Ugh, will it EVER get light today?

Answer, No, if the weather forecast is anything to go by. We are set in for a day of 8/8 cloud cover and day-long drizzle. Should be fun walking the dog in this...

Like many people in the northern hemisphere, I suffer from SAD - Seasonal Affective Disorder. You may know already if you've got this  because it means you basically want to hibernate all winter - you can't wake up, you can't keep your eyes open, you can't get enough sleep no matter how much you sleep, you eat lots and gain weight, and you generally feel low and depressed. Uncontrollable, reasonless weeping is another clue. February is about the worst month, but December and January are no picnic either.

It was my doctor, some 12 years ago, who noticed the connection between my depression and winter. As, once again, I sat in his office, weeping and sniffling, he looked thoughtful and started tapping into his computer. "Do you realise?" he said, "that you come in for your anti-depressants every year between September 15th and October 15th? It's like clockwork. When do you stop taking them?"

"April," I said. "Come to think of it, it's April every year."

On that occasion, I departed from his office with a prescription for MAOIs - the old-fashioned type with which you couldn't eat yeast and red wine and Twiglets, but the connection with winter was too strong to ignore so I decided to buy a lightbox. Like many people, I'd heard about them but been put off by the price - even then they cost over £300 and good ones haven't gotten a deal cheaper, considering all it is, is a box full of daylight-spectrum bulbs. But just a few days of using it and I was feeling like a different person.

Since then, I've managed without anti-depressants in winter but instead chosen to deal with my SAD by other means. Firstly there is the lightbox, to which I am glued like Linus with his blanket all winter, and even on dull days in summer. For years, it was set on timer to come on at 5.45 in the morning, right behind my head as I lay in bed, and I would then sit and read till about 7.30, then get up and go about my day - leaving for work at 8.00 or 8.30. This was enough light to keep me going throughout the working day, but now that I work from home, so I have my lightbox set up on near my workstation and it's on all day, but set a little further away.

The cats love this thing - in fact I've lost one to a cat snuggling up to it and pushing it off the desk.

In case you've never seen one, a lightbox gives out 'full spectrum' light that imitates daylight. It's a bright white light that is very strong - usually about 10,000 lux - and you have to sit within about 18 inches to get the full benefit. The further away you sit, the longer you must use it.

Our second mode of attack is to have daylight fluorescents all over the house, particularly in the office, where there's a bank of five of them. Daylight fluorescents aren't full spectrum but they're a good blue light that makes you feel like you're in the open, as opposed to the greenish pall of normal fluorescents.

Nowadays, to rid myself of that sluggish got-to-hibernate feeling in the mornings, I also have a Lumie Body Clock. This comes on gradually, like dawn, over the course of 90 minutes and the theory is that by the time the alarm actually rings, you're properly awake. It is a hell of a lot better than being woken by the alarm - you wake up gradually and naturally, as if being woken by the sun. Like the lightbox, it gets the feline seal of approval and half the time my view of it is blocked by a cat, soaking up the false dawn. If you live in the US, there are daylight alarms by Hammacher Schlemmer that even wake you up with nice smells, but sadly these aren't available in Europe.

One further trick for banishing winter is kind of corny, but it also works - birdsong on a CD. I keep this playing all day long in winter, and so cozy and bright is our office, with its yellow blinds, tweeting birds and brilliant lighting, that it can be a real shock to walk out onto the landing and find it's a dark winter day outside.

The final tip, if you have an IPhone, is to download a background sounds app. Rather than an alarm clock, these days we're awoken by 45 minutes of dawn chorus that sounds totally genuine, followed, at 8.00, by the sound of a Japanese wooden flute. A better way to greet the day... 

I suppose it's because I take it as given that as women, we all know that it's women and children who suffer the most in war. You can't protect yourself, you can't protect your children. The threat of sexual violence only adds insult to injury, and it is women, worldwide, and in all times, who have borne the brunt of it.

Most of us are lucky to have grown up in nations at peace. But I still know many women who've been raped. Raped by fathers, brothers, boyfriends, strangers.

Rape exists in every nation even in peacetime, but its use as a weapon of war should be no surprise to anyone who's read Susan Brownmiller's book Against Our Will. I have always remembered (though I paraphrase) General Patton's order concerning his own men: "In spite of my most diligent efforts, there will undoubtedly be some raping...and I want the offenders brought to me so that I can see them properly hanged." He was as good as his word, too - expeditiously trying and executing four American troops in Sicily who had raped Italian women.

