From sticking my head out of bed to setting foot on the old, hard tiles of the hallway took me three hours. Most of it was, quite clearly, taken up by procrastination, though some was taken up by the need to escape from my trousers after the second leg went disastrously wrong.

You would think that after 200 years of trouser design it would be possible to design a garment that allowed an elderly man with bad knees to dress with dignity. However, it seems not.

It is cold, which always slows me down, and it is Monday. Julia now goes to work on her own on Mondays, so I don’t need to get up. And, with her not being here, I have, if I’m honest, no reason to get up.

I skipped breakfast, because it was nearly lunchtime, and am now considering skipping lunch as I am not actually hungry and managed to rewrite three poems in my head whilst messing about with socks.I need to write them down soon or they will get mixed up with the instructions for cooking meals for the next three days, which are also jostling about in there.

Corned Beef Hash with Many Vegetables, a Vegetable Stew and Sweet Potato and Chickpea Curry, in case you are wondering. The “many vegetables” are onions, leeks, parsnip, carrot, sweet potato, swede (or neep or rutabaga depending on where you live) and spinach. Not bad for a dish that used to contain just onions, potatoes and corned beef. The vegetable stew will be much the same but will have lentils (which I have to sneak in because Julia objects to them) and pearl barley but probably no spinach. Well, they can’t be identical or it looks like you aren’t trying. The curry will have sweet potato and chick peas, onions, tomatoes (tinned), spinach and rice. It seems rice counts as one of your daily portions. I also have a small orange and a small apple for lunch. For at least three days of the week I will be getting plenty of healthy vegetables.

I aim to surpass the five a day suggestion as a regular thing – we have fruit for breakfast and lunch which helps, and am now looking at ensuring we eat 30 plants a week. It’s not hard when they allow you to count coffee and spices. If I have the four meals above plus fruit, and then count tea, coffee and spices, I’m already up to about twenty.

Chorizo and Bean Stew