"Does the paranormal exist? I've noticed there's a definite area of my kitchen that's several degrees colder than the rest of the room. …I called an exorcist, but he said it was just my fridge." [Paul Merton]

The overarching topic of the moment is the broken fridge. After a couple of, how shall I put this, hurried visitations to Mr. Khazi – neither prompted by any of the usual foods which irritate my irritables – I wondered whether there may have been other causes.

Putting two thermometers into the fridge [just in case one wasn't calibrated - what, me, paranoid?] and leaving them there for several hours produced a reading of 10C [50f], when it should be at most 5C [41f].

I turned the knob up to full. Still 10C.

I switched the fridge off, defrosted it fully [which produced a lot of this entry's title], cleaned all the gunk out from underneath, switched it back on, and waited 24 hours for it to get back to working temperature. Which turned out to be 10C.

The fridge is part of the supplied "fixtures" of the flat, so I phoned my landlord's representatives. They sent round Aaron, the local electrician. He took one look, said "yeah, it's buggered, cheaper to get a new one than fix the thermostat" then went away.

Unfortunately here the story has been interrupted by the three-day holiday weekend, so I'm spending it devoid of refrigerated food content. Cue tin cans of everything.

Add to that the problem that come Tuesday it's not just a case of them ordering a new fridge to be delivered to my doorstep – it's an "integrated" fridge, part of a fitted kitchen; it has to be hard-wired in by Aaron – I wouldn't be allowed to touch it even if I wanted to.

So it looks like it may be a few days before I'm able to have a cheese sandwich without having to throw away the 90% of it I won't use afterwards. Okay, with the shops in my little town, the cafe, and some good friends, this is not exactly a disaster – it's totally copeable. It's just a right royal pain in the 'arris, that's all.

Although less of a pain in the 'arris than eating food that's been kept slightly warm for several days.

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Advance notice/warning that there's a new naughty story to be released, which is just getting its second proofread, hopefully as I type. Watch this space.

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Other things running round my brain this Saturday night:

* Not watching the Eurovision Song Contest. When it used to be one crap singing contest a year, it was something special, worth both loving and taking the piss out of. Now we have six sodding thousand "talent contests" on telly, from X-Factor to Britain's Got Embarrassing to Dorothy to Who's The Best At Pretending To Be Bea Arthur On LSD [note: yes, I made that one up, but I've copyrighted it so no nicking the idea, Sky One]. Why celebrate the "bad" when the bad has become the norm?

* Dinner with someone bitchenly amazing, this Thursday. If the sodding fridge saga doesn't intervene.

* Is that really Nicola Bryant, the woman who was Peri [companion to Doctors Fifth and Sixth], fleetingly in the John Lewis advert? [Yes, I found after much frame-by-frame research.]

* On which note… CELERY SQUEE!!! [This is a reference to the latest Who episode, which I won't further explain so that I don't give away spoilers.]

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Today's Big Question: Which household device*, appliance or gadget would you least want to give up? Why?

* note: this does not include "personal entertainment devices in phallic forms".

Various Mini-Updates:

Job: The 20% deal is all done bar signing my name to it. Having got over the initial "omigod, I'm gonna spend the rest of my life living off fish fingers and 19p Aldi soup" phase, I've entered the second section of "coping with change"; thinking of how to construct the necessary alterations in a positive and constructive manner.

The main saving that needs to be made – and various bits of motivation including this are leading up to this – is that I need to give up nicotine.

This is not something I can do straight away – for various reasons I need to get medical permission before I embark on this – but it's certainly something I can work on at the minute in terms of getting my strategy and my mindset prepared for when it actually happens; say, a month's time.

This may all sound like a pathetic addict putting off the day of reckoning, but the fact that I'm seriously contemplating this change is, in itself, progress. I am, of course, no stranger to "addiction recovery" – it's now the best part of two decades since first realizing I had to stop drinking at some point – and I know that my way is the only way to do this. You can't force any addict to give up [unless you utterly isolate them 24/7 for years and years] – you can only set the conditions in which recovery can be allowed to happen. And I think the time may soon be ripe…

Stomach: Since the bout of food poisoning pre-Xmas, and the splurge of food which the festive season always brings, I've been a lot more careful about what I put into my digestive system. And it's paid dividends. Apart from a small tempestuous event on Saturday evening – which I'm putting down to some dodgy veggiesausages – things have been brilliantly quiet on this front.

The main "loss" has been that I've cut out curries. Yes, yes, I know, it's surprising that this particular addiction has gone unsated for six weeks, but it's actually been easier than I thought.

One particular aspect of the change in diet has been the addition of a daily "bio-yoghurt" pot. Opinions on these differ wildly, and of course my subjective perceptions of their effects are invalid as evidence; the fact that they've coincided with a calm period in my digestive system may be entirely accidental or placebo. Bottom line, though; if you're not concerned about the amount of sugar syrup put into the things – and, luckily, sugar is not an addiction of mine – I figure it's at least doing no harm to put a small amount of sickly-sweet yoghurt in my system every day.

