I have this running joke. I'm a girl who needs 8000 calories a day to keep her figure. It's not quite true, but close. Last week in the wilds of East Anglia - or Angular as Jade Goody once said - the progeny and I were force-fed like pigs being fattened for market. Our hostess, an old friend, is loving and generous to a fault. But she's a control freak. Like Cathy Bates in Stephen King's 'Misery'. Her husband is so infantilised he wears short trousers. He's 62. We were similarly smothered; ferried around the lowlands, stoked up on cooked breakfasts and vast three course dinners. One day we escaped. "I'm taking the girls out for a break," I said. At the front door, we were presented with a picnic. The rolls were labelled with our names. Leaving Norfolk six pounds heavier, I said: "That's it. Family hold back." But we had two parties in the diary. And empty cupboards. So I kept ordering home deliveries. This morning at six, the girls left for Leh. We had breakfast before I dropped them at the Heathrow Express. Back in a silent house, I moped. At ten, I had a second breakfast. Then I worked my way through a box of chocolates called Seven Deadly Sins. One chocolate for each sin: sloth, pride, anger, lust, envy... greed and gluttony. I am exploding out of my trousers. Not so much muffin top as nightmare at the bakery. Worse. Just now, I ate two chocolate medallions belonging to my eldest. "Save them for me, Mum," she said, as she headed off to the mountains. What kind of woman have I become? My child is on her way to the other side of the world, and I ate her sweeties before she'd even crossed Turkey:-(