Dearly Beloved Daughter was in floods of tears when I picked her up from school a couple of days ago.  We are having an emotional week, her and me.

A boy in the year above, with whom she has been at various schools since she was two, called her 'fat, with a low voice' in front of the little chap she love(s/d) most, and some of her other friends.  Nobody stuck up for her, and then they all went quiet when she walked past.

Aged twelve she has learned something that I didn't learn til I was 50.  That remarkably few people will stand up for you, however much they like you, against someone they perceive as powerful.  I was utterly devastated by the discovery.  Beloved Daughter will be much better prepared.

Since the really big girl in her year left, BD now weighs the most in her year group. She is taller than the boy in question.  

We went to look in the mirror together, and I explained the concept of body dismorphia. "We are about the same fat, or not fat, aren't we?" I said to her as we gazed at our joint reflections, "only you're without the tummy."  We are both statuesque, strong, robust people. Like Princess Diana might naturally have been initially.  My father was the President of the Boats at Cambridge. BD and I would make good rowers, like her two stunning, willowy, 6' cousins who both rowed at Women's Henley last weekend. BD agreed.

"Let's sing 'Feed the Birds'," I then suggested.  She did so with enormous zest, while I accompanied her on the piano, with as much exhuberance as Liberace, but more mistakes.  "Sing the low G, like it says, not the high one," I shouted at her over the din.  She couldn't quite reach it.  Her voice is not low enough.  Just lower than the boy in question's.

The next day she was due to perform one of the only solos: 'Let It Go', from the animated film 'Frozen' on her flute, in front of all her friends at the School Summer Concert. "You are truly going to Let It Go tonight," I announced.  "You are going to get on that stage and knock'em dead.  Are you allowed to wear mascara?"

"No," she replied.

"OK, put some on so it doesn't show too much," I ordered her.  We tried on her old and new school uniform, and opted for the old one which is a little tighter, and she rolled up the kilt an inch or two (the one good thing about the imminent merger with the school across the river is that its uniform might be a little more flattering to all the little girls.) "And buy some new white socks!" I shouted after her, as she got out of the car, ready to face her day.

X was already planning to do the return trip from London (4 1/2 hrs each way) and Granny (84) from Dorset (2 hrs - her driving - each way), just to hear BD's four minutes of fame. How loved is that little girl?

The school dealt with the incident first thing, reporting back to me, and by evening, my beautiful, dazzling blonde Beloved Daughter was up on that stage with the widest smile lighting up her pretty face from ear to ear.  She remembered to close her eyes during the last crescendo of Let It Go and we all went home for supper kindly cooked by X before he left for London, probably to arrive at two in the morning.

So, many thanks from BD to that nasty, short little boy with the high pitched voice. First, the Summer School Concert, next, The World!

So with three internet dating sites on the go, everything's going a bit mad. Possibly bad and dangerous to know as well. I'm having a bit of trouble keeping up, but I think I'm still on top of things, just.  And anyway - after this sudden peak, I am fairly sure all will suddenly disappear and there will be nothing left, within days.  But at the moment things are quite exciting!

The other night a chap of 41 who lived locally, and was so utterly drop dead gorgeous that he gave me butterflies, contacted me.  I got back to him, and he turned out to be Sheikh from Leicestershire who had used a picture of a male model instead of himself, and completed an entirely fictitious profile, including describing himself as 'white/Caucasion'.  Well what is the point of that? But I felt a bit spooked.

A day later an equally delicious young man of 34, Italian this time, contacted me, and looking at the pictures, he really is from Plymouth. But - now what? He's not brilliant at English and I can't imagine what we would talk about, or how he would make me laugh.  I think he must be some kind of gigolo, but that is my suspicious mind.

Several of them write so utterly beautifully that you think they must speak like that too.  And then they don't. Quite a lot of them look defeated and sad, even though everybody bangs on about how happy they are in their profiles.  They're all also after honesty apparently.  I bet if honesty really hit them in the face they'd run a mile.  All the beaches that allow dogs must be packed out by lonely hearts enjoying what they love best.  'I'm just a normal guy' doesn't do much to sell anyone to someone like me.  'who enjoys the good things in life like eating out, going to the cinema and theatre, as well as cosy nights in by the fire' drone on the cliche-packed profiles.

