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Liz Jones's diary: In which I overdo it again

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So, I spent Christmas on my own. Even Nic, my assistant, had high-tailed it to London. My friend Isobel had a migraine. My Christmas lunch was a disaster, even though I now have an oven I can heat things up in for the first time in five years.

Who knew parsnips cooked so quickly? If only they had given me some sign before they became all shrivelled and desiccated, like me. I overcooked the sprouts. I burnt my hand.

There is a storm raging outside. Terrible wind and rain. I got Nic’s horse Quincy in and put him in the barn to dry out, but I couldn’t manage Lizzie and the ponies.

It was so easy, horse-wise, where I was before: no mud, as I’d had special all-weather tracks made at gateways. A yard, where they could choose to come in and shelter. Now I have to lead them along a lane and as there are five of them, it’s very difficult on your own, especially as Lizzie is blind and Dream disabled.

This morning, worried about snow on the hills, I carried two bales of hay across the field, and sank to my knees time and again. My hair is an impenetrable knot. I no longer have 50 acres, of course, so I can’t just walk the dogs as a pack, off the lead, without worrying.

Now, I have to keep Mini on a lead, given she’s so wilful. The other night, exhausted, I just let her in the garden at 11.15pm. Michael, Grace Kelly and Jess all came back within minutes, but Mini just would not come.

I spent the next three hours looking for her with a torch. I’ve tried training her with mini sausages (Mini sausages) but if she is head-first down a rabbit hole, she is just not interested. She, like her mummy, is not really motivated by food.

I thought he would like me more if I were thinner

I don’t regret moving. Once indoors I’m warm, and I love my house, even though it’s just rented. It will be easier when spring gets here. But part of being somewhere lovely is that you want to show it off. I’ve invited people to stay – Kerry, Sue Needleman, my friend Dawn, a sister – but no one has come.

I think the main problem – the only problem, really – between me and the boyfriend is he hates being written about. Another friend – I’ve never met her, but we email – sent me this: ‘Come on. Tell me who it is. I won’t breathe a word! I’ve never met a rock musician who is shy!’

It’s not that he’s shy, or even that he wants his relationship and private life to be just that, private, but he hates me making fun of him, telling the world when we do or don’t have sex. He prefers publicity on his own terms. My husband certainly wasn’t shy, but he too hated me revealing every little thing. He developed a secret life. I wonder if this one is doing that too. Viz…

Me: ‘Whose funeral was it? Someone close?’

Him: ‘Oh, no one you’d know, it was fine.’ Viz…

Me: ‘Is there something wrong? Last time you came here, the only time…’

‘No, nothing. Um, except… Don’t write this, yes?’

‘No, of course.’ (Listen. You try filing 750 words during a week of several bank holidays. You get desperate. You betray people.)

‘I’m worried. Um, you seem to have become very thin again.’

I have. My skinny jeans are now oxford bags, and fall off my hips. I hadn’t thought he’d noticed. I hate it when people worry about me. ‘I don’t have time to eat.’

‘Everyone has time to eat,’ he said, reasonably.

I always stop eating when I’m stressed. Plus, you try lugging two bales of hay across a field in the mud and the driving rain. You wouldn’t need to join a gym. But, yes, knowing he was coming to stay for the weekend meant I stopped eating. It’s a reflex. I thought he would like me more if I were thinner. So, yet again, my stupid overdoing it has done the opposite of what was intended, ie, I repulsed him.

‘No, not repulsed, don’t be daft. It’s just I don’t want to be the source of any extra anxiety in your life.’

‘You’re not. You’re a nice thing. You’re the purple one with a nut in the middle in my box of Quality Street.’

‘You’re the nut,’ he said, hanging up the phone.

  More diary updates Liz Jones: In which exhaustion sets in Liz Jones: In which he won't commit Liz Jones: In which we don't get intimate

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