Saucy Writing: Something is brewing. It's not ready yet, I can't even tell what it is yet, but I can feel it there…

February: Always the "joker" month – it's either brilliant or crap. This year, apart from that one "down" day, it's been good so far – although one never knows what's around the corner, natch.

No V-Day cards or presents will be sent this year; and CarolineDay will, hopefully, be spent pootling around Knorwich with S. wetting ourselves over too-expensive shoes before going back to New Look, which has thankfully cottoned onto the size-9 wide-fitting affordable but doesn't-look-like-stereotype-lesbian market.

Plankton: PLANKTON!!!

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Today's Big Question: What "change" are you currently contemplating?

Warning: Post contains description of gastric distress.

When it comes to our bodies [as opposed to our brains] we all have our strong points and our weak spots. The perfect specimen doesn't actually exist [and if he/she does, he/she's probably too froggin' arrogant about it to actually be likeable]. Regular readers will know that my particular weak spot is my digestive system; although there's nothing seriously wrong with it, it's what's known in the trade as irritable, and it has the tendency to make me sodding irritable whenever it's irritated.

So, when on late afternoon Monday my bowels felt like they were going to explode, it wasn't a complete shock to me, even though it was sodding annoying.

Several hours later, after an attack which could best be described as on the sodding extremely heavy side, I phoned NHS Direct. They advised me that given the amount of red in what I had just passed, I needed to go down to A&E.

Ipswich Hospital's changed since last time I was in there in a hurry – there's a new Emergency Unit wing, and it's rather swish. After checking in, I gingerly sat in the waiting area – not too many people, and ostensibly all "walking wounded" physical injuries – on the seat nearest the toilets. By then everything, including liquids, had passed out of me, but my insides were still cramping as if there was more to come.

It's common to hear horror stories about eight-hour waits in Casualty: I guess it has its peak periods, but a quiet Monday evening, before the pubs close, isn't one of its busiest times, I guess. It was an hour's wait for the initial assessment [hey, you're not going to die on us, are you] and an hour and a bit to then see a proper doctor [let me just do a quick physical up there; yes, you've got food poisoning and a small external fissure, but we don't need to keep you in if you've got someone to look after you].

Given the advice that I needed looking after, I decamped to my mother's with a box of sachets of rehydration powder – which say on the box they're "blackcurrant flavour"; which I guess they are, if you took a blackcurrant, dipped it in salt, dissolved it in hydrochloric acid then paid an insane Albanian to sit on it for six months.

So actually the A&E was one of the least worst bits of the whole evening, and the only really sickening aspect of it was that the TV in the waiting area was tuned to Channel 4 all evening – so my companions whilst I waited were a documentary on African kids being slaughtered for being witches, followed by How To Look Good Naked – The Over-60's Edition. Not exactly the most reassuring – or digestive-system-settling – of distractions. Should've brought a little radio.

Anyway; most of yesterday was spent asleep at Ma's, and I managed to eat and keep in me a baked potato and a cheese sandwich later on in the evening, so it's almost back to normal – a day or two's resting up should see me right.

I have radio, I have good books, I now have my laptop with me – I'm definitely all right

Thanks to those of you who saw my pained FB updates and sent good wishes. Sorry I've not kept up with everyone for the last couple of days – I'll catch up later on today.

In the meantime, here's a big question for you:

What is your physical weak spot? What is your physical strong spot?

Monday mornings are not usually the places for "hurrah!" of any nature, although one of the joys of shift work is that I don't actually have any fixed "Monday morning" back-to-work feeling, since both work and sleep patterns tend to wander all over the place like a drunk on the A12 with one leg longer than the other.

And whilst there's not a lot of actual "hurrah!", there are things I'm content with, things that have made it okay to be alive at 10am this day.

In no particular order;

- The heatwave has abated [a bit]. It's gone from the uncomfortable around-thirty to a very bearable low-twenties-with-a-breeze. All activities – sleeping, eating, sitting at the computer, walking, driving, pointing in the general direction of Armenia – become pleasurable again, instead of a sweaty mess that makes you want to stick your head in an igloo for a month. And the blisters on my right arm might die down.

- No further ill effects from the chilled-section curry, bought from Asda, which I was given for dinner yesterday, and which within three hours decided to reappear again at both ends. I'll save you any further description of the events.

- Ian starts his new job. Bookselling to hospital care is a bit of a leap, but I'm rooting for him. Good luck!

- London on Wednesday. I had other invites for both the weekend just gone and for next weekend, but work precludes them; instead, subject to confirmation, trains and life in general, I get another round of "person from Internet appears in actual 'meatspace' and hopefully turns out to be bitchenly amazing".

[Further details, such as who and where, withheld for the moment just in case some psychotic is reading this and decides to turn up at the restaurant at the same time...]

- No more sodding Wimbledon. If football matches can't go on forever and are only given half an hour of extra time before being forced to end up in the lottery of a penalty shootout, why are tennis matches allowed to take up five sodding hours of the telly and radio, cancelling other things?

The Ashes series starts on Wednesday, thank Gawd. [Don't worry, Pet, I won't be bringing a radio into the restaurant.] You may all yawn, but at least so long as you don't depend on Radio 4 LW it's easily avoidable, unlike etc. etc.