So far everybody I've come across on the internet seems to have some kind of major drawback. Usually they are too old (I thought 60 should be my top limit - that's pretty old), too small, too fat, too bald, too glass half empty, or too boring.  Annoyingly, I am also becoming increasingly convinced that it will only work for me with a private school person. Not that I'm particularly snobbish, but because ours is a little world of its own, where everybody has an automatic understanding of each other. So that cuts out a mere 95% of the human race.  

What does unite everybody that I have met is that they all, bar one or two, appear to be extremely nice, decent, well-intentioned people.  Just like anyone that you might meet on the street really.  Which they are, if you think about it!

And my guess is that if the really made me smile, giggle and laugh with uncontrollable mirth, any other concerns might well go straight out of the window.

So if it's inevitable that you must be flawed in some way if you're internet dating, what's my problem, you may well ask.  Well it's obvious isn't it?  I am surrounded by sheep.

This morning I looked like one of those characters in a cartoon where water streams out of its eyes in a gush.

I don't remember ever crying so hard - not ever. Except when our first dog died, when I was seven.

Last month I poisoned Twiglet, our wonder-dog, by giving him an ibuprofen after Kind Neighbours' dogs attacked and hurt him.  £450, hundreds of pills and four weeks later, he is now as good as new, no thanks to me.  

Today I poisoned my horse.  With rat poison.

She was crashing around the stable, dripping all over with sweat, 'lip curling, rolling on her sides, scraping her front hooves on the concrete, gasping.

In a way I am relieved that I can still feel, and so hard.  I was beginning to think that I had become a bit emotionless, but clearly it's all still latent. I don't know how actors can portray that amount of sheer grief unless they have felt it themselves, and it's taken me til I'm 54.

I rang the vet four times: "Hurry hurry hurry hurry" I sobbed.  I got the picnic stool out and sat near adorable Vegas, gasping "I'm so sorry," to her, over and over and over again and stroking her wet neck.

Gradually she quietened.  I wondered whether she would shortly lie down and die.

After an hour I heard Vivian's car finally arriving, and she came in and took Vegas' heartbeat and listened to her gut.

"Clinically she's perfectly OK," she commented.

Vegas had barged through a blocked door into a small section of the barn which had two small trays of rat poison on the ground, and had clearly panicked as she couldn't turn around to get out again.  She must have eventually backed out in fright.

On close inspection we found it difficult to believe Vegas had actually eaten any of the poison - it didn't look disturbed - and Vivian said that the behaviour I described wouldn't have been caused by rat poison.  By now Vegas had started eating her hay.  Vivian said she thought the incident had been colic induced by stress, and gave Vegas a jab to calm her stomach.

She seems to be fine now.  Just like Twiglet.

So there we are. What a morning.  I feel very odd. And not very proud of myself.  Beware of your Mama, pets.

Help! 

My rationalisation has definitely gone too far!  I am empty for the whole of July! 

OK - I have let the house out for the week of July 26th which means closing the B&B for a couple of days either side. And until three days ago I had shut myself down for the first week in case Four in a Bed came, and the second week hopefully for another rental which hasn't transpired.  

But I had thought that my marketing expertise was so splendid that my two glorious, luxurious rooms would fill up with last-minuters. Wrong. Nothing. Not a squeak. Or a pip.

But meanwhile, I am really, really tired.  I might get a lie-in on Friday morning when Beloved Daughter boards.  That will be my first, in probably a month. So it's odd having our house back to ourselves, especially with my lovely huge sunny Hexworthy room empty, waiting for someone else, instead of having me in it. Yesterday I lay for an hour in our hot tub, which has been completely renovated at vast expense.  Beloved daughter didnt even bother getting dressed.  And we forgot to feed the horses. Today my ancient skin is even more dry and wrinkly than usual. 

I guess business is bound to pick up soon.  We have been given yet another cry-worthy fantastically fantastic review on Trip Advisor so we retain our place in the Top Ten, and now I've fixed it so that you can book us direct via TripAdvisor too. I'm not sure how much that will cost, but I'm very interested to find out.

Tonight it's "I Can't Believe That She Does It" or whatever the name is of the book by Allison Pearson, on telly.  Ms Pearson once met X at some talk, and sent him home with a copy of her book for me, with a message in it saying "I can't believe how you do it."

Three years later she was speaking about her sequel - a book about her crush on David Cassidy - at Dartington 'Ways with Words' literature festival, which is one of the highlights of my year - it's so beautiful.  So I went to see her, and told her that I hadn't managed to 'do it' after all.  She commiserated, and she wrote another lovely message, such as "All men are bastards" or something, for me on the inside cover of the David Cassidy book.

