I'll begin this entry by addressing a query from a regular reader. It seems that he doesn't believe that I can handle a chainsaw, or that I could have cut up my sofa without snagging the chain. So to put his mind at rest, I'll provide a little illumination.

I know how to use a chainsaw because Charlie and I did a lot of work together when we first met, clearing trees from the river that ran through my parents' garden. Charlie did all of the dangerous stuff, but during that time he did teach me how to use a chainsaw safely. A 2-stroke engine does not faze me. I used to service my father's lawnmower when I was a teenager, so starting the chainsaw does not present me with much of a problem. As for the sofa chainsaw massacre, I was mindful of the snagging danger, so I exposed the wooden frame before I began, in order to see just what I'd be cutting through; simple and safe, and much cheaper than getting the council to take it away. I may write about some strange stuff in my diary, but you have to believe me when I say that I don't make any of it up.

Now to business.

I've been feeling very odd lately. Now, it is true to say that I have always been a little unusual, but recently I've been feeling fidgety, sleepless and, well, just not normal. I have pondered as to why this might be, and I think it must be down to the alfalfa. A good friend of mine told me that it is a super food, and begged me to try it. I was slightly hesitant at first, but I took the plunge, and since I've been on it I have become pretty much addicted. I think it must be doing me a whole lot of good because it's making me feel like a teenager again. I'm sure those surly girls at the veggie café can't be eating the same stuff, because they didn't seem in the least bit joyous. I shall investigate this matter further and let you know what I find out...

Recently Rosie has been listening to a CD of mine called, 'Mad About the Boy'. Peggy Lee and Aretha Franklin aren't generally seen as cool by 11 year-old girls, but Rosie has pretty sophisticated tastes and plays the classic songs over and over again. It must have something to do with what she listened to in the womb, but whatever it is, I'm glad that she gives Green Day a break and lets real music enter her soul.

When I was a girl we didn't have ipods or CD players, we had a huge thing called a music centre. Ours was a Decca music centre and it was the size of a well-fed Shetland pony. The strange thing was that for all its impressive girth and length, it sounded tinny and terrible. I have no idea what was inside it, but I suspect that it was mostly egg boxes and string. I much preferred to listen to my dad's reel-to-reel tape recorder. He had a collection of classic 70s songs, recorded onto quarter inch tape, and they were wonderful. In the school holidays I used to watch Robinson Crusoe in black and white. It was really boring and badly dubbed, so I decided to record my own commentary on the tape machine. My mother told me I could wipe a tape, so I duly sat on the floor with an old reel and began. After a while I found myself sitting amid a huge, unruly nest of uncoiled tape. I couldn't understand why it was so difficult and time-consuming, and then my mother came back and told me that wiping the tape didn't actually mean rubbing off the sound with a tea towel.

I don't know why I have such a mechanical bent; my friend Jenny says all women's heads are filled with frippery and bobbins, but I think mine must be filled with string and egg boxes. It doesn't make me feel any less feminine, but at present I have no man to wield a chainsaw, so I must do it myself.

When I first became a film camera assistant I had to learn all about the equipment I would be using, and last night I came up with a theory that links tape recorders with human attraction. Bear with me, because this is going to get complicated.

When I began working in television, sound and film were recorded on different machines, and the reason that the sound tape and the film could be matched up so that they were perfectly in sync, was because their electric motors were each regulated by quartz crystals. Run a current through a quartz crystal and it will vibrate at an exact and unfluctuating rate. Switch on a camera, and turn on a tape recorder 30 seconds later, and if the current is the same, the motors will instantly sync up.

So where am I going with this? Well, last night I was thinking about human attraction and how you can become completely attuned to another person. You become locked to that person in such a way that you can predict their brain patterns, finish their sentences and tell when they are going to call you on the 'phone. You can be with a hundred different men, but one day you will meet a man who is perfectly in tune with you. You know it before you speak, because something inside you is already in sync with him. Something inside each of you is resonating at exactly the same pitch. You are putting an equally amount of energy into the relationship therefore you are perfectly attuned. I believe that many people ignore this spiritual and emotional regulator, which is why they end up in unhappy relationships. They know it doesn't feel right, there is imbalance, but they stick with it anyway.

When Charlie died I felt him very strongly, in my heart and in my head, but as the years have passed his presence has faded; it doesn't mean that I no longer love him, but that I no longer feel 'in love' with him. I said this on the Vine show and it stirred up quite a bit of controversy. It was a very bold statement to make on national radio but it is what I truly believe. Charlie is kept in a special place in my heart, but I cannot perpetuate feelings of longing for a man who is dead, and it would be wrong to try.

Radioactive matter has a rate of decay called a half-life. A half-life is a measure of how long it takes for the radioactive energy to fade - don't ask me to expand any further because was rubbish at chemistry, but what I'm trying, very badly, to explain, is that in order to quantify how long it will take you to finish grieving, you have to take into account how much energy, love, commitment and happiness went into your relationship (if I was good at maths I would write a complicated equation to explain my theory more succinctly, but as I got an ungraded mark in my maths O level, I think it might be better to stick to things I understand) .

Now, if you had a relationship that was fairly unhappy, then, no matter how your partner was perceived by the rest of the world, the reality is that you know in your heart that there's not much juice to power your grief, and therefore it should quickly fade. If you had a good and happy marriage, then it will take much longer to properly rid yourself of the grief.

Regardless of whether you were happy, or constantly at each other's throats, you let your partner go by releasing all the energy, love, pain and longing associated with his or her death. Keep the energy inside you, and it will keep that feeling of longing alive, just like a current being passed through a quartz crystal. You will expend precious emotional resources trying to stay in tune with a person who is no longer able to stay in tune with you. You will extend the half-life of your pain indefinitely if you keep it locked up in a lead lined casket. Let it go from you, and the emotional crystal inside you will have nothing to power it and will cease to vibrate. It doesn't mean that you lose the love for the person that has died, but that you accept their loss.

I realise that I had an exceptional relationship. I knew it as soon as I met Charlie, and I also understand that my emotional crystal is only going to become fired up again by a man that I feel completely in tune with. But I am ready, and even though I understand that it's going to take quite a man to accept my many idiosyncrasies, and provide a suitable foil for my acerbic wit, I have absolute faith that there is another quartz crystal out there just like mine.


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