I cannot stomach your cabbage, your broccoli, your cauliflower, your green beans of any size or shape, your leeks, your courgettes, your carrots - the list goes on.

So a suggested 'grilled chicken breast with a pile of vegetables' is reduced to a lonely-looking chicken lump for me, nestling on a vast expanse of empty plate.

I can eat a little leafy salad, but I assume that equates to negative nutritional value once all the chewing has occurred.

Any suggestions as to what an anti-green like me could pile on the plate instead?

(Pulses are OK, as are onions, spuds, tomatoes and, errr, that's it.)

This coming Saturday, my 12-year-old daughter, her parents (that's me and my significant other) and her 75-year-old grandparents will have to find something to do in Glasgow between 1 o'clock-ish and bedtime.

The younger member of the party will be in town for a singing competition on Sunday and, should that not go the way we all wish, I'd like her to have seen something of a city none of us have been to before which will stay in her memory.

And around 7.30, I'd like her to sit with us in a reasonably-priced restaurant while we all rest our aching feet.

Snapshot of a city: where would you go?

Great gig for La Marling last Friday - see My Night Out With... - but Laura's leaving left a lot to be desired.

She announced that there would be no encore - fair enough.

But as the last strains of the last song rang through York Minster - and believe me, that's a lot of ringing - she left the stage at speed.

The audience were, one by one, rising to their feet in appreciation. That's a bona fide standing ovation. But everybody found that, having gained the upright position, there was nobody left on stage to accept their tribute.

Her stage-fright and awkwardness with between-song banter are well known, but shyness surely can be overcome long enough to stand still for a minute or two to let the people who enjoyed the performance let you know it, through the medium of prolonged applause, with occasional whooping?

Or, having given of her best, is she entitled to exit venue stage right, job done?

Have I made this up, or was a new adaptation of Room At The Top supposed to start on BBC4 this week - complete with Maxine Peake in too-bright lipstick? I put it on Sky+ - or at least I think I did - and it has transmogrified into Fanny Hill.

Any wise Worders know why it has disappeared - or was it all a dream....?

In the newly-refurbished cellar there is a newly-installed window. To allow the newly-refurbished cellar to function as an occasional sleep-over room for the small daughter and her friends, a blind has to be installed to prevent passer-by observance.

In keeping with my DIY history, of the four rawlplug/screw interfaces required to affix the blind to the plaster ceiling, one has seated itself remarkably well, two just go round and round like a circle in a spiral, and one (the blind having now been fitted in a perfect example of the triumph of hope over experience) is descending in strict accordance to the laws of gravity and will doubtless, by morning, have overcome the resistance of its fellows and turned my blind into a crumply floor covering.

If anyone out there is A Proper Man,can you point me towards a remedy?

And speaking as one who took over forty minutes to put up a brass coathook on the back of a door with millimetric accuracy, only to have its merits questioned due to the mere side-issue of its being upside-down and functionally useless, are you, like me, a DIY disaster area, or a master of the manly tool-based arts?

Having thoroughly enjoyed a vinyl nostalgia wallow with my copy of the Birmingham Beano fan's Back To The Night - one of three cassettes worn to single molecule thickness during my first year at Sheffield Poly, along with Crime of the Century and Wish You Were Here - I thought I'd splash out on a new-fangled CD of same.

Which is easily achieved. If I'm happy to buy from Canada. And only if I spend one-hundred-and-thirty of your English pounds.

So two questions: does anyone know - apart from the usual 'contractual problems' - exactly why such a major artist's work is so hard to get and so eye-wateringly expensive?

And how much moolah have you unexpectedly had to fork out to replace big, black and round with small and shiny?

If I may briefly beg the indulgence of the readership: if anyone can be Christmas-spirited enough to type out the Szechaun Chilli Prawn recipe from Ken Hom's book - mine having mysteriously disappeared after its last festive wok-oil-spattered outing - my family and I and the thirty crustaceans thawing in the sink will be eternally grateful. And if no-one can oblige: felicitations to you all regardless.

Did anyone see young Christopher Martin and his chums on last night's South Bank Show? And, given the shedload of opprobrium they seem to attract, did any doubters find themselves being won over by the winsome foursome's unfailing good manners - and undeniable dedication to being good, but getting better?

...people who say 'meet with'.

What's wrong with 'meet'?

But if someone can tell me that 'meet with' is perfectly good English, and not just another unawanted borrowing from across the Atlantic, I'm prepared to divert my impotent rage to another utterly trivial bone of contention.

(Ooops - should have been entered in the 'annoying' thread down there. Mis-use of blog protocol get on anyone's wick, perchance? If someone In Power can move this - please do)

Depending on your point of view, congratulations or commiserations are due to Roy Wilkinson whose Iggular interview extract from The Word (below) makes Pseud's Corner in today's Private Eye. Deserved - or undeserved?

"While conducting The Word around his beguiling Florida property, Iggy stops to have a nice big slash on the lawn. It's a gorgeous sun-flushed afternoon. Bare-chested and freshly showered, he makes no effort to step away from his guests as he unzips his jeans and decants onto the grass. Iggy's comfort break is undertaken unselfconsciously, without the slightest desire to shock and amaze. Rather, it's oddly charming, reprising the easy nonchalance with which he's long addresed the corporeal."

I could weep every time - yes every time - I get to the end of the Zeppelin beat group's 'In My Time of Dying' and the wheels fall off the whole hurtling juggernaut with a shitty lyric change, a fake cough, a bit of cockerney rinky-dink guitar and exit everyone to go down the pub.

It last only a heartbeat or two but and shatters every scintilla of atmosphere the preceding 11 minutes or so builds up.

It could be the beginning, the end, or any of the bits in-between: which few seconds of what track make you bellow at the Dansette in a teary-eyed rage at a thing of beauty forever spoilt?

I've heard very little by The Bearded One but, for the many of you who worship at the altar, you'll find a dozen Richard Thompson covers at http://coverlaydown.com/.

One which is not there is Maria McKee's 'Has She Got a Friend For Me' which I've always loved without knowing, until quite recently, that it's a gender-transferred version of an RT song.

Any others worth tracking down?

(Even if the man in question leaves you cold, Cover Lay Down is a site well worth spending some time with.)

As I type, my ears are being assailed by one Jackie DeShannon belting out a hoaky, bar-band version of Kim Carnes' Bette Davis Eyes. Wordists better versed in trivia than I may have already known that Jackie was co-author of the song and recorded it seven years before Kim took up the mic. Thanks to Spotify (may its name be praised) I went on to sample Badfinger's original version of Without You. Oh dear. And in both cases, I'm mystified and awestruck by whichever producer or artiste saw such treasure gleaming from within the dun-brown slurry of these songs on first hearing. So point us towards them, Massive, so we can all listen and wonder more: the polished pairings of v. poor source material and its resultant sparkling gem.