Since Shana and I decided to lose some weight a couple of years ago, we have weighed ourselves every week at more or less the same time and always on the same day, and we always keep a record of the results. One day we will plot a graph of our progress, hoping it will look like an infographic of share prices at the time of the Wall Street Crash, or at least not too much like the crazy spiral of petrol prices circa 2012.

To get optimum results, sometimes we breathe out as we mount the scales, and sometimes we stand on one leg. This week, though, I shall try a new tactic: the electricity company approach. Instead of actually weighing myself, I shall simply record an estimate. Like a real energy supplier, my estimate will be much higher than usual, and when I eventually go back to recording my actual weight, I shall be much relieved at the apparent reduction, even though it might still be two pounds more than I would like.

And why might my weight have gone up? Well, that would have something to do with today’s lunch, namely one Asda rhubarb crumble plus the obligatory tsunami of piping hot Devon custard. I looked at the box later, having retrieved it from our little recycle bin to see if any crumbs needed licking off removing. ‘It says here that it’s supposed to serve six,’ I said to Shana. ‘Well, we’ll just have to be three each then, won’t we,’ she said, with the simultaneous wisdom and obscurity of a latter-day Nietzsche.

If all else fails, I have another trick up my dieter’s sleeve. It being Olympics year, I remembered that sometimes, in athletics, a competitor can run a world-beating time or leap a hitherto unequalled distance in the long jump, only for their record not to stand because it was wind-assisted. Tomorrow, at weigh-in time, I shall copy those athletes: if my weight has risen a tad too much I shall simply ignore it and claim that it must not be recorded because it might be rhubarb crumble-assisted. A gold medal-winning ploy there, I think. Meanwhile, for the next seven days I shall be subsisting solely on oranges in a heroic bid to slim down from a post-rhubarb crumble ‘slightly porky’ to a more reasonable ‘mildly corpulent’. It’ll be tough, but it’ll be worth it. Better sit down now, though: I’m feeling faint already.

‘I’ll have the last mandarin,’ I said, reaching for the lonely leftover of a small pack of fruit we bought recently. ‘My skills with mandarins are improving fast. I even managed to remove the peel from the previous one all in one piece,’ I boasted, carefully avoiding any mention of the orange juice-impregnated sweatshirt I was still wearing. (At least I made the house smell fresh; a bit like a human Airwick, you could say.)

Shana pretended not to be impressed though. ‘I supposed you’re going to do some origami with the peel then, are you?’ she said, smoothly hyperlinking the word ‘origami’ without even pausing for breath.

‘Haha,’ I chuckled. ‘That would be orange-gami wouldn’t it?’

Shana groaned and threw on a sou’wester as I reached the mandarin’s juicy innards. Can’t say I blame her really. When I’m nomming, you can’t be too careful.

Yesterday (Tuesday) lunchtime, after a glance at Mother Hubbard’s cupboard, I announced, ‘Today I shall be having soup dewjaw.’ Shana was baffled (a regular occurrence when I’m around) and requested clarification. ‘Soup dewjaw,’ I repeated, assuming that would be enough explanation too.

‘What are you on about?’ said Shana, getting exasperated plus VAT.

‘Soup dewjaw,’ I said again. ‘They serve it every day in those fancy French restaurants. My pronunciation might be a bit iffy though.’

‘Soup dewjaw,’ Shana pondered. Then it dawned. ‘Oh, you mean “soupe du jour“,’ she said, relieved, before adding ‘Crackers.’

‘Eh? Who are you calling crackers?’

‘For lunch,’ said Shana. ‘I’ll have crackers. With a little cheese.’

‘Right,’ I said, heading off for my soup dewjaw and a couple of slice of pain (that’s French for bread, if you’re bothered). Isn’t foreign food brilliant!

I’ve been getting adventurous recently and trying new kinds of fruit. Hitherto, I’ve always gone for apples (and nearly always Braeburns) but, following last week’s tentative sampling of a handful of clementines, this week I tried mandarins. With less yukky chewy pith, they’ve already surpassed clementines and soon I shall decide how they stack up against satsumas; it’s years since I bothered with any orange fruit, to be honest, so this is all like a fructiferous born-again experience for me.

I’m still a messy eater though. Taking a bite out of one mandarin segment I was hit in the sweatshirt area by a veritable water-cannon of fruit juice.

‘Well that settles it,’ I said. ‘As Noel Coward popularised the wearing of smoking jackets in the interwar years, so I shall start a trend for wearing a mandarin jacket or general fruit jacket. I know it sounds weird, but-’

‘Why don’t you just get a bib?’ said Shana, always the practical one. I couldn’t help feeling that her tone contained just a slight hint of the disparaging. Maybe I imagined it. I dunno, I was too busy mopping up the splashes.

While hunting in the kitchen cupboard for something to eat at lunchtime today, I found what must be the most battered tin I’ve ever seen–and about fifteen years ago I worked for a short spell at a tin can maufacturer’s in Lincolnshire, so I’ve seen my fair share of cans, believe me. Even so, depsite its sorry state, this one was just about intact. Worth getting a few pictures, though, I thought, hastily choosing the mackerel for my lunch as being the less likely tin to contain megadoses of botulism or the dreaded ptomaine toxin owing to microscopic apertures in the container’s outer skin. We’ll be opening the tomatoes tomorrow, all being well. Wish us luck.

This bashed-up tomato tin made me think of Warhol’s famous pictures of those Campbell’s soup tins. Maybe the great man should have used a more beaten-up example as his model. It could have symbolised the innate corruption of industry and the much-derided multinational corporations. And then I thought of those multicoloured repeated images of Mazza Monroe. As my homage to Warhol, I quickly put together a short series of fuzzy tomato tins.

But if you prefer twisted metal wreckage to fine art, here are some more shots of that poor old tomato can. I reckon it had an argument with a forklift truck–and lost!