Geri’s preparation prior to attempting her lap of the track involved getting in a few sneaky rally-driving lessons from a friend. Mine involved going shopping.

            See, while some peoples’ ideas of forward planning to avert financial meltdown might involve withdrawing all their money from the bank and stuffing it under a mattress or putting it on a horse, mine turned, as usual, to food. What will we all eat in these times of economic gloom?

            The answer lay, or so I thought, within the pages of ‘101 One-Pot Dishes,’ a handy-sized cookbook of, well, 101 one-pot dishes. I picked it up in Borders for the credit-crunch-friendly price of £4.99. Economical, comforting and delicious. What could possibly go wrong?

In my head I was all set to spend the dark evenings of autumn and winter smugly ladling out nutritious casseroles and cunning cassoulets for my amazed and grateful family. The washing-up would be completed in moments, drudgery halved, job done - mug of tea, anyone?

            It hasn’t turned out to be as simple as that, sadly. Things rarely are. But I have to admit that part of the problem lies with my long-held belief that reading recipes all the way through before starting cooking is strictly for cissies. If you’ve got the ingredients, you can cook it, so get on with it… 

The first one-pot recipe I tried was a yummy-sounding stew of pork, apples, potatoes and sausages. Excellent. Everything apart from the sausages was bunged into the pot and left to simmer for an hour or so, with just the sausages to add near the end of cooking time. So, at the allotted moment, I checked the foot of the page. ‘Brown the sausages and add to the pot…’ Eh? What in, exactly? Call me pedantic but doesn’t that make it two-pot cooking? Similarly with the curries. ‘Serve with rice’ at the end of a recipe to my mind involves cooking the rice in a pot first, doesn’t it?

Admittedly, one recipe suggested buying ready-cooked pasta to serve on the side of the dish. Very crafty. However I couldn’t find ready-cooked pasta in Tesco, nor could I bring myself to ask, in case I got that most dreaded of things from the assistant: a Funny Look. But even if I had managed to track it down, what would I have heated it up in? The cheering warmth of the evening sun?

Flicking through the pages, I thought it a bit of a cheat when I read the recipe that suggested putting a tray of oven chips in a hot oven, and then, five minutes before supper time, cracking some eggs into the gaps. That was when I realised how fine the line can be between crafty, one-pot cookery, and just being a bit of a slob. I mean, did you know that you can pour Heinz Baked Beans straight into the pan that’s still busy cooking your breakfast fry-up? Me neither. But apparently you can.

Serendipitously, just last week found me with no power in my kitchen, and only a single ring through in the back of the house to cook on. And in addition to the family, I also had two builders needing dinner before driving back down south. Thank goodness, I thought, for the astute episode of forward-planning that had led me to buy ‘101 One-Pot Dishes!’

Except I couldn’t find the book anywhere. It has disappeared. I think it has realised that it has been rumbled, and skulked off under a stone. £4.99’s worth, missing in action.

There was nothing else for it but to fall back on that other credit-crunch essential: parents. Mine, spotting the SOS sign picked out in pebbles on the lawn, turned up with stoic, ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ Blitz-spirit smiles, and mercy-dropped a large pot of steaming Bolognese into our cheering midst.  We were saved! For now…

By the way, it’s worth noting that Geri Halliwell, even after all the preparation she put in, still clocked up a rubbish time on the Top Gear track.  There’s a moral in there somewhere, surely?

            Also, well on its way to becoming a permanent fixture, is Andrew Marr’s breezeblock-sized “A History of Modern Britain” which, in a self-improving frame of mind, I imported from the bookcase to the bedside table aeons ago.   One day I shall get beyond the introduction. Oh, who am I kidding.

            There is almost always a recipe book, and some sort of paperback - currently Stephen Fry’s “Moab is my Washpot“, the rambling autobiography of his early life.

            But now there’s a new bedside man in my life. His name is Banksy, he’s a graffiti artist and his book, “Wall and Piece”, is one of very few where, after getting to the end, I immediately turn back to the start and read it all over again.

            It’s mainly drawings and photographs, you see. Powerful images and statements illegally painted or installed, sometimes in high-profile places but mainly just on random walls in random streets; messages and comments about society that make you stop, smile (mostly), think about the state of stuff, and then move on. Genuine Pop Art, I guess.

            The cover quote is from a Metropolitan Police spokesman and it reads: “There’s no way you’re going to get a quote from us to use on your book cover.” Round one to Banksy.

