It must be said that Brighton, unlike London, makes driving seem very appealing. Instead of glowering faces and angry horns on all sides, we have the coast road in front of us and the Sussex Downs just 10 minutes behind us.

Big women do themselves a disservice when they attempt to become the Righteous Fat (the Righteous Thin are bad enough, all that running around and sweating, somehow believing it means anything).

Now the whole dizzying and delirious range of sexual possibilities has been boiled down to that one big, boring, bulimic word. RELATIONSHIP.

And call me a pig, but isn't it brilliantly refreshing how early the Dutch eat dinner? When they're still laying out the cutlery in achingly hip Barcelona, they're hanging the Closed sign on the restaurant doors of old Amsterdam.

The truth of the matter is, beauty is a specific thing, rare and fleeting. Some of us have it in our teens, 20s and 30s and then lose it; most of us have it not at all. And that's perfectly okay. But lying to yourself that you have it when you don't seems to me simple-minded at best and psychotic at worst.

But just think what a boring, bread-and-milk world this would be without the boastful.

Some say that Cusk has no sense of humour, but expecting giggles from this writer would be akin to expecting sonnets from Benny Hill.