Actually I've checked, and she's much too nice to have penned such a thing.  In fact she wrote "I think I love you" (with the 'think' crossed out and changed to 'know') "Better Luck Next Time." 

Anyway - they're showing the film of "I Don't Know How She Does It" tonight on ITV2, and I must catch it. I'm fed up with all the channels showing the most boring acts taking place at Glastonbury.  I'm sure there must be some better ones going on on different stages, that we don't get to see.

But in the meantime, I've just realised why I appear to myself, and probably everybody else, to be so obsessed with this internet dating thing.  It's because I'm a Virgo, and I just can't rest until I've properly completed the job in hand, whatever it is, to the best of my ability.  Which, as it happens, I've just done.  

I have now got profiles up on three sites: Encounters, Guardian Soulmates, and match.com; and can't do much more.  I've told my various audiences exactly who I am, who I would like to meet, and then made up a sort of TripAdvisor Review about myself, written by a fictitious first date.  I think all internet dating sites should carry reviews, just like hotel sites do.  I've given myself five blobs, naturally, and described myself as 'an extremely attractive woman'.  I wonder if it will work? Nothing else has, so I can't lose.  The trouble is, looking at all the men available on the sites, I'm not sure if I'd want any of them anyway.

Hmmm.  I might have made an error.  In my extreme efforts at the rationalisation of my burgeoning new business, I appear now to be empty for most of July.  That wasn't exactly the plan.

I have closed out 'Bellever' - the smallest, cheapest, most private room, so that I can sleep there myself instead of finding myself camping in Revered Son's room in the attic.  This leaves just the two larger, more expensive rooms available: 'Hexworthy' - with morning sun, huge bathroom, private shower cubicle, bidet and trouser press; and 'Dartmeet' - evening sun, twin option, and lovely private view across the garden to the moor, from your most comfy of places sitting on the loo.

I have sacked all the agents - which has proved a bit serious.  Because, including VAT, they take a whopping 20% (15% plus VAT) of whatever you charge. So for a two night booking of Dartmeet, say, they would take over £40!! PLUS; they just don't 'get' what Wydemeet offers.  Not surprising really, considering they are based in Amsterdam or somewhere, and have never heard of Dartmoor.  They keep sending me extremely nice Germans who erroneously believe we are a convenient central point for exploring the West Country by car, and are surprised and a bit concerned that there are no signs to the B&B, and that we don't have things such as wardrobes, and that our albeit satellite broadband is nevertheless still rubbish and only works in half the house.

The next most expensive items after the agents are Sashka's hours, and laundry, which come to half what the agents charge, and are absolutely vital for my sanity, or at the very least to keep me in a good mood. 

So I've decided I've got to rely on my own marketing skills.  Which means I have to keep on getting lots of favourable reviews on TripAdvisor in order to stay in the Top Ten - which is a challenge, with just two rooms, however good a time everybdy has. 

And I also need to keep coming up first in the Google Search Engines.

On top of all of this, what with booking out most of July in order to let out the entire house, and banning large bouncy dogs and sticky-fingered children, perhaps I've gone too far!

So I've just re-opened lots of July, typed this up to help with SEO optimisation, and crossed my fingers.  Do come!  It's fab!

Last week I spotted a small sign outside the neighbouring farmer's gate saying 'Barn Dance'.  If you craned your neck and looked onto the other side of the notice, it said 'Open to All', June 21st.  That was yesterday, for those of you who didnt notice how long the day lasted.

So I was faintly appalled that I knew nothing about it, and was not aware of anyone I knew going to it. No one had mentioned it.

Kind Neighbour, bringing round yet more delicious eggs for my B&Bers, advised me that it had been organised to raise funds for my children's old village primary school.

I've mentioned before - I'm a bit of a pariah around here.  It must look a bit odd - this woman keeping going, running this large house in the middle of nowhere, alone with just her young daughter for company. Most jilted wives would probably have wanted to move as far away as possible from their Nemesis, into the safety and security of their family's arms, in a small house without draughts where everything didnt break all the time.  

I dont really care if they think I'm Mad Mary of the Moor, but I do find it hard to go to these social gatherings full of indigenous local people, all of whom have partners, and most of whom are related to each other, one way or another.  I've been here nearly twenty years now, but I'm not part of the soil.  Not even rural really - I still don't know the names of the fields, tors or birds. And you're more likely to catch me going for a walk in a swimming costume, sarong and flip-flops,  than boots and those stupid sticks that scratch the roads and mess up the moor. Anyway - that's why I have horses. So you can sit down going uphill. 

