardieu; and that sweet eighties film, Letter to Brezhnev., which I think will be a feel-good film par excellence to get me better. Then I went up Cross St (past Get Stuffed, the taxidermist) to Ottolenghi, where I replenished my supply of overpriced, enormous designer meringues, at a cost equivalent to only about five large packets of chocolate Hobnobs. But I can't eat Hobnobs anyway, so it is all academic.

Then thought I might as well have a quick look in Jigsaw...

The silver strappy top will be fabulous for recuperating with abdominal scars, because it's one of this summer's smock shapes. It's so cute. Can you just see the whole thing? It's a bit small in the bust, but that's not a problem because I'm told the real weight loss has barely even begun, & anyway it looks fine. So I asked the girl for a little cardigan to put on over it, to see how it might look in real life. The cardigan was so lovely... I liked it almost better than the top!

But I had to go to the cashpoint, due to some vicissitudes of my cash flow, and on the way back from there - feeling, I have to say, by this time really stressed out and aware of the impending knife and tired of carrying my laptop and aware of spending money and needing still to go buy food - I happened to see this beautiful Chinese orange handbag in the window of Spice... and you know, it is small (but cunningly roomy), and I've been thinking for weeks: I'm going to have all these incisions on my right side, which is where I carry my bag, and all my handbags are huge... even after I'm okay to go out I won't be able to lift the damn bags...!

Well, so after buying the handbag, only in grey not orange because it's more versatile and anyway the hardware was gold on the orange one which is not me - and the top and the cardigan in Jigsaw (my lovely recuperation outfit which will cheer me up no end after all the months I've spent watching my same two grey Gap T shirts get baggier and baggier, one with the stray thread that hangs down just at the V of the scooped-out neckline) I had to go have a coffee and sit down. So tired. So many bags. Plus the laptop on which I had been unable to do any of my work. And, like, all these days of getting caught in these downpours, today I bring my umbrella out and of course it stays dry!

I've bought the food. Cooked the chicken. Changed the beds. Done laundry. And the dishes. And watched EastEnders (don't even ask), and taken the rubbish out (but not replaced the bin liner). And had a big fight on the phone with my lovely pain-in-the-ass eldest child the Urban Warrior, and then put my head in my hands and cried, wanting to ring someone and wail at them, "it's so awful and no one will help me, and no one cares and I'm going to be put under and cut, and you have no idea, I spent so much money - !" But there wasn't anyone.

So then I went and cleaned the kitchen.

Oh, and a family friend says to me, "don't worry, it'll feel like a whole new world. You'll see, it'll be great." She goes,"you'll have to be careful what you eat for a month or so, you can't eat anything greasy. But that's okay because you won't feel like eating anything." She says, "well you'll lose tons of weight!"

So, maybe no chocolates after all. Will it never end?

On the other hand, it looks like I might be reading at the Poetry Cafe on July 7th (Ringo Starr's birthday, I can tell you now for nothing). To be confirmed.