            From the Warhol-esque image of the clown being dragged away by riot police, under the tiny caption: “You told that joke twice”, to the characters from The Jungle Book, bound and blindfolded by axe-wielding loggers in the middle of a torched wasteland, Banksy always makes me think: ‘I wish I’d thought of that’…

            He sneaks into animal enclosure in zoos and scrawls groups of lines on rocks, with diagonal strokes through them, as though the animals are counting off their days in captivity. He attaches wheel clamps to statues of chariots in Central London, he recreates famous landscape masterpieces, and then adds sinister CCTV towers or police ‘do not cross’ scene-of-crime tape. He outlines primitive shopping trolleys on cave paintings, daubs ‘Late Again’ on the sides of trains and depicts ferocious, masked hoodies, hurling bunches of flowers.

            Problem. It’s easy, after a few read-throughs of “Wall and Piece“, to start fancying that you can see an art installation in everything. I can no longer look at a row of traffic cones without wanting to do a Banksy and return in the dark, wearing a balaclava, to cut their bottoms off at diminishing heights and angles, making it look as though the ground they’re standing on has turned to quicksand.

            Similarly, there was a flashing sign near me for weeks saying ‘Work starts here on 25^th August, delays expected.’ And when the 25^th came and went with no progress I thought I was onto something - aha! The very delay is the delay! It must be art!

            Banksy takes an aggressive stance on what constitutes art. Who decides what art is? He says, “when you go into an Art Gallery you are simply looking at the trophy cabinet of a few millionaires.” Which is a fair point. I am no expert, as will be obvious by now, but I do recall someone who sounded like they knew what they were on about explaining on Radio 4 why The Mona Lisa wasn’t, technically, a very good picture. It’s all very confusing.

But I admire people like Banksy, who nudge at the boundaries of things that we accept as inevitable parts of modern life, in clever, entertaining ways - see Bob Geldof for more details. That’s not to say I’d be happy for someone to come and paint on my wall - they’d get raced faster than you could scream “Oi! Not In My Back Yard!”

Unless, of course, it was Banksy himself. He’d get coffee and maybe a nice scone.  

            Same goes for Athlete’s Foot. I didn’t hear anyone in Beijing blame their failure to ‘medal’ on a nasty bout of that.

            Housemaid’s Knee?  Can’t say I’ve ever been afflicted with that one although to be honest, it’s doubtful I’ve ever gone at the housework hard enough to put myself at risk.

            Probing a nearby GP in the name of research, I learned of more occupation-specific conditions. Did you know that there’s an ailment known as Policeman’s Heel? That Gamekeeper’s Thumb isn’t limited to just Gamekeepers? That you don’t need a diamond-patterned jersey to suffer from Golfer’s Elbow? That Golfer’s Elbow is different from Tennis Elbow?

Brewer’s Droop - there’s another one. It sounds a bit rude, but it’s nothing compared to the tender condition that’s attributed to Chimney Sweeps. Poor chaps.

            Who names these things? Worthy physicians in Victorian wood-panelled consulting rooms, or groups of people in pubs having a laugh? Anyhow, I’ve discovered a new one.

            If nobody minds, I’m going to call it “Museum-goer’s Leg”. And it is the curse of the holiday mum.

            My legs seem to know the instant I go over the door of a museum. They’re like animals who can sense when they’re on the way to the vet. It’s very mysterious.

            There’s no time delay; no hour or so of pain-free looking and learning, before the symptoms come crashing in.

Instant sore feet. Swiftly followed by an aching numbness that travels upwards to my knees, as though all of the blood has stopped circulating and is solidifying, throbbing, screaming to get out.

            The condition is usually eased by diverting to the café for coffee and a bun, then formulating a plan of where to go for an early lunch. Management thereafter involves fixing a time-limit for the rest of the visit. Half an hour is about right.

            Sometimes, though, even that is too long. The legs feel like they’re going to explode in a pulpy mess and the feet scream for mercy. When that happens -let’s call it the acute phase - proceeding directly to the gift shop can help, until the rest of the family’s ready to leave.

            This summer holiday, with the weather being how it was, we visited several museums. And I learned that it didn’t really matter what sort of trickery they threw at us in the name of education and entertainment, the attacks of Museum-goer’s Leg were still triggered within the first five minutes, every time. London’s Science Museum, for instance, offered an all-singing, all-dancing interactive spectacular exhibition designed to prove to our children that no matter how much they cared about the environment they were still all doomed, it was all their fault and there was nothing they could do about it. At least, from my chair over in the corner, that’s what it seemed like to me.  Afterwards I trudged in their wake up to the earthquake room and lurched onto the earthquake simulator, just to get something to hold on to.

