Breaking news from the kitchen:

Amelie thinks I've bought her a beanbag...


And Lisa's trying a new muffin recipe...


One of them's likely to be rubbish, but at the moment it's hard to say which.

In other news, I've been doing clinics this week in the delightful village of Hassocks. If you've not visited the place, it has an Age UK shop next to an Equestrian Supplies store, which tells you everything you need to know about the residents. The last time I was there, I bought a valuable oil painting which, almost two years later, still occupies pride of place inside an old bin-liner in the cupboard downstairs. Lisa doesn't like it, but I'm hanging on to the thing until the Antiques Roadshow rolls back into town. She'll like it a lot more when I sell it for a fortune.

Today, however, I bought something slightly more modern from the same charity shop. It's a toy shopping trolley for Amelie, filled with fake food, counterfeit cans, and grossly overpriced groceries. It may only be made of plastic, but it's frighteningly realistic - the moment I tried pushing it, it swerved and went in the wrong direction. It cost me four quid, which is three more than the ones at Asda, but Amelie seems pleased with it. She's like a contestant on Supermarket Sweep, only more intelligent.

On the downside, the trolley was so full of plastic knick-knacks that having bought it, I couldn't easily carry the thing, and was forced to push it back to the health centre at lunchtime like some kind of deranged bag lady with a mental age of three. I almost made it without being seen, until I rounded the last corner, and had to apologise to an elderly lady shuffling along the pavement, as I overtook her on the grass at high speed, with plastic french fries shooting out of my trolley like some kind of James Bond anti-pensioner gadget.

Trolley dash completed, and with my embarrassment fading, I consoled myself with the knowledge that at least I'd never see the lady again.

Until twenty minutes later, when I called my first patient of the afternoon...