I just like it here, that's all, particularly in this extraordinary weather.  It is utterly, utterly, utterly stunning!  I lie in the sun and just drink it all in!

My daughter felt the same about the Dance as I did. She didnt want to go.  She hasnt seen her local friends since Widecombe Fair when they came up to say hello and she rushed off to the dog show, looking and sounding like a 'too posh and arrogant for words', when in fact she was just suffering from an eleven-year-old shy-on.

"We're Hadows" - I said.  "Best foot forward.  We're good at this sort of thing."  So we went.  And thank God that we made ourselves do it.  I would have died to have heard about it afterwards, and to have missed it.

This part of Dartmoor still holds events verging on the celestial from time to time.  There is an annual Cricket Match, Widecombe vs Poundsgate; the first match of the day is played by women and children, and the second by the men. X once hit heads with a jockey while fielding, got severely concussed and ended up in an ambulance.  This match is held in a stunning natural amphitheatre with views towards the sea; everyone is in their whites, drinking beer and wine, bringing along barbeques, garden furniture, marquees and even hammocks.  It's like Dartmoor's version of Henley.

Well this Barn Dance last night was held in Near Neighbouring Farmer's field and barn.  His son is in his last year at the primary school.  The large field was mown and in the evening sunlight were a bucking bronco and several bouncy castles.  The barn was huge and immacuate - about 100 metres long, featuring a succession of local jazz, soul, blues and rock bands, and even local children, playing and singing, none of it overly intrusive.

Children were everywhere,  and virtually every person I have ever met since living here was there, and I am definitely still part of it all, however vicariously.

After a shaky start,  and a little word in a few little girls' ears from me, Beloved Daughter ended the evening happily sitting in the family car of her best old friend from her old school, turning elastic bands into hair attire. It was as if they had never been separated. 

It was the most perfect evening imaginable.

Yesterday, to be on the safe side, I bid for three Nespresso machines on eBay, in the hopes of getting a bargain for my posh Hexworthy room.  Guess how many I won? All three!  Oh dear - where shall I put them all?  And I don't even like espresso coffee that much.

They are called 'Pixies'. Two are Krups, and one is a Magimix, and I got them for around £50 each, instead of the £100+ charged for new ones by companies such as Lakeland Plastics.

These machines are part of my drive to improve the 'product', or 'offering' of my B&B, in advance of Four in a Bed's visit.

I have been looking at the pictures on Babington House's website, so that I can copy what they provide.  Babbers, near Frome in Somerset, is where the pop stars go, or used to go, to pretend they were enjoying a country break, complete with wellies. It costs up to £400 a night without breakfast, and I am hoping to meet someone via Times Encounters who would like to take me back there. It's my favourite hotel, and it's been many years since I was lucky enough to be able to visit it.  

So, in my bid to emulate, or, of course, to outdo them, in addition to the Nespresso machines, I have also bought three white candles from Morrisons, some cotton wool balls, and a really nice little box to hide the tissues under.  

A see-through bath in the middle of the room, and a TV the size of a garage, complete with Dolby surround sound, remain beyond my means at the moment.  Watch this space..

There were was a cat-fight between two middle-aged women in Beloved Daughter's Posh School Car Park last week.

Not literally, and anyway I exaggerate, in order to catch your attention.  

In actual fact, two Mums shouted at each other, one broke down in tears and called the other a nasty name.

I was sad because I know both of them and they are both nice.  And they were both right, but the environment was not conducive to rational thought or discussion, as we all stood out in the rain and wind, waiting for a summit meeting in which to discuss the school's future.

With around 100 pupils, Beloved Daughter's School achieves places, and often scholarships, for children going to Eton, Harrow and Winchester.  Every year its children win academic, music, art and all-rounder scholarships worth £100,000s to all the best schools in the South West. This year so far 13 pupils have won a total of 16 scholarships and the entire top year group has passed Common Entrance. In the last six months, just some of the highlights include the school winning the national prep school's Rugby 7s at Oundle, winning a national IAPS team trampolining competition in Croydon, best school in all three sections of the Devon and Cornwall athletics championships (both girls and boys), it has winning county players in  hockey and cricket, national diving champions, and it came 6th out of all the schools in the country in the U14s show-jumping in Buckinghamshire, with two of its four team members on their titchy ponies aged just eight.  A truly ridiculous proportion of all pupils end up getting into Oxbridge.  The children are very jolly and high spirited, and the school continues to fire on all cylinders.