            If Museum-goer’s Leg strikes even in hyper, buzzy environments like those, it ought to be ten times worse in the Natural History Museum with its endless glass cases filled with assorted stuffed critters, no?

No. It’s actually a bit better there, which is odd. Maybe it’s because of the wonderful high ceilings of the beautiful old building, that lift the spirits and ease the feet. Or maybe it’s because the stuffed critters don’t try to send any right-on messages apart from: ‘Excuse me? Can you get me out of here?’ Which, come to think of it, is pretty much what my legs were telling me, so perhaps that explains it.

            I don’t dislike museums. I just wish they didn’t hurt so much. I like what they do; those occasional Kodak moments when the children are fully engaged with something alien to me like fossils and I can sit back - in the café, usually, and feel like Parent of the Year. Curiosity - aside from what it did to the cat - is good. Museum-goer’s Leg is bad. Though it’s infinitely preferable to what the chimney sweep gets.

I know, I know. I feel like a cross between David Brent and that guy who couldn’t accept that he got four thumbs-downs on the X-Factor and told Simon Cowell he’d regret that decision till his dying day then swore and cussed all the way out the building.

 Oh, I tried to sound all friendly and agreeable and un-stalkerly but the deed is done. Wonder if they’ve stopped laughing at Competition HQ yet?

            Deep in concentration on the computer, I was switching between roughing out a chapter of a book that may or may not be going somewhere, and over-competitively tackling an online spelling quiz, when the jarring ‘thud’ nearly gave me heart failure.

            There’s no sound quite like it. I knew before turning round that some poor bird had made the rookie error of mistaking the window of my house for more of the outside.

            I didn’t want to turn round and look. That would have meant facing up to a potentially fatal incident and I was doing so well on Hard Spell (which is a BBC children’s word challenge) that rushing to engage with the crisis outside would have threatened my record. And you can’t let those nine-year-old spelling geniuses get the better of you, can you?

            But it was hopeless. My concentration had been fatally punctured when that little beak made contact with the glass, so I hesitated online and came to grief on ‘paraphernalia’ which, in high-end junior spelling terms, is about as easy as they come.

Abandoning the quiz with reluctance, I swivelled round, and looked.

            The little bird wasn’t dead. It was crouching on the window-sill, hyperventilating. It was blinking a lot, too, perhaps the avian equivalent of slapping your forehead and saying ‘D’oh! I can’t believe I just did that - sheesh, hope nobody noticed!’

            Small, brown and quivery, I think the technical name for it is an LBJ - a Little Brown Job. My husband, pillar of the RSPB that he is, would have had it named in several languages by now, not that that would have done it much good. But he could probably have told me whether its cheep was sounding a bit off or not - as things were I was none the wiser whether it was a rattling death-cheep, a piercing cheep of pain or just a common-or-garden, full-out livid cheep.

            I’m no use at identifying birds, possessing a repertoire limited to the likes of robins, puffins and ducks. Oh, and crows. When my daughter pointed out a wee bird in the garden recently and said ‘look at the cute chaffinch!’ I was beyond impressed. Somebody, somewhere, had done something right with that girl and it hadn’t been me.

            Cautiously I stood up and approached the window. The unidentified little bird just sat there. This was not good news. Little birds should fly away when people approach. Its head seemed to be listing at a curious angle too. Concussion. I half-expected to see it perform a full Basil Fawlty faint - straight over, flat on its back, wee leggies in the air. (When I was doing my criminal court training, my fellow trainee Carol and I used to console ourselves that should things ever get really tricky whilst we were standing up in front of the judge, we could pull off the Basil Fawlty Faint - though probably only once in our careers. I’m still saving mine. Must track Carol down to find out if she’s used hers yet).

            Back to the bird. What to do? I could hardly open the window and talk it down off the sill. Meanwhile it was still staring lividly at me, one beady eye at a time. Its head looked as though it could swivel a full 360 degrees and I didn’t know if that was normal or not.

            “Sorry, little birdie!”

            An apology. Like that was going to do any good. And anyhow, wasn’t there contributory negligence on the part of the bird? But I really did say that. “Sorry, little birdie!”