- Torchwood Week. The third season is five shows over five nights, starting 9pm tonight.

The bastards killed off my favourite character at the end of last season, so it remains to be seen how the slimmed-down triangular version will work. Teasers for the episodes so far have revealed a Midwich Cuckoos "kids get taken over by alien intelligence" theme, though their mantra of "we are coming" is perhaps slightly unfortunate…

Which, by the way, is another bonus of it not being quite so hot as it was…

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Today's Big Question: What are you happy about, or at least content with, this Monday?

I've put on weight.

I found this today when I put on my Marilyn Manson t-shirt -

- and found that it looked like he was doing a Timewarp-style pelvic thrust.

I would weigh myself, but I haven't got any scales. [*insert your fish-type joke here.*]

I suspect, though, that a fairly sedentary nightshift lifestyle, coupled with an expansion in my eating out habits, has contributed to a situation where, a month before my 37th birthday, I'm finally succumbing to middle-aged spread.

I'm not particularly bothered about losing whatever weight I've put on, but I don't want to put on much more. The options, as I see it, are these:

1] Improve My Diet. There's certainly room for improvement – as anyone who sees me in the local "if it moves, deep-fry it" cafe could attest – but I don't want to have to watch my food if I possibly can avoid it.

The reason for this is that I have a history of problems with food, stretching back to when I was fairly severely "ill".

I lost a lot of weight at that time because I got very paranoid about what I was eating and what it was doing to my digestive system, already overburdened with psychosomatic symptoms.

One particular period in Dagenham I [just about] remember that I hardly ate anything for a whole fortnight because my food budget went on Scotch, and from the scraps of writing that remain I can safely conclude that if the 36-year-old social-worker me met the Dagenham-starvation me, the latter would be detained under the Mental Health Act quicker than you can say "canary smeared with margarine".

So over the years of my "recovery" I had to learn to absolutely not worry about what I ate, what it cost, or what it would do to my stomach, and just eat it anyway. Perhaps I've gone too far in that, and I need to find a happy medium, but I'm not sure it'll be easy.

2] Exercise. Again, much room for improvement here, including the kind of horizontal whole-body exercise that I've been missing for far, far too long.

In my last job, a few years ago, the place I worked at had its own little five-a-side football team: we were absolutely pants, but at least we got a workout. Now? No funding for that. Even though the people I work with are the kind of people the Government will be throwing money at later on in their lives when they're much fatter. Yes. Hmmm.

I do try to have a good walk – if not every day, then at least every other day – and, fortunately, I'm in the kind of area where some very pleasant places to walk are not far away, even if some of them become venues for "cottaging" and "dogging" in the evening.

I'd probably need something a bit more aerobic than that, though. Cycling, however green and worthy, is dangerous in these parts where the roads are narrow and the drivers are psychotic. There's a sprinkling of local gyms, which I'd rather stick my joy-parts in a blender than pay good money to.

One option here is the evening class. Yes, it may chill what's left of the rebellious teenager in my soul, but even if I don't get to the bellydancing again, the Tai Chi or something may appeal. All I have to find is someone to go with so I don't feel like a total tit…

3] Ignore It.

Which'd be great until it gets to the point where none of my clothes fit any more. I'm still attached to my t-shirt collection; some of those are just completely irreplaceable, unless you pay inflated eBay prices.

And it's even worse if, like me, you're one of those people whose preferences and proclivities mean you have to maintain two wardrobes…

FX: The flicker of a TV set being switched on.

PRESENTER: And finally this week, let's take a look on how you should use the hard shoulder in an emergency.

CUT TO VT: Grainy CCTV footage of a motorway. Time and date are stamped on the bottom of the screen.

PRESENTER [V/O]: This is a northern stretch of the anticlockwise M25 on a fairly busy Saturday afternoon, with traffic flowing normally. It's not far to the next junction…

A silver car pulls over to the hard shoulder and stops.

PRESENTER [V/O]: …but sometimes that's too long to wait.

The car switches on its hazard lights: a man scrambles out of the passenger-side door, and drops on all-fours on the grass verge.

PRESENTER [V/O]: If you have to stop, use your hazard lights, and if you get out of the car use the offside door if you can.

The man uses one hand to pull his long hair back behind his head as he copiously vomits up a mixture of cheese sandwich and black coffee.

PRESENTER [V/O]: Obviously this is classed as an emergency. If you can, stay on the motorway until the next junction or service area.

MIX TO: Timestamp shows a couple of minutes later. The man swigs out of a water bottle, spits it out on the grass verge, and climbs back into the car via the passenger-side door.

PRESENTER [V/O]: As soon as you can, vacate the hard shoulder: it may be needed for other emergencies.

The silver car indicates right, and after a brief pause rejoins the traffic.

PRESENTER [V/O]: He continues to the next exit, where a traffic car found him in a petrol station just off the motorway and checked he was fit to continue driving. He was, so no action was taken.

CUT TO: Studio.

PRESENTER: That's all from Police Camera Action! this week. 'Bye for now.

CUT TO: Credits and music roll over slow-motion CU of the vomit action in all its projectile parabola glory.