Forget that The Bridge is yet again closed to high sided traffic as we huddle beneath 70mph winds; forget the steady drizzle that's been moving across the Pentlands since oh whenever - for  it is officially that time of year when we should be Slimming For Summer.
Yes it is that time of year again when we are told to get a  beach body/ smart diet /flat tummy in six, five or four days  via total fruit detox / food combining or flat out starvation ....You know the routine. 

Well, get this, this year, for a change I have cracked it.  Despite not getting out of bed for days on end, ceasing to walk further than 50 years,  and eating only jam doughnuts for a week, I am back at size ten.
Officially. 
Check it; I am very clearly wearing jeans which are labelled US size 2.
You read it here first. Obviously this is a diet plan which needs to be patented. All it takes is, wait for it, incarceration in St James' medical assessment unit for a week. Call me picky, but I can't eat within five yards of a commode. In a ward of six inmates only two of us were not elderly and bedridden. And bless Dr Jacobs who refused to consider for one moment, allowing me to walk out of that ward in the direction of to the hospital shop.
I existed on a bag of jam doughnuts brought in on day 2.

Laterwhiles, back home, I seem to have slept through any snack attacks. Which is a Good Thing since the Cherub is eating his way through foodstuffs faster than Tesco Online can deliver them, and it's been many a week since I considered baking even a pathetic wee flapjack.
The net result, peoples, is, two dress sizes down in four weeks.

Probably a good thing for world karma, that Ms Smug here is officially forbidden to fly or leave the country this side of Christmas.....