The last line of this paragraph from Michael Ondaatje's 'Anil's Ghost':

He had grown up loving the sea... And whatever coast he was on - at Hambantota, in chilaw, in Trincomalee - he would watch fishermen in catamarans travel out at dusk till they faded into the night just beyond a boy's vision. As if parting or death or disappearance were simply the elimination of sight in the onlooker.

Each time anyone close to me has died, I have been absent - not close at all. The pattern has been remarkable, to me at least. And so it has at times seemed to me as though it is not that the person has gone, but simply that I am not going to see them any more; they have stepped outside my line of sight. Almost as though it is my failure, my inability to see, that is at the heart of their absence.

This all sounds pretty silly and pagan and more serious than I would like when written down by me, but when Ondaatje says it - it speaks.

So it would seem that sambuca shots and sleepless nights are not the fastest route to curing a cold. Oh when will I learn?

Still, no cold was going to stop me from getting to Wardour Street to buy the fabric for my soon-to-be ballgown. Yards and yards of periwinkle blue chiffon, with bluebell silk satin for the lining... Old-fashioned Heaven.

So anyway, I'm walking through Trafalgar Square with a bag of silks in one hand and a baguette in the other, desperately trying to stay ahead of the huge anti-vivisection march, out of earshot of catchy slogans such as 'No more torture, no more lies, every six seconds, an animal dies' - and I get chatted up. I am actually beginning to think of myself as some kind of sleaze-magnet. Ok, sure my dress was short and blowing about a bit in the breeze, but I was doing my best to control it with my baguette-wielding hand, so hardly channelling Marilyn Monroe. I suppose perhaps I ought to be flattered, but this man was out WITH HIS SON. And I am so not ready to become the stepmother of a five-year-old kid with a mohican and a gold chain. So thanks, 'Marcus', but no thanks.

The thing I love most about being ill is how I feel like a child again, wrapped up, small, drinking hot ribena, luxuriating in just the right degree of self pity. I am actually trying to work here on my sofa, but instead I keep dozing off and dreaming of crocodiles. Funnily enough, I also wonder if this is what it is like being old. The involuntary dozing bit anyway.

From the warmth of my room, the brightness outside successfully impersonates summer, rather diminishing the pleasure of being poorly. I suppose this cold is penance for staying out til 3am in that ghastly club in Leicester Square on Tuesday evening. On a school night! I wonder if now I am older, all misdemeanours will be paid for in like - comedy dance moves in the early hours of the morning will inevitably entail an afternoon on the sofa wheezing and snoozing like a granny. Great.

I'm not old, I'm not old, I'm not old.

It’s ten days since I returned from my two weeks abroad, and it’s a relief to find that the feelings of rejuvenation and optimism have not yet completely petered out. Strangely, I still feel a deep and constantly surprising pull of homelessness for Singapore. Lovely as my first spring in London is proving to be, the memory of heat is hard to shift. I could write endlessly about this holiday. 2009 was characterised by huge upheavals in my life, and yet I still managed to spend most of it within Zone 1. I became completely intoxicated with London. But my brief affair abroad has altered, although not quite broken, the spell.

Travelling alone again has reignited my independence. After months evading solitude, it was thrilling to rediscover that things can be just as exciting, just as beautiful, when seen on one’s own.

I still miss Jane though. In the heart of Colombo we made a pact - of resolutions to be fulfilled within the five months until our next meeting. Anything seems possible on the other side of the world.

At least I know my optimism and my plans will not be quashed or cluttered by my love life. One of the major disadvantages of travelling alone is having to apply sunscreen to one’s own back; mine now resembles an atlas in browns. I’d blend very well into the undergrowth. Then there’s my brown stockings, which end abruptly mid-thigh and the stripes of my midriff, which resemble a diagram of the earth’s crust, and wouldn’t look too wrong labelled ‘topsoil’, ‘permafrost’… Anyway, it’s hardly a good look for seduction.

When I grow up I want to be a chav

So I have two fears at the moment:

1) I am becoming an fully-fledged adult.
2) Under my liberty-print, Byatt-reading, David Dimbleby-watching exterior, I may actually be a chav.

The first is to do with a sudden liking for Jamie Cullum. For an ex-jazzophobe, discovering that I suddenly can’t get enough of the boo-boppety (ok, not quite the boo-boppety, more the laid back omelettes-on-a-Sunday-morning kinda groove) is disconcerting to say the least. Jazz and wine used to represent the habits of people more grown-up (read: more boring) than myself; now they seem pretty acceptable companions. Well blow me: looks like I’m a grown-up!

The second has been a sneaking suspicion for some time. The way huge gold hoop earrings always seem to be the perfect finishing touch to my outfit; the way I love to drive vans; the fact that my phone is pink and that the other weekend I woke up to find a half-drunk WKD blue in my fridge – these are all serious symptoms of a barely repressed chav persona. The well-bred don’t suddenly lapse into an Aussie accent; they don’t make up ‘alternative’ names for works of art in the Tate Modern; they don’t win sailing trips by dancing on bars – they just sail.

I am never cool and languid, nor are my limbs long and graceful. I have no cheekbones to speak of, my hair will not be bouffant no matter what I do (I cut it myself on a whim in a pub in Victoria, so the most it does in the way of wispiness or volume is to stick out over my ears in racoon-like tufts) and I am never going to be tall. Ever. But with one friend telling me that a male mate of hers isn’t posh enough for me, whilst another tells me ‘you’ve gotta treat those posh boys mean’ – what am I to do?!

It’s not all bad news, however. My Chinese step-grandmother was a notorious Kampong flirt, who used to run up gambling debts then hide under the bed when the collectors came to call and throw scissors at her daughters across the room. She’s now nearly 100 and still going out to lunch. So maybe there’s something to be said for a bit of roughage in the diet…

I think I am actually allergic to Friday nights in. It doesn't matter one bit that I've got a horrible cold, my body temperature doing a jig up, down and all over town - I do not want to spend the best night of the week sat at home alone watching Jonathan Ross and wondering: when did Charlotte Church get hot?!

Note to self - if a mum of two looks that much better than you, it is definitely time to go to the gym. And stop eating ice cream from the tub. That would be now.

Essentially, I think I am paying for last weekend. I had been drinking for fourteen hours straight; something was bound to go wrong. And it had been such a lovely weekend - tequila in the Cuban bar, picnicking in Richmond park, pool in the Pilgrim... Then of course I spoiled the fun with my very special knack for making a mess.

And now someone is very angry with me.