Later on this month we are cooking a heroic feast for 50 at the Brighton Festival. A literary theme is our only limit to creativity. For inspiration we tore straight into the library to research the greatest fictional meals since the dawn of time.

Second chances don't come along every day and you never get another opportunity to make a first impression. It is these clichés which reverberate as I make my way to this date, a last minute reprieve for a potential romance I'd long consigned to death row.

Shaving is a recent phenomenon. 100 years ago, women probably couldn't have cared less. Five hundred years ago, they certainly didn't (they didn't even wash that often, back then, believing overt cleanliness to be a trigger of disease).

You need a thick skin to be an internet dater. While there may be weeks where suitors are banging down your inbox, there are others when the only emails you'll get are from the dating site to remind you that you've been a customer for six months (already!) and must renew your subscription. Six months, and Mr Right still eludes you.

Friends can feel like the infrastructure of our lives, our sounding board, our pick me up. They can also give us enormous pain when they are lost, like any connected, loving relationship. Take those that stay, say goodbye to those that go, but don't lose sight of your ability to make connections and that sometimes in life, what fits one period, doesn't fit another.

The 50 Best restaurants in the world idea began life as a random magazine article in Manchester.

After having such a nice time with the Stuntman after the gallery, I decided to get all proactive on his ass, and ask him out. But for more than just a few drinks. A friend of mine owns a bijoux little cottage on the optimistically-named English Riviera and asked me if I wanted to housesit for a long weekend.

We see the classical portrayal of what everyone thinks an anorexic should look like, because they all look the same of course. Your average anorexic will be a young, white female who is in a picture looking suitably emaciated wearing next to nothing. I sink a little inside each time I see this ridiculously stale, outdated idea of an eating disorder reported.

The noble sentiments which lie behind the Marriage Foundation's own foundation also appear to be a bold attempt to reverse recent trends. A third of marriages which do take place in England and Wales don't last 15 years.

With the UK facing its longest downturn in a century, it's important we understand what this means for people and not just for the bottom line. New business strategies need to be matched by new attitudes and openness around mental health.

The advertising industry is highly aware of its responsibilities. Pretty as a Picture was commissioned to help advertisers understand what young women think about images in advertising, and it's good to hear policymakers recognising the industry's positive response.

I have had some real friendship tests recently. In Paris you meet many expats who then go back home. Perhaps I am calling into my life these wandering minstrels to teach me to deal with change or I am attracted to foreign cultures. Either way it has been a learning curve.

So, the good news, I had my final scan and I'm in remission. Its taken a while for it to sink in. I don't know if I ever wholly believed I had cancer in the first place, I just went on autopilot, got through the treatment and got to where I am now.

No denying it, if you didn't already know, Glasgow is firmly on the fashion map, with the arrival of the fabulous Mary Portas.

I was drawn to sugardaddie.com because I wanted to meet someone older, wiser, more distinguished. I had no idea that a sub-culture existed where men offered shopping allowances, gifts and in some cases cash in return for the luxury of a non-demanding girlfriend.

I've been on more than a few dates in the two years or so I've been single. Some have been disastrous, many have been delightful, but they have all had one common denominator. Each of them, without exception, has involved alcohol.