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It’s really not that often that I treat myself but this particularly chilly winter's afternoon was an exception. My hair needed re-coloring, my shoulders ached and my brain required the kind of luxuriant peace and quiet one can only find in the bathtub. So, armed with my bottle of "no more gray to be seen after 20 minutes", a coconut scented bath bomb and the intention of doing nothing for at least half an hour I disappeared into the relatively tropical steaminess of my bathroom and wallowed.

As I lay in the gloriously warm water, my hair piled on the top of my head like a gungey, purple trifle, I considered that I might get out of the bath to get myself a drink. OK, I know I should have thought of that before but I hadn't, so I climbed out of the tub and reached for the towel...

...no towel. Drat!

No doubt one (or both) of the children (now inconveniently at school) had used every available dry towel in the house and not thought to replace the ones from the bathroom. I had no choice but to go on a towel-finding mission, which was not going to be easy as for one thing, I was not wearing any clothes and for another thing, my house has huge picture windows (many of them) and I am famous for not having any blinds.

So, I crawled from the bathroom on all fours, across the landing and rifled through the airing cupboard. No towels. I ransacked the floors of my children's bedrooms. Not a towel in sight - not even a dry washcloth. There was only one thing for it; I would have to check the laundry pile downstairs. If I were a better housekeeper, there would be no laundry pile downstairs. Everything would already be ironed and put away upstairs, but that doesn't happen in my house very frequently.

As I reached my office downstairs, I noticed that there was a tea towel hanging on the radiator, I grabbed it for modesty's sake and that is where I made my first mistake, entering the office, my computer room. There is was, my computer, connected to the Internet and telling me that there was e-mail waiting for me. I couldn't resist, it looked important, over I went and sat down, holding the tea towel with one hand while I typed with the other.

I was startled by a knock at the door. This would be my front door, right next to my office window, one of the aforementioned picture windows. Great, there was no escape. I sidled into the hall with Quasimodo's gait and called to the visitor “please go round to the side door” (thereby giving me valuable time to make it there before them). I raced through the house and skidded to a halt in front of the frosted glass door to the kitchen, well ahead of my mystery guest - who turned out to be the lady delivering my ground coffee. I had only just started having coffee delivered and this was the first time they had sent someone out to my house to make such a delivery. I opened the door a tiny bit and said:

"I'm sorry, I just got out of the tub, how much is the coffee?"

It was 2.09. I excused myself, closed the door, bolted back through the house and ran/crawled, depending on various window positions, upstairs, grabbed a twenty, looked wildly around for a towel again but was unsuccessful so ran/crawled back to the kitchen, praying that the coffee lady wasn't the inquisitive sort and wouldn't be peeking through the window. She wasn't, thank goodness. I couldn't help thinking how composed she was. There was I, still a little wet from the bath, purple gloop on my head, clutching a small towelette and she didn't flicker, not once. Not even when she said:

"Do you have the nine pennies?"

I patted my side.

"On me? No."

Silence.

I excused myself a second time, closed the door again, raced back through the house, did the whole commando thing all the way back upstairs, scraped up some pennies, shot back into the kitchen and handed her the coins. Then and only then did she hand over my coffee. Moreover, she didn't bat an eyelid, not once!

That is absolutely the last time I leave my computer hooked up to the Internet while I am having a bath. Tomorrow I am going shopping for more towels. And blinds.