day 23

8.45am: In a surge of early-morning rebellion, bypass habitual porridge oats, and go straight for the office biscuit tin.

8.50am: Make Earl Grey tea with posh Parisian tea leaves using the same elaborate (and moderately painful) process as yesterday.

9am: Coralie (colleague) pityingly offers to pay for some Earl Grey tea bags – if I go and get them.

9.15am: Marks and Spencer’s is filled with white-haired ladies clutching flamboyantly iced cakes. Want cake.

9.20am: Buy Earl Grey tea bags (torturously positioned next to luxury chocolate biscuits) with Coralie's money. Buy brown roll and a high-end M&S tomato with my own (might as well sort lunch out).

Total (minus the teabags) = 61p

Money left = £12.37

9.30am: Mug of tea and a pair of Pound Shop digestives from the office tin.

9.32am: Discover that Pound Shop digestives do not withstand tea-dipping.

9.38pm: Why is biscuit dipped in tea amazing, but biscuity sludge in bottom of mug gross?

1pm: Starving, and definitely on a sugar-downer; hurriedly make tomato roll.

1.15pm: Predictably, still hungry.

2pm: Search absent colleague's desk drawers for edible things. Find none.

6pm: Hate the tube; hate the Central Line; hate everyone on the Central Line. Why doesn't everyone just refuse to use the tube until Boris makes it bigger? Or just only let small people on, or something...

6.35pm: Through door. Need food fast.

6.45pm: Dinner = porridge oats. Pathetic Ruth-Ellen, simply pathetic.

7pm: Listen to blurry tales of dance-floor romance from a very hungover cousin.

8pm: Boyfriend arrives, clutching Tesco’s bag.

8.30pm: Feel little wave of guilt that boyfriend has to bring his own food with him.

8.45pm: Feeling intensifies as I eat some of his avocado.

8.50pm: Definite pangs of guilt as I relieve him of some of his quiche (roasted pepper and mushroom) and a little bit of tomato.

8.51pm: Taste buds jangling in delight.

9.30pm: Cousin orders herself a pizza, under the logic that her hangover is demanding a pudding, and it is only really acceptable to get a pudding, if she gets a pizza as well.

10pm: Start getting ready for bed whilst hearing cousin angrily shout at pizza delivery man who won't walk up the stairs to our flat.