Bathing by candlelight

...and not by romantic choice, may I add. Due to either supernatural forces or the dodgy electrical work of our Polish builders, the lights in our house have one by one been permanently extinguished. Since we of course have no candle holders, I've had to fill the bathroom with glasses of dusty old dinner candles and waste my precious Danish vanilla candle purely to enable me to achieve a basic standard of hygiene.

In some ways, it's quite aesthetically pleasing: in dim candlelight you can't see how bad your racoon eyes are, your tan looks great, and cellulite is a thing of the past. On the other hand, shaving your legs becomes an extreme sport. How on earth did girls beautify themselves before Thomas Edison? Luckily for me and my beauty routine, it's only two more sleeps before I find myself in the relative luxury of Ben & Erin's.

Unfortunately, that is a bit of a two-edged sword in that I'm losing Mia, who's moving back to Australia. Mia could always be relied on as a single friend to take to parties where I was afraid I might accidentally snog JonJon's flatmate, come celebrity spotting on a Sunday morning at the vegetable market or partake in completely gratuitous jewellery shopping in Notting Hill.

Meanwhile, in a meeting that may cause some kind of disruption in the space-time continuum, tomorrow the Queen of Unrequited Love (that's me) meets the Queen of Dumped, author of Ex and the City, who I am interviewing uncomfortably early in the morning. Of course, Queen's Park being the media vortex it is, she actually lives quite close to me and we are going to meet for a chat over breakfast. I have a feeling we'll get on rather well...