            After a few more tense moments, the bird swivelled its head to look at me, blinked - or possibly winked, which is a far nicer thought - and flew away. I was glad, though still worried about residual damage: hairline fractures, whiplash, memory loss and the like. If it’s daft enough to do it again I’ll know there’s been some lasting harm done - though unless it’s a penguin next time, how will I know if it’s the same bird?

But I think whoever made it up just picked the wrong ones.

I didn’t so much as meet my hero as stumble upon him by accident - not once, but twice.

The first time was far too many years ago to quote accurately. My Granny Munro had taken me to Edinburgh for a few days; a treat to celebrate moving on from primary to secondary school. I believed I was going there to help her, reading the numbers on approaching buses, hailing cabs, deciphering street maps, that sort of thing. In reality, of course, she was looking after me; taking me to interesting places and buying non-stop treats. The things we realise after folk have gone!

One of the excursions she arranged was a guided tour of Edinburgh Castle. The youngest of the group by a good sixty years, I trudged up the cobbled hill towards the castle, trying to pay attention to what the kilted guide was saying, hoping we’d get back to the shops before long. But then a couple of louts joined us, smirking, at the back.

Nervous of ‘bad boys’, I kept my head down.

            “Excuse me,” the guide called out to them, after a few minutes. “This is a private tour. Do you mind leaving us alone?”

            So the two louts shuffled good-humouredly off down the hill. I risked a glance over my shoulder. Tchuh. One of them hadn’t even bothered to get dressed - he was in his pyjamas!

            Hang on.

            He was in his pyjamas…

            He was Johnny Fingers from the Boomtown Rats.

            The other lout was Bob Geldof.

Heroes? I’m telling you, it was all I could do not to point and shout “Bob! Bob! There’s Someone Lookin’ At Ya!” which was one of their singles and would have guaranteed instant stalker status - quite an appealing thought for a twelve-year-old.

            Beside myself with excitement, I dashed over to Granny and brought her up to speed.

            “Then what are we waiting for?” was probably more or less what she said, and together we gave chase, back down the cobbled hill, eventually collaring them for a photo near the car park at the bottom.

            Bob couldn’t have been more charming. Obligingly, he stood behind me, his hands on my shoulders, and smiled into Granny’s camera. I could feel his breath on the top of my head.

The photo is a hoot; I still have it in a scrapbook. He’s wearing a leather jacket, red drainpipe trousers, green suede shoes and a soft, sexy smile. I’m wearing a blue ski anorak with a collar wide enough to land helicopters on, a checked lumberjack shirt, flares, Jesus sandals with grey tights underneath, and a miniature Coca-Cola can necklace which I’d just bought and which broke the same day. My puffy wee face is an ominous reminder never, ever to give up the jogging.

            Anyhow, I bumped into him a second time, just last year, in a DVD rental shop on London’s King’s Road. He was Sir Bob by then. It took a few moments before I realised that the craggy, greying man in the shabby long tweed coat browsing the DVD rack beside me was HIM.

            What had we both done in the intervening years? Well, I’d lost some of the puffy face. He’d fed Africa. Hmmm. I chose my hero well.

            Sir Bob seemed in no hurry to pick a DVD. Meanwhile I went through agonies wondering whether to say something.

            How about the cheesy-but-honest: “I love you very, very much and think you are a wonderful human being,” or, bolder and scarier: “Sir Bob! Edinburgh Castle! You and me! Remember - Granny took our picture?”

            He must have been aware that the strange woman to his right had kind of frozen, holding ‘How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days’ in one hand and ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ in the other. Just…staring.

            Cowardice, plus a desire not to come across as a mad bat, won out. I left the poor bloke alone, and he left the shop, unmolested.

            Both encounters made my day. I’ll never forget them. Nothing much happened, but, well, y’know. That’s the thing about meeting heroes.

            So let’s hear it for heroes! And Grannies, come to think of it. They are so often one and the same.

Do not start with ‘First of all, let me say how much I enjoyed…..’ This is when I know that you did not.  Let’s all skip straight down to the ‘However…’ on the third paragraph, shall we? That way you haven’t debased yourself with insincere platitudes, and I know where I stand. I am big and ugly, I can take it.

These messages are known as **** sandwiches (the asterisks rhyme with ‘git’ which is what I shall think you are if you ever send one of ‘em to me) and are intended to make the writer feel better, not the recipient. If I want to make myself feel better I will read to my son or go for a run or nip my husband’s head until he manfully shoulders the brunt of whatever it is…but I don’t send messages saying ‘like-this bit -don’t-like-these-bits-like this bit…

…aaannnnd…breeeeeeaaathhhhe…..