Rich asked me what the parents were doing letting their children play, shout, swear, run riot and generally abuse passers-by until 10 o’clock at night. Now, we happen to know that the people to whom these little shits belong are living in the council properties opposite our (soon to be ex) house, and I have heard the Benson and Hedges-tinged voices yelling to their spawn to “Get your arse back in ‘ere” with my own ears. This latest phenomenon in Underworld Road (in the Wycombe Shitbowl as we lovingly call it) has only really started in the past few weeks, leading us to believe that a new family has arrived. The last lot must have moved on after their BMW – yes, I kid you not, they owned a Beemer on the dole – was torched at 2am one Monday morning, throwing 20 foot flames leaping into the air, scorching the telegraph pole and generally terrifying the road’s inhabitants.

I digress. I started by quite calmly and reasonably saying that these poor kids have nothing better to do than to hang around on the streets. Their parents don’t want them indoors (presumably so they can shag bloke number five to spawn child number 8 ) and with a woeful lack of organised activities (assuming they would go, that is) there is little else to do except throw litter into our garden and let the neighbour’s rabbit out of its hutch, prompting some comedy bunny chasing on my part to avoid it becoming a “Hot Squashed Bun” over the Easter period.

I then got a bit cross. Had I perhaps taken it upon myself to accost one of these filthy little beggars and politely request that the volume be turned down, I could not be sure that our house and cars would remain intact. Visions of dog poo through the letter box and bricks through the windows flashed through my mind and I realised that while an Englishman’s house might be his castle, he cannot defend it without fear of recrimination and revenge. How can this be? How can normal, hardworking people be penalised for having pride and respect, while the country’s ne-er-do-wells and Chavs feed off the state, terrorising us and making us pay for them?

These children on our street will never know that they are behaving unacceptably, because they will never experience anything else in life. Their parents will never teach them acceptable behaviour, because they never learned it from their parents. And so the nightmare perpetuates itself. The parents will blame the teachers, passing the buck to someone else as usual, and teachers will in turn continue to bang their heads against brick walls, fearing mad-eyed fake Burberry-clad viragos screeching accusations at them while jumping through bureaucratic hoops instead of getting on with the job in hand. And politicians will say we just need to befriend the hoody-wearing yobbos, understand their wants (surely just more Argos jewellery?) and send them on safaris instead of to Borstal where they belong.

And breathe.

 Now it’s a week on Sunday. Gulp. Sweat. Shake. Shiver. Panic! We’ve logged the miles, dealt with lost toenails and gone through the expense of changing top of the range trainers at least once in that time. Not that I’m knocking them – several years ago I couldn’t run for twenty minutes without my knees complaining and laying me up for two weeks. A trip to our wondeful sports therapist in Cambridge (Graham Blakely) soon sorted that out – “Get some decent trainers, and learn to walk again – you’re walking liking a two year old”. It was an epiphany. I could never have imagined running for an hour, let alone the 3h 10 minutes in the howling wind we did last weekend to cover 22 miles, our peak “long run”. Now, two hours seems short to us.

When he was an ankle biter my husband Rich’s father told him that the marathon was a waste of time, it took too long and there wasn’t any point in doing it, so it has never really been on his radar. Rich also never did a lot of running because of his back, but again, the trainers did wonders.

So, the run itself. Both of us seem to have a permanent kaleidoscope of butterflies in our tummies at the moment. Is it normal to have a constant fluttering even this far out from the marathon? I don’t know if it’s down to a completely new challenge with no idea what to expect from the distance and my body or if I’m just paranoid I’m not going to raise enough money (of course I will, people are generous, aren’t they? In case you’re feeling generous yourselves by the way…..www.bmycharity.com/teamtaylor)

I lay awake for ages the night before last, in that funny place in between awake and asleep, jolting every few minutes with a variety of little panics…loo stops, wrong kit, forgotten trainers, falling over (always a good one – am just getting rid of the scabs from the entire left side of my body when I went for an impressive slide-along-the-gravel-path-on-my-tummy commando drop the other week) blah blah blah.

I don’t think I was this nervous for my wedding six months ago (I had it all planned to a tee), or even sitting on the start for my first international rowing race! But then I had practiced and practiced the distance, the start sequence, the first 500m, the first 1000m, the last 750m, mid race pace, over race pace, burns, pushes, winds…..I feel woefully unprepared in comparison but it’s a completely different discipline and a different way of using the muscles! I suppose we’ll see how it goes on the day.

Based on half marathon times we’ve done, we should be able to finish in under 3h 15m, but of course, many factors could conspire against us. Rich’s tummy troubles, a poor night’s sleep, falling over, being held up at the start……

Each person has a “fit” ranking, let’s say on a scale of one to ten. In general, that person’s chosen partner, current shag, wife or husband is plus or minus two on the hotty scale. Our theory is this:

If there are more than two points’ difference between the individuals in question, there must be a reason (usually financial, material, status etc).

Let’s take Heather Mills and Paul McCartney, or Anna Nicole Smith and J. Howard Marshall (RIP x 2) or even Hugh Heffner and his Playboy Honeys. Now, I may be stating the obvious here but there is  a HUGE points difference with all of them. Anna Nicole wasn’t with Mr Marshall for his six pack and chiselled cheekbones, now was she? Macca might have been OK in his day (the droopy eye thing isn’t for me, even in his youth) but he’s an old boy now!

These are all high profile people, but I see it all the time. Women go for guys (not necessarily much older) for what they can offer, and the men love it because they will never be able to get a woman more than two points above them on the scale. I don’t believe the blokes are so deluded as to believe that these women have chosen them for their good looks or sunny dispositions, so they must just accept that they are being used for their fat wallets, and not their fat ones. Everyone’s a winner, surely.

Where this all gets a bit messy is when the woman wants the money, the house, the cars and all the trappings of a wealthy lifestyle but doesn’t put anything into the relationship pot. To my mind, if you are going to be with someone for their money or their status, you really ought to do your bit. Be a home-maker, give them babies, be a lovely hostess and most importantly, be grateful for what their income facilitates. I can’t stomach the women who are blatantly unfaithful yet won’t even hold their man’s hand.

Of course, he might just be grateful for that leggy blonde and doesn’t give two hoots what she does. Just as long as everyone knows where they are!

 Basically, she made up a base lie about me, in the hope that it would go to our mutual boss, who would then decide to sack me. Sadly for her, she is the one who has now been sacked and I am still “in there”. Is that karma coming to bite her on the bum? Does what go around generally come around – eventually?

I think she had been made pregnant at a fairly young age, unmarried and in the late ’50s. Her son – she told me during one of her interminably long gossip sessions (you know the ones where you just make a noise at the appointed moment but don’t actually have to put anything into the conversation pot) – had diddled her out of lots of money, she is not allowed to see her grandson and she now lives alone with her shivery whippet called Wally.

 She sat in the same office as me for 14 months, and knew I was getting married last year. She did not offer one word of congratulation or a good luck wish – not that I would have wanted it anyway. I had been starting to feel a little guilty that no one had done her a leaving card when she finally left last week with her tail between her legs – not unlike Wally the wimpy whippet – but the moment I found out about what she had tried to do to me, all guilt or ideas of social nicety evaporated into the ether.

I just hope that isn’t the start of me becoming a lonely old bat with just a bag of bones for company.