Help! I'm drowning in red tape! Everything seems to be complicated these days, with more new rules springing up than I can shake a stick at. I took back some lingerie to Marks & Spencers today. I had been busy and it hadn't been at the top of my agenda. Seems that now you have to return items within 35 days or you get around a third of the price you paid, even though the garments were in pristine condition. New policy, madame, since April, said the assistant. Company policy can't be challenged. Whatever happened to nice old M & S ?

I have been creating perfumes for ages for The Perfume Studio and life used to be at least simple there. Now it seems that they will be needing all sorts of extra information about the clients, including complete contact details and date of birth &c. What will they be wanting next? Inside leg measurements?

On a happier note, now that I have had my "Grumpy Old Woman" moment, I spent a pleasant lunchtime with my mother who, thanks to all the healing help and support from the Soul Therapy Group, is much recovered and once again attending her three bridge clubs, going to exhibitions and seeing friends. She is grieving for her younger brother, my uncle, and although they didn't see much of each other in recent years because they lived a couple of hundred miles apart, the idea that she won't physically be able to see him again breaks her heart. She is aware of the continuation of the soul into Spirit, but says that doesn't make it any easier. I am so thankful that she still has her mind intact, albeit her memory isn't always great.

I have just written some copy for a journalist on a new glossy magazine, the name of which I don't know - they're keeping it under wraps for the present. Media work is quite often unpredictable. Sometimes I get sensible requests like this one was. Other times the questions are on peculiar topics and my quotes are mangled beyond recognition, like this Monday in The Times, when I hope nobody I know read the garbled version of my remarks in the article on the psychology of wearing flat shoes versus high heels - it read more like a clue in the cryptic crossword!