By the time you read this I will have given the talk I am toying with in between other bits of work - and the ladies of the Pelynt Women's Institute will either have had an interesting and informative evening learning about the Cornish Times or I'll be at home lying in a darkened room sucking my thumb.
Regular readers will know that in a previous column I wrote that ever since college days I have been totally unable to do any kind of public speaking that involves standing up in front of people I don't know and telling them anything intelligible.
If anyone asks me to do a talk I usually refuse and tell them a pathetic but true tale about stage fright and what has become an overwhelming phobia. So it was a surprise to me when someone rang me up in the early summer and asked if I would talk to Pelynt WI and I said yes.
When I put the telephone down I airily told myself that it was a long time ahead, that it was ridiculous that someone of my age should worry about talking for a short time about a subject I know quite a lot about and I had months to work out what I would say.
Then I promptly put the whole thing out of my head - which is one of my many talents which irritates the hell out of some of my friends and most of my family.
Come November 1 I was desperately thinking of some way to get out of the whole thing. I can say this now because the evening will be over for better or worse.
Could I lose my voice? Bully one of the trainees to go in my place? Break a limb? I used to work with a man who, because he had lost his driving licence and didn't want to tell our boss, wore a sling on his left arm for three months having said he had fallen off a step-ladder and broken a bone. His downfall was a fondness for double whiskies and one lunchtime somebody noticed the sling was on the other arm.
Procrastination being my middle name I shelved the problem over the weekend and it was only on Monday afternoon that panic set in. I hadn't written a word.
My original plan was to do a sort of off the cuff thing, but as they are no doubt expecting more than five minutes I decided I must write the talk down.
Having spent many hours over the years in my job sitting through meetings listening to the most boring people on earth I know that there is nothing more alarming than someone who gets up to speak, tells you they are going to say just a few words, and then produces a sheaf of paper which looks like a draft copy of War and Peace.
The trouble was several people had said 'Is it going to be funny?' and advised me to put bit of light hearted banter into the thing and tell a few jokes. But what kind of jokes do you tell the WI? Not the sort of jokes I know, that's for sure. And I'm a bit too long in the tooth to take up a career as a stand-up comedian, even if I could do it.
The sad thing is that even comedians are not funny in real life. I once interviewed Tony Hancock and he wasn't funny. He wasn't very nice either, not until he realised that I was a terrified junior reporter and then he softened a bit but he still wasn't funny.
I'm ranting again - there's 22 hours 40 minutes to go - I've still not trimmed my talk down to a decent boredom threshold and I've got to go home and wash my hair. And I've just remembered that I didn't buy tights this morning which are desperately needed because that unwise buy of hold-up stockings last week was a disaster. I've been going around like Norah Batty ever since I put them on.
PS. Discard all the above if I win the lottery tonight - I'll be on a plane to the sunshine by the time you read this.
I watched Rick Stein being interviewed on television last week. I like Rick, he's a nice man and he's done a lot for Cornwall and Cornish food. But he told the interviewer that he wished that British people would talk about food instead of the weather. He said that people abroad don't go on about the rain, they chat about their meals and recipes and food and greet each other with enquiries about whether they have enjoyed their lunch or dinner.
A nice idea Rick, but it wouldn't work here. French people do talk about food all the time.
Pop into one of those Relais restaurants and you'll see lorry drivers discussing the menu, comparing notes about the sauces and even nosing into the kitchen to see if the trout is fresh.
Can you see British lorry drivers sitting around their transport caffs asking one another if they think there should be a touch more salt in the tomato sauce surrounding their beans or if the burly lady behind the counter might like to try frying their bread in a nice unsalted butter rather than three week old oil of uncertain parentage? I don't think so.
People do discuss food more than they once did. At one time, in aristocratic circles, it was considered most impolite to mention the food at all, on the grounds that the host and hostess were so well heeled and terribly grand that it went without saying their food was going to be without fault.
Most husbands will chew their way through years of food without saying a word, and if you ask they'll mumble ' very nice' or just 'ok'. A friend of mine said she very nearly set about her spouse with a frying pan after he said, in answer to her mild complaint that he never paid her any compliments about the food, 'If I eat it it's alright, I'll tell you if it isn't'.
My ex-husband, after we had been married nearly 30 years, casually remarked that he didn't like roast parsnips, which was odd because I had prided myself on producing crispy delicious roasted caramelised parsnips with just about every Sunday meal over three decades. And he'd eaten them.
I pointed this out and he said 'you needn't bother in future'. Thirty years too late.