I have written five blogs today.

I've also had three mugs of coffee and finished up two small slices of old chocolate cake. 

But no fags, Mr Lancashire Hot Pot.  

And no diet either.  Big decision.  I have agreed with myself - what's the point really?  I would rather go out with someone fat, than starve myself for someone who at present doesn't even exist.  Some people like me the way I am, anyway.

And all of this is despite my post-summer holidays ''to do' list being three pages long.

Because I am putting off 'It'.

'It' being the court's forms for my two cases - one against the Okehampton garage, and the other against BT - both of which come up in November. 

The whole process involves Small Print.  Being Meticulous. Making yourself Cross.  Urrgghh.  Here goes.

And by the way.  Who said this was an Indian summer? They're lying.

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.

TripAdvisor is like Coca-Cola, the sensible South African woman at the other end of the phone told me.

This was the first time I had ever spoken to anybody intelligent or efficient at TripAdvisor, what a revelation! 

I had rung them to ask how to award myself a five-star rating; and to qualify for the 'romantic','family friendly', 'luxury' etc categories that line the top of their page.

The nice lady and I were chatting about how they measure the blob rankings, and she was explaining that it is down to a secret coding which nobody is privy to, just like the recipe for Coca Cola.  

Meanwhile, to get myself a five star rating, I have to contact Expedia, she told me.  And to get categorised, you need to have lots of the appropriate words quoted in your reviews.  TripAdvisor's computers look for these key words, so the more reviews you have, the more likely you are to get categorised.  So I'll give up on that one, with my mere two rooms then.

I contacted Expedia regarding the star ratings, and five days later they got back to me, predictably advising me to ask TripAdvisor about it. 

Meanwhile, Wydemeet continues to languish in the Number Four slot, and I'm not sure what else I can do, other than entreating an entire family of four to write individual reviews for me (providing they enjoy their stay, obviously) and see if that gives us the boost we need!  Or should I simply give in, acknowledging that there must be something in the Coca-Cola mix that we're never going overcome, and we'll never achieve that Number 1 slot.  Perhaps Number 2 might be better anyway.  I mean, look at One Direction!

I could hear the throbbing through the bathroom window, and looking out, there was the helicopter approaching.  An old friend was visiting, circling the property, checking out the white tea-towel Sashka had put in the top of the horses' field to act as a landing strip.

We have had several visitations from friends in helicopters over the years.  And every time they never fail to cause the adrenalin to pump.  Those little machines are just so loud, and their propellers go round so very fast; I find the whole thing hugely exciting!

He had casually dropped by for a coffee, and after we'd all waved goodbye I drove off in Ken, the Terrano, to swap it for the Golden Monster.

Well.  I've fallen in love.  I just LOVE this bling new car.  It's unmissable. Unusual. Rather in your face.  But steady, safe, reliable, practical, and does the job.  Just like me.

I have never had a car so new.  It's got a little gadget called 'Parrot' in it, which I dare say will turn out to be very useful when my children show me what it does; and I have worked out how to plug my phone in so I can listen to my own songs.  Loudly. Bliss.

And I can take it back to the garage for servicing at cost, while they provide me with a courtesy car.  They made me feel that they genuinely care about their customers. They've got 15,000 followers on Facebook, so that's just a few people who appear to like them anyway!

It's so comfortable, and such a pleasure to drive, that now I'm doing the sums to work out whether it makes sense to give away Marvin the Magic Focus, and use the Golden Monster as my runabout instead.  But all the tables on Google are in litres/kilometer so I can't work it out.

Yesterday I bought eight slabs of home-made tiffin tea cake for £5 from the local Bring & Buy sale - it was all they had left.

I've packed it in cling film and put it in the freezer. Tomorrow I will buy some 'cookie jars' - if that's what you have to call glass containers for biscuits these days - and display my teacake in our Hexworthy and Dartmeet Rooms. I hope people don't eat it too fast, or that could get expensive.

I've done this because the B&B at the top of TripAdvisor's Leader Board of Dartmoor National Park's 183 B&Bs features a lovely  close-up pic of a jar of bits of teacake, with a brown hand-written label attached on a ribbon, saying 'home-made chocolate biscuits'.  And all its reviews refer to these delicious titbits. So I am going to copy them (only mine appears to be a bit on the soggy side).  Otherwise on the face of it, there doesn't appear to be anything particularly special or outstanding about Dartmoor's Number 1.

So my suspicion is that its owners are utterly delightful, and that they must offer an immaculate service, with delicious breakfasts with home made compotes changed every day.  And these nice owners, just like me, have presumably got wise as to how TripAdvisor works, and are using it to promote themselves for free. Good on them!  

Meanwhile Wydemeet languishes way down in the Number 4 slot. 

If you had told me a year ago that we would reach Number 4 in just twelve months I would never have believed you.  But now I know how TripAdvisor's system works - ie the computer checks out who's received the largest number of 5-blob reviews most recently - I am beginning to dream of the unimaginable possibility that Wydemeet might hit the Number 1 slot shortly!!!!!!!!

Wouldn't that just be completely amazing?! 

So huge, huge, huge and enormous thanks to all of you who have helped us get this far.  I am SO grateful!  Your reviews really, really mean the world to me! I still can't quite believe the wonderful lovely gorgeous things you say.

Well.  So wedding bells aren't looking in the least bit imminent.  Perhaps 'TripAdvisor's Number One' might prove a fitting end to 'Suviving Solo' Volume 1?

