I had to meet Esteemed Partner's new girlfriend last week.  

He found her through Guardian Soulmates. She lives in Totnes. She'll be a crystal-polisher. She'll have straggly, unwashed, unbrushed, long thin hair with grey roots, wear floppy brown clothes all made from natural fibres, and on her feet will be hideously expensive, individually handmade, leather, cornish pasty shoes.  She'll exude the smell of musk, joss-sticks and what my son refers to as 'weed'. She'll be a Vegan Liberal Socialist (although if you ask me, there's nothing liberal about these people's attitudes to Daily Mail readers.)

Sigh.  Better quickly mow the lawn between storms. And be late.

I roar up outside the quiet country pub in my huge bling truck,and quickly replace my bright pink wellies with more sober and tasteful sparkly blue flip-flops.

I walk in, there they are, and ping!  She has something about her.  I really like her.  Immediately. Before she has even said anything.  One of those unusual special people who exude an aura of calm, smiling, gently humorous, modest self assurance.  She's also got more hair than me, and is thinner, and trendier too, even though she is two years older.  She's wearing undone little gymshoes with no laces.

She is so funny.  She really makes me laugh.  She and Esteemed Partner feel to me like grown-ups indulging a kid, and I am allowed to be loud and to show off, and to be enjoyed.  She is great.  She is going to come riding with me soon.  I am so glad that he is in such a safe pair of hands.

X also has a new girlfriend, predictably ten years younger than him, and apparently looking a bit like me only smaller.  Beloved Daughter gets on well with her daughter, and both my children like her.  I thought X would choose well when he eventually found someone whom he was happy to introduce us to. I have invited X to ask her to stay, but I don't suppose he'll be doing that in a hurry.

Just about all my guests are couples who seem very at one with each other.  They either both completely get it, and love Wydemeet for its remoteness, beauty, comfort, peace, and amazing surrounding wilderness.  Or they're both wondering where the wardrobes are and why there are bats in the trees.  We've had an engagement and two pairs of honeymooners staying in our first year alone!

Which leaves me.  My love-life becomes ever more rubbish.  I forgot to cancel Times Encounters, so I am still a subscriber to that, but Guardian Soulmates has recently run out.  Just as well - the past three 'likes' I received came from bald men of varying strange religious pursuasions. I emailed them back saying "I read the Daily Mail so I don't think you would like me."

Last night I sent a message to a hunk from Oxford who claimed to like all the arts, both highbrow and lowbrow.  

I said, "What - even X-Factor?"  He replied with
"I haven't been lobotomised!"
I thought that was rather good so I came back with
"Pity, I love X-Factor.  Clever you to be able to spell lobotomised."

Anyhow - this morning I discover that he has 'blocked' me.  I have never been blocked before.  So I can't get back to him to explain that I am extremely civilised and erudite, despite my penchant for all things Cheryl Cole (or Fernandez or whatever she calls herself now).  As well as Simon Cowell.  He is a living legend.

My take on it is this. If you imagine you are at Exeter College with 2000 people of the same age and in the same kind of world as yours, and it's still tricky to find a suitable boyfriend or girlfriend, then it's no wonder that on-line dating can prove a bit slow, when there's only a handful of like-minded people of the same generation living within a 200 mile radius of yourself. Your other choice, of course, is sheep.  But they're nearly all ewes.

"So give it a chance!" my logical side says to my impatient one. 

And I say, "Bring on Four In a Bed!

Some of you readers have been commenting that I've gone a bit quiet lately.

"Cat got your tongue?" one of you sweetly enquired the other day.

Well I've been busy.  It was August.

On a couple of occasions I found myself serving seven people seven different things for breakfast, all at the same time.  This made me sweat.  And won't be too attractive on telly, if Four in a Bed come here replete with their full complement of B&B guests.

Looking after so many people comprises a proper job.  Full time. It is more than just a laugh.  You are working and earning like a professional, and there isn't time or energy left for silly fripperies like entertaining myself and you lot with pointless babblings on the net.  Especially when you've got a sprained wrist from a surfeit of house-work.  That meant that I couldn't exercise my horses, work efficiently, type efficiently, or even indulge in playing myself meloncholic Chopin Nocturnes on my piano at the end of each evening. In fact the vague nagging pain made me feel a bit sick.

On top of which it rained every single day for the whole month.

My turkish tan has entirely disappeared, leaving white wrinkles in its place, and I'm fast losing my fitness too.

So I've booked a flight to Barcelona.  It was only £81 return!  I think another holiday will be just the thing.

"Just look at this brilliant thing!" I gushed.

The key in the lock went "click click click" and then nothing.

This was to have been my third outing in the Golden Monster.  The children and I were on our way to Cornwall for the evening, to meet Judith and her new Times Encounters boyfriend for a swim at their hotel, on the very beautiful and usually overlooked Rame Peninsula, just across the river from Plymouth.

Tomorrow was Pony Club Camp Day, and Bank Holiday Monday.  A two hour drive away and the reason why I bought the Golden Monster in the first place.

We all quickly decamped into Marvin the Focus and off we set.

The next morning my two lovely guests, together with George who does all my mending, pored over the Golden Monster in the pouring rain, attempting to jump-start it from their brand new hire-car-Discovery, but to no avail.

So it was that the AA visited me for the tenth time in two years.  I think I have reached my limit.  The nice man started the truck OK from his powerful batteries, and then we had to leave it running with a brick holding down its accelerator while I finished serving breakfast, found someone prepared to replace a 3 litre diesel battery on a Bank Holiday, and a farrier, as one of the horses had chosen this day of all days to lose a shoe.

Halfords! I love them!  £126 and three hours later I returned to pack up the car; a farrier had been found all the way from Torquay - what a jolly Bank Holiday he had had! - and I set off with the two horses and Beloved Daughter to join fifty other children aged 10 - 18 for a week's camp in the Somerset rain.

I'm sure this was just a blip of the part of Golden Monster.