The High Price of Tea

I have spent the last few days on a Bed of Pain. The bed itself was fine - I have laboured long and hard to make sure that I have the most comfortable bed in the world - but I was languishing in Pain on it.

I was Suffering from migraine. Or not, medical opinion varies. It was a one-sided headache which made me feel nauseous, but (on this occasion) without accompanying funny coloured lights (which was a mercy. If somebody had told me when I was eighteen that I would not enjoy free coloured lights with different coloured borders hovering around in the air, I would not have bought it. Life is a very chastening business.) Anyway, my doctor is completely unconvinced and says I suffer from tension headaches, and so I am driven to Home Remedies - depriving myself of tea, coffee, chocolate and cheese. The last three really aren't an issue - I dearly love cheese, but shouldn't eat it anyway because it is implicated in the fact that my cup size has gone up four letters in the last six years, or in other words, it maketh me porky. But tea - crumbs, tea.

My morning pick-me-up, my eleven o'clock shot, my refreshing lunch-time brew and my home-time treat. I am so dull these days I am nearly flawless - and now, my only vice, my favourite fix! to be so cruelly deprived of almost my last remaining pleasure! Two days of moaning into my pillows was enough, though, and now my new vices will be liquorice and orange teas - and possibly, later in the month, peony and other weird flavours. Four weeks without tea; can this be sustained without descent into madness? I shall have to see, for I can lose no more of my life to the misery of the migraine if it can be prevented. I have not had a cup of tea since Friday afternoon; three days down and twenty-five to go. Bye bye to tea. Hello to Rude Health.

NANCYLAND

Well, I was wrong - the Nancies had to snog somebody, but it wasn't Capn Jack. Poor guy must be all smooched out from Torchwood. They had to snog a Joseph. He was sweet and didn't mind that Keisha had been eating onions.

Finally said tarah to Tara, who sang rather craply throughout, and then opened her larynx and sang a blinder on her way out. Was she nobbled, I wonder; she was criticized for being "pop-py" - they meant that she sounded like a pop singer, not a red flower - but what she had to sing was "I Can't Live (If Living is Without You)" and "Let's Hear It for the Boy" - the definition of pop. Did she misguidedly choose these songs for herself? I think not - I smell stitch-up here; but then - that would be the all-controlling BBC, the unelected representative of The People and What's Best for Them.

This year's contenders are all excellent singers - the Irish leading the way with three of the final nine, all lookers and two about nineteen. Meanly, I find myself hoping that one of the older ones gets the role - Rachel or Francesca or Sarah, who have been living in London pounding pavements and going to auditions and living off crap jobs for five years - simply because the 17/18/19 year olds have had such an easy time of it so far. Niamh is pleased that she's cooking her own sausages and doing her own laundry - a proper achievement for a 17 year old to pique herself on, but not a life story to make you feel that she's earned a plum role in the West End. As for Jessie, a coltish copper-curl-tossing Irish colleen, it doesn't matter that she can't act for toffee and giggles like an idiot when she has to try, because ALW can barely stay in his seat for praising her. Is he harping on about her accent, which is at least as strong as Simona's? Funny that.

Dr Who was really good. Why it was called "The Fires of Pompeii" instead of "Written in Stone" is anybody's guess, but even through the dark mists of pain I enjoyed it. What splendid fun it is not to have a soupy tweeny girl in lurve with the knobbly kneed doctor, but instead the voluptuous Donna giving voice to More Estuary Indignation at every turn. She even makes him cross, which is fabulous. Loving it loving it loving it.