Or perhaps I am just counting my chickens...

I know everything about tow vehicles.  I learned it all on Tuesday, and bought one this morning.

Some of the perceived pros and cons of different makes and models are, of course, personal; and some depend on where you live and the job you want doing.

First and foremost, after my recent experiences with the Nissan Terrano, I was after something reliable, in which I could feel safe pulling my two horses in their trailer up the hill past The Forest Inn. This has a One in Two gradient, is one car wide, and has a blind corner.

And I wanted a diesel automatic. It must cost less than £6000 and should have fewer than 100,000 miles on the clock.

As a result of these criteria, my search on Ebay, Autotrader, Exchange & Mart, Pre-Loved, Gumtree, and something called 'Motors' narrowed right down to just a few cars in the country.

I believe Land Rover Defenders, Discoveries and Range Rovers tow better than anything - they're rated up to 3.5 tons.  But I don't want any of them, because according to all the on-line chat forums they are all always breaking down.

I LOVE Toyota Land Cruisers.

I quite fancied the idea of a truck.

Shoguns are man enough.

And then there's something called a Kia Sorento which the horsey ladies on the Horse & Hound website swear by.

By now I was down to about 25 vehicles in the whole of the UK.

So off I set yesterday to try out a Sorento in St Austell, an Isuzu Rodeo (more comfortable, better turning circle, more reliable than the Nissan Navarro and Toyota Hilux I read) in Plymouth, a Land Cruiser in Exeter, and another Sorento in Tiverton.

The first Sorento felt like a big powerful box on wheels.  "If you want a truly awful car that is a cheap means of towing 3.5 tons, this is the one for you," read the blurb.  I quite liked it, but it got stuck in low gear 4 wheel drive.

The Isuzu (how do you pronounce that?) D-Max was golden. GOLDEN??!! Imagine me turning up in this F-off truck as big as a football field, at the Pony Club! I mean it's bling gone completely bonkers! Nevertheless, I got in it and it felt like a new car. 2006 reg with 69,000 miles on the clock, VAT included, used by one lady owner (the salesman's auntie) to tow her horses occasionally.  A bit different from a truck used daily in the mud by a farm labourer wearing his hobnailed boots.  Its size and power would mean that it wouldn't even feel a heavy trailer attached to the back, and stinky tack could go in the separate covered boot.

I was also very taken by the bloke selling it.  He was a proper professional salesman - young and nice-looking in his beach shorts and flip-flops, chatting away like we were old friends about his family (his brother won the Grand National on Seagram) sounding oddly like a cross between Ricky Gervais and that tall west country cohort of his in 'Extra's'.  

I am a complete sucker for professional sales techniques, and was particularly impressed by the clearly genuine pride he takes in his vehicles, pointing out everything that he felt wasn't 100%, such as a couple of scratches, a bald tyre, a lock, and valetting, all of which were to be sorted out the following day.

Then I went to see the Land Cruiser in Exeter. 1999 reg. It had rusty windscreen wipers, two tyres in need of pumping up, and looked old, sad and forlorn, even though it only had 99,000 miles on the clock.  The seller didnt bother to return my five phone calls and wasnt there when I arrived.

The owners of the second Sorento still havent returned any of my phone calls, but in the description it says that the low 4x4 gear light stays on.  

I reminded myself that the garage selling on my beautiful Range Rover insisted I paid for £3000 worth of work before they were prepared to display it on their forecourt. So I thought, "No, I am buying something in perfect working order from a garage which has given the car a full service and provides a three month guarantee." And went home.

Well you may remember my worry that I like people who don't like people who drive Range Rovers?

I've bought the Golden Monster.  What on earth are they going to think about that?

And needless to say it cost more than £6000.

"£5472.27 is due from you now."

That's what an innocent-looking letter I received out of the blue the other day from HM Revenue and Customs said inside it.  I mean who has over £5000 at their disposal to give to any old Tom Dick or Hannibal that asks for it, there and then?

I was so cross I decided to buy a car.

You may remember that back in the mists of time I was having a rant at the stupid tax credit system that gives well off people money for no reason?  Well now they're asking for mine back.  Fair enough in principle, but annoying because it's for an  illogical reason.

My issue with their system was that they are happy to give you £100s a month no matter how much you are receiving in maintenance from your ex.  If it's on offer, it is almost impossible to resist taking it.  Even though your ex might be a millionaire paying you £10,000s a month.  You can top this up with even more £1000s in child tax credits from the government as your maintenance payments are not taxable income.

In my case, an uncle has died and left me some money; but it's all being used to pay off inheritance duties, so I don't actually see it - yet, at any rate.  So in principle I don't receive any of that money to live off, and therefore still need assistance from the government.  In practice, perfectly obviously it has always been ridiculous for me to be eligible for government assistance in the first place.

So I'm not saying "Poor Me".  I'm simply saying "The tax credit system is really stupid and annoying, badly run, illogical, lacking in common sense, and scandalously wasteful."

Have you ever seen a fat cleaner?

Well if you have, they're not very good.

Because proper housework, in my opinion, provides as much of a workout as rowing.  That's rowing with oars rather than with voices.  I have just finished preparing Dartmeet, and I am absolutely shattered.  That's only one room!  Last Saturday I did two rooms and I still haven't recovered properly.  I got wrist strain from wiping surfaces and it hasn't gone away.

I am getting old.