HELTER-SKELTER

Do they still have helter skelters at funfairs? I was thinking about this the other day, while driving round Sainsbury's car park.

I looked it up. For four hundred years, 'helter skelter' meant sort of confused and disoriented, dizzy, if you will; which I imagine is how you're supposed to feel at the end of the ride when you stagger off with your coconut mat, picking the splinters out of your red-raw fingers.

I guess I feel a bit helter-skelter at the moment. I moved desks this week and everything's different. Plus somehow I've managed to get out of sync with all my evenings, and everything is clustering together, preventing me from establishing a routine, or in fact, a night to disappear from public view and relax. As the days go by, so does the scenery, round and round, as I slip and slide down this rickety old track.

My oven is essentially a smoke-machine and using it would take more faith than Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego could muster, psyching themselves up for a another go at the fiery furnace.

Plus, I've run out of clean socks, which is always annoying - especially as I've had to revert to my pile of odds. There are few things more infuriating than trying to pull a trainer sock round one ankle (inside your shoe) while the sock on the other foot is so tight that it's cutting off the circulation in your lower leg.

Well. I could sort all of this out, couldn't I?

It's pretty difficult when the world is spinning round your head.