Hideous Kinky: Molly Bennett's Guide To Inadvisable Methods Of Follicular Camouflage And Stress Relief.

God, my hair just will not grow. Well, it will - but only on my bloody face, and not on my head where it's supposed to be. It's very depressing, and provides nothing by way of cover for the incipient beard, which doesn't seem to have heard that UK growth has gone into reverse.

Talking of depressing, Max and I spend the morning plunged in gloom at the prospect of him losing his job, and things don't get any better when we look at the receipt from last night's shopping trip. Food is so incredibly expensive!

"Those bloody people on Help Me, Gok - I've Eaten Too Much must have a far bigger income than we do," says Max. "It'd cost a fortune to get as fat as some of them."

"Hmm," I say. "Though doesn't Gillian McKeith always say that beige foods are the cheapest - as well as being the most fattening?"

"Yes, but she's an idiot, isn't she?" says Max, "You can't trust anyone who doesn't realise that jungles tend to contain a lot of insects. Anyway, with the price of food of any colour, not to mention petrol, there's no way that we can afford to go out anywhere today, so we'll just have to stay in and try not to eat too much while we're at it."

Before I can reply, he picks up a Sudoku book and a pen, and settles down on the sofa. Honestly, I'm sure he uses those damn puzzles as an anxiety-distraction technique, though I suppose my own aversion to them may explain why he's so much less of a stress-head than I am. Normally.

Puzzles don't seem to be working their magic today, though - not if the twitching muscle in Max's cheek is anything to go by. I just hope it's not the start of a tic. Richard Bloody Levinson's got loads, and they are so contagious. By the time he leaves the office, I'm always twitching and scratching like a total lunatic.

Anyway, prevention is better than cure, so I decide that there must be something that's more fun and less likely to cause muscle spasm than Sudoku seems to be, and that Max and I can do together this afternoon - mustn't there? Preferably something that doesn't cost any money, while relieving stress at the same time, if that's not too much to ask.

"Why don't we go for a walk?" I say, after ten minutes' concerted thought.

"Where to?" says Max, looking out of the window at the pouring rain, and then back at me as if I am mad.

"I don't know," I say. "Round the block. A little constitutional."

As soon as I've said it, I can see that it lacks a certain je ne sais quoi, but I'm stumped for a better alternative - until I have my sudden brainwave. That's what comes of being married for aeons, I suppose: you get into such a rut that you miss possibilities that are staring you in the face.

I get there in the end, though, a bit like Gordon Brown. I just hope it brings me more joy than it brought him.

"We could always give up on today altogether, and just go back to bed," I say. "Seeing as it's raining, and there's not exactly anything better to do."

Much to my astonishment, Max agrees, and is off the sofa and up the stairs like a rat out of a trap. Which is either very complimentary, or a measure of how bored he really is. Beggars can't be choosers, anyway, so I follow him, feeling quite exhilarated by the success of my Big Idea.

This sense of achievement lasts for all of thirty seconds, until I walk past the mirror at the top of the stairs, and spot my face, spotlit by a cruel and unnecessary shaft of sunlight that's just broken through the clouds.

Oh, my God - there are even more hairs on my chin than I thought. Max'll freak out if he spots those during sex. He'll think he's in bed with a transvestite or something, and decide that Sudoku is far more appealing. I have to do something - fast - but the question is: what?

"Hurry up," says Max, who is already in bed, his clothes strewn all over the bedroom floor.

"Um, yes," I say. "Going as fast as I can."

Which is a lie, as I am actually taking my clothes off as slowly as possible, while trying to search for my tweezers on the dressing table at the same time. But there's no sign of the damned things, or of the dreaded Tweezi-wand or whatever it's called - and, anyway, I haven't got all day to start rolling that over my face. Now what, oh Brain of Britain?

I'm just about to pretend that I've suddenly developed a migraine, when I spot my salvation, lying amidst another pile of clothes and shoes in the corner of the room.

I bend down and sneakily pick it up, remove the last layer of my thermal underwear, and then crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head. I curl up in a ball, with my back to Max, while I wrestle with with my beard hair disguise. I am undoubtedly the last of the great femmes fatales.

"What on earth are you doing, Mol?" says Max, trying to pull the covers away from my head, and rolling me towards him. Then he lets out an amazingly loud yell, and jumps out of bed with a horrified expression on his face.

"Are you trying to give me heart attack?" he says. "What the bloody, bloody hell is that?"

"It's a balaclava," I say. "I thought it might be kinky."

Max sits down on the side of the bed, rolls his eyes as if he's dealing with a complete lunatic, and then says, very wearily:

"That's not the word that I'd have chosen."

Insect-Induced Hypothermia - Which Could Only Happen To Connie.

Oh, my God. I am so fed up of wearing all my clothes at once, and even some of Max's. Including in bed. This may have something to do with my lack of a sex-life, but I can't help that. I haven't stopped shivering for weeks.

Connie has to go one better, though. She phones this afternoon and, when I ask how she is, simply says:

"Hypothermic."

"Don't exaggerate," I say. "You sound like Dinah."

"I'm not exaggerating," says Connie. "I nearly died of cold during the night."

Given that she made Max and I buy her a million-tog duvet before she left home, I somehow doubt that - and say so.

"Yeah, well, I couldn't use it, could I?" she says, as if I should have known.

Why do children always think their parents are psychic? When I ask Connie why she couldn't sleep under her quilt, things become absolutely no clearer.

"Because of the spider," she says. "On the bedroom ceiling."

Connie is terrified of spiders, due to some unspecified childhood trauma, which probably had something to do with Josh. Most things trace back to him, as far as she's concerned - but, even so, I'm still confused.

"What's that got to do with your duvet?" I say. "You usually just trap spiders under a glass and wait for someone else to get rid of them."

Connie explains that she couldn't get to sleep while the spider was walking around above her head, so she decided she had to get it down somehow. This was a challenge, as Connie has the same trouble with high ceilings as I do but, eventually, she managed it.

"I flicked it off the ceiling with a pair of tights," she says. "But then it landed on my bed."

"Well, why didn't you just flick it off that as well, then?" I say. "Job done."

"That's what I was going to do," says Connie. "But you know I don't like hurting anything - so I wrapped it up in the quilt and tried to shake it outside instead."

"Well, for God's sake, Connie, there was no reason why you couldn't use your bedding once the spider had gone. Even Gillian McKeith wouldn't have made that much fuss."

"She would have done if she'd dropped the f*cking quilt out of the window as well," says Connie. "Into a huge puddle."