Now Lynne knows the awful truth it’s time to eat humble pie... low calorie humble pie, that is.

If I tell you my guilty secret, I know I can trust you to let it go no further.

I weigh a tad over 13-and-a-half stone (I wrote that in a whisper).

If you cast your minds back to my optimistic youth, when I was a mere 61 years old at the beginning of 2017, I shared my theory that you can think yourself slim. Yes, and I clapped my hands to show I believe in fairies too. I now have to admit it doesn’t work (although Tinkerbelle was saved).

In fact my weight-loss hypothesis has not worked to the total amount of one stone. For the metrically literate, this is 6.35029kg. Most things in journalism are compared to well-known things, such as the “size of Wales” or the “size of four football pitches”.

I have managed to put on weight equivalent to a sack of spuds and my bottom covers an area not much smaller than the size of whales. I should have realised something was up (ie my weight) when the ramp up to the door at work started squeaking in protest when I used it.

Having avoided a weigh-in since my well woman appointment with the practice nurse back in January, I was now being forced to have another because my husband’s pension provider wants to calculate how long I’m likely to live, or something.

As we don’t have bathroom scales at home, I had to weigh myself in Boots the Chemist. I can only say, thank heaven it wasn’t a speak-your-weight machine because that would have had them rolling in the Athlete’s Foot medication aisles.

If this swish new digital model had spoken (according to pantomime lore) it would have said: “Oof, one at a time please.”

These days, you get a discreet slip of paper with your weight, height and BMI displayed. (BMI is not a regional airline). If only, I thought, I had been a foot taller, my Body Mass Index might have been within the safe zone. As it is, dear reader, with a BMI of 31.6 I am well above the acceptable maximum of 25 and thus seriously in need of a diet and exercise... I shudder at the prospect.

Sharing my woeful results with my husband, he was encouraging. “Well you did have your shoes on... and I expect your jeans are heavy... and you forgot to press the female button so it thought you were a man.”

There was no answer to that but I appreciated the thought. Had my jeans been that heavy I would have had to haul my way through Boots on my tummy, dragging my heavy legs behind me. As for being a man? Things can only get better, I suppose.

I am now preparing for a new healthy eating regime as best I can. Currently, I’m eating all the chocolate in the house so I won’t be tempted.

And I have taken on board the advice not to continuously re-stock.

I have brought in large quantities of porridge because it’s filling (in much the same way as mortar) and Good For You (GFY). You can always tell when a food is GFY because it looks like sludge and doesn’t taste of anything.

It is also important to cut down on bread, rice, pasta and cheese and I am thinking about that.

Exercise... yes, well. I am virtually touching my toes 10 times in the morning and 10 times before I go to bed. I am hoping that, eventually, I shall actually touch them. I have about five inches to go. Moscow State Circus, here I come.

According to website Furniture 123, the most common causes of disagreements over flat-pack assembly are:

? Not having the correct tools (82%)

? Unwelcome ‘interfering’ (76%)

? The method undertaken (59%)

? Interpretation of the instructions (43%)

? Abandoning the job before it is finished (32%)

In our 39 years of marriage I think the nearest we have come to a bitter custody battle is over who gets the allen key.

“Do you actually look at the instructions?”

“You’ve put it on upside down.”

“Is it supposed to lean over like that?”

In the end we found that it was best for one person to assemble and the other to sit and do the crossword.