Yet, like so many other rural prep schools, its numbers have halved over the past few years, and the governors have told us that we are to merge with the cheaper, less successful, less beautiful school across the river, which isn't geared towards its leavers going on to posh boarding schools. There are simply not enough children in the area to fill up both.

Feelings are running high, and everywhere is rife with rumour and conspiracy.

Every day, what feels like dozens of passionate unsolicited emails arrive in my in-box. Some of the parents are so rich their answer is simply to buy the school outright. Some of what is written is unbelievably vitriolic, personal and rude. If the composers of these emails were divorced, they would have learned the 24 hour rule.  They would have waited for a day, reread what they had written in the heat of the moment, and amended their words accordingly, before pressing the 'send' button, so ensuring their antagonism was not pushed off to every unsuspecting tom, dick and harriet, unasked for.

I am constantly relieved that, for the most part, so far those of my friends who have allowed themselves to become embroiled in the furore, have retained their courtesy and dignity, their communications remaining civilised.  

Being me, I am endlessly tempted to publicly tell the other parents just what I think of them, but I know it would be bad form. 

Anyway, Beloved Daughter is due to leave at the end of next year, so I don't think it's appropriate for us older parents to get involved.

... do I bother? Spending (wasting?) so much time with this blogging business? Risking alienating potential guests, offending friends and family, and probably ending up in some lawsuit?

Because I gather that regular updating of a blog on a website adds to its SEO - Search Engine Optimisation, ie it makes the website come up first when googled.  But someone else told me that the blog was supposed to contain useful information and be featured on the front page, so it can't be that.  Even though, if you google "Luxury Dartmoor B&B" - up we come! 

Because post-divorce, one of my many money-making ideas was to write a book, to be called 'Surviving Solo'. And another was to have a go at becoming a columnist.  With the blog it's possible that I might eventually be able to amalgamate both, along the lines of, say, "A Year in Provence", only less well written and less about France.  The trouble is, books need shape: a beginning, a middle, and an end.  Hence my remorseless search for the perfect man.  Once I've found him, I can give up the blog, as the fairy tale will finally end:  "So then they got married and lived happily ever after." Presumably, judging by past experience, after that you will subsequently have to suffer Volume 2.

And finally, because, (mostly, I expect) I like talking about myself a lot, and seeing my name in print.  Always have. Pathetic.

Just don't get divorced if you can possibly help it, OK?

The grass isn't greener - just different.

Go through your Christmas card list.  How many people's lives are you jealous of? Like - nobody's, probably.  So don't wreck things and then regret it.

My experience of the last five years has led me to believe that most people you could end up with are neither better nor worse than anyone else - they just offer different strengths and weaknesses, personalities, good bits and bad bits.

Whatever happens, if you get divorced, you will be poorer.  And you will make your children cry. And you will never truly enjoy Christmas again.

If one of you goes off with someone else, that someone is, almost by definition, likely to be vaguely immoral to knowingly contribute to the bust up of your family.  So they're likely to prove not all that nice in the end after all. And then what?

I am feeling bitter sweet as you can tell.  We have such a lovely time when X comes back to see Beloved Daughter, often picking up Revered Son from his boarding school in Dorset along the way. This weekend we went riding, galloping through the woods, Beloved Daughter on her fantastic new horse which is big enough for me to ride, while X attempted to keep up on his bicycle. 

Steak, ducks legs, macaroni cheese - all of everybody's favourite things to eat for supper, amid much hilarity around the kitchen table on Saturday night. And then the next day it's the 'Man vs Horse vs Bicycle Race' - five miles as the crow flies cross country to the Plume of Feathers in Princetown.  Man - ie X; wins, verdict - Easily.  And the cycles - Revered Son and friend - come last by half-an-hour, rather dangerously getting caught in a thunder and lightning storm on top of a tor on the way. 

Wydemeet is, and has always been, a place for families, parties, fun and laughter.

But then after tea and chocolate cake, it's time for everybody to go their separate ways again, and for me to get back to earning a crust to pay for those school fees which disappeared into a lonely tiny flat in Parsons Green for X, as well as the inevitable legal costs.  

What was it all for?