Escape From Herbal Hill

Lunch time: I arrive at the Obs offices and become immediately embroiled in a bust up with Effikal Lucy Siegle re the half-drunk Starbucks latte I am clutching to my breast. Now, generally I wouldn't mind one bit. Effikal is very good value – despite all the, you know, ethics - and she and I live for a good barney. But this particular incident came too hard on the heels of my virtually being asked to leave a fashionable North London caff because I'd made the hideous blunder of ordering a Diet Coke. I was told in no uncertain terms that I could opt for their house organic cola, or 'go somewhere else'. Now, I love Diet Coke. Even after Paris Hilton branded it a fat person's drink (how ridiculous.) Even after John McCririck went cold turkey without it in the Big Brother house. I love its branding and its fizz and its intrinsic glamour. It's like champagne for the daytime. But it seems that increasingly, a girl can barely snap open a can without some interfering type launching themselves on her, and explaining that their homeopath really, really doesn't approve. Caffeine, it seems, is the new fags/ mobile phone mast erected next to a playground/ binge drink Number One Enemy of the Public, and I am destined to become some kind of social pariah on account of my fondness for it. Why, I'm virtually an oppressed minority already!