Ok we aren’t completely reformed characters. I couldn’t quite claim that.

But the proof is in the very obvious lack of pudding.

Shaun is now svelte as a Sumo.

And I have given up tea.

I realise you, in the caffeinated comfort of your own familiar environment, are struggling with this concept…

I have a mug at home, bought in a moment of tacky and clearly desperate soppy taste, which says something really radical, wise and succinct like, Do The Impossible Because It Might Just Turn Out To Be Possible. One Day. You Never Know. (Go On: Give It A Go.)

For years I’ve been standing in the garden, holding that mug in my hand, wondering why I’m not sailing over the fluffy clouds and heading in the direction of the nearest misty rainbow.

And all along, the answer was within my grasp. (Not that you’d want to grasp tea, necessarily, but you get the idea.) In the mug.

The Impossible that God had in mind for me to achieve was not flying without the benefit of wings over the rooftops. But giving up tea.

Ironic that it’s a tea mug. One of life’s little witticisms I suppose. Even more, that the writing on said mug is very slightly at an angle. Clearly the normally Possible task of placing a motto horizontal on a mass-produced item of inspirational crockery turned out to be Impossible.

So now, our day goes a bit like this…

Well, you’ve already got my pre-dawn sussed. It leaves the Royal Marines’ toughest training regime at an amateur standing start.

Sprinting off towards the horizon. Plunging under icebergs. Taking a hound who would stand seven foot in his stocking feet (if he were ever allowed to stand upright on his little tippie-toes, which for obvious reasons he isn’t; nor permitted on sofas, since you ask; nor to help himself to the Sunday joint which sits somewhere lower than his copiously drooling mouth on the average dining table – I often tell guests, It’s fine: he won’t steal your food; just dribble all over it) out for his non-stop-five-minute half-gallon morning pee.

Then it’s back to the house for a big spotty pot of Ayurveda Fasting Tea. I’m not kidding you here. We now drink this stuff. Bought in bulk from my favourite tea supplier (hurry: they’ve still got their Black Friday deals on, for the rest of today) whence I normally, in a decent year, place a proper, large, biannual order for mid-season Assam, Breakfast Blend, autumn-picked Darjeeling, Garden of England midsummer tea, Spring Blossom Easter tea, Autumn Berry tea, Christmas spicy tea… oh, why did I ever start on this achingly nostalgic list?

And occasionally we go wild and splash out on Detox Lemon and Ginger tea (a vile lie: it’s nothing but grass) and quaff mug after half-pint of this insiped concoction because we also have to consume four pints of water a day, which is a heck of a whack to put away if you aren’t diluting it with whisky. And herb tea counts towards the tally.

We also drink sparkling water at breakfast. Water. At breakfast.

(Which is easier, actually, if you’ve been for a puffy run. Just sayin’.)

Then we have a couple of eggs each.

On spinach. Or around mushrooms. Without butter. Or just neat and naked as they come, in an eggcup. (Again without my normal blob of butter on top: what has become of me?) Or occasionally, on Sundays say, we really let our hair down and it’s raspberries with yoghurt. I know, I know. Raspberries are not in season and it’s really wicked and unecological to eat them in Advent, but most fruits are as forbidden as the one on the tree in the middle of the garden.

Then nothing till lunch.

Actually, that’s not quite true either.

The friend who put us onto this said she used to ease her regime with one square of 90% chocolate a day, and a glass of wine on Sunday. And still lost three stone.

So Shaun and I break it with a splash of cream in our coffee. You’ve got to take your pleasure somewhere.

It continues like this for the rest of the day. Lean meat and greens. That’s about it. Set meal times. No snacking.

And loads of water. Unadulterated.

And then at around nine thirty at night, Shaun looks at me and I look at him and he finds a bottle from somewhere, and we each have one tot.

That’s it.

This is a blog about finding comfort in the most dire situations, right?

That is the really odd, surprising, extraordinary thing.

I feel fantastic on it.

Not necessarily as fantastic as I will feel when that first splash of champagne hits my tongue on Christmas Day.

But seriously.

I feel kind of… well, healthy I suppose.