Patton knew his history, and he knew that the story of conquest is indivisible from rape. But it was Brownmiller who made it clear that rape is not committed by retreating armies (too busy saving their skins) nor, generally, by front-line troops (too busy winning the battle). It is those who follow that cut a swathe through defenceless womanhood worldwide - the second-line Russians marching into Berlin, frustrated grunts in the Vietcong-infested jungle, irregular troops, militias, marauders and skirmishers of every description, in every war, everywhere, at every time.

In my lifetime, Americans have raped the Vietnamese wholesale, Pakistanis have raped Bengalis, Serbians have raped Bosnians, Israelis have raped Palestinians, and on it goes. The current world focus is on the Janjawiid militias, who are terrorising the women of Darfur, but in the most recent wars, militias raped virtually ALL the women in Liberia, while to this day, the women of the Congo are fair game for every soldier on every side, even those in the uniforms of peacekeepers.

As far as rape in warfare goes, the younger the victims the better (little girls are the best), and the more public the crime, the more effective it is - preferably gang-based, preferably in front of the men, preferably resulting in children of another colour, so that the entire fabric of society is shattered. There is no more certain way to plunge a nation into chaos than to pollute its women. So wholesale was the rape of Bengali women in the Bangladesh war that the government of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman declared all such victims 'heroines of the state' to prevent them being ostracised or killed by their own families.

The adoption of resolution 1820 in the Hague will do nothing to stop rape in war, but it is at least a step in the right direction and let us hope that it leads to the crime being seen for what it is - a political strategy used by the unscrupulous to create conflict and disorder for generations to come.

Congratulations to them.

In a very sweet move, they both wore white and had a traditional cake, but with two brides on it. The ceremony was a traditional Jewish one conducted under a huppah - 'traditional' obviously being a fairly flexible word here.

The couple have repeatedly tried to get married in their 15 years together. For eight years they showed up at the courthouse each Valentine's Day and were repeatedly denied a marriage licence. Eventually they undertook a high-profile lawsuit to have California's ban on same-sex marriage ruled as unconstitutional.

For this, the couple were chosen to receive the county's first licence "in recognition of their unique role in the court's decision," said acting LA County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan.

Hundreds of guests and three television networks were on hand to greet the couple but of course, the nutjobs were also out in force with their placards complaining about how this will all be the end of civilisation as we know it.

What IS their problem? Do they seriously feel threatened by the level of personal commitment shown by these law-abiding, tax-paying adults? Are they equally threatened by Del Martin, 87, and Phyllis Lyon, 83, who married each other in San Francisco on the same day, the culmination of their 55-year relationship? In a world as fucked-up as this one, you'd think people would be happy to celebrate two human beings' obvious love for one another.

Nevertheless, whatever the right-wingers think, in the long run what might count for more is the pink pound (or gay greenback, in this case). There are about 80,000 resident gay couples in California and doubtless many of them will want to marry (there are said to be 650 lined up in San Francisco alone). With each couple spending a shedload on flowers, cakes, clothes and venues, any business connected with weddings stands to make a serious buck in the next six months.

So I hereby make a prediction - the world will not stop spinning on its axis because gay people get married. Let's see if I'm right....

As of yet, the hospital has released no other information and has declined to comment on rumours that the girl has been reunited with her mother, grandmother and surviving siblings.

Josef Fritzl remains in custody.

For more on this story, visit the BBC website.

For those who don't know, a gastric band is the update to the old stomach-stapling routine. You have a plastic band fitted over the greater part of your stomach, or a blow-up sac and silicon loop inserted, leaving you with a small portion of stomach above and the majority below. It doesn't block the passage of food into your lower stomach, but it slows it down and you fill up faster, so the theory is, you're satiated sooner and that helps to stop you eating.

In the UK, the operation is available on the NHS for people who are clinically obese (a body mass index of 35 or above) or have other health issues such as diabetes, heart disease or high blood pressure, and whose lives may be at risk if they don't lose weight. People also have to undergo psychological counselling about their reasons for overeating - after all, this is a lot of money to come out of the public purse for people who just can't lay off cream cakes.

But many people who have the op choose to go private, at a cost of about £7,000. And I must admit that that worries me. If you don't qualify for it on the NHS, should you be having this done privately? As with any operation, there are some risks involved, including anaesthesia and leakage, which can entail a second operation to correct the first, and having this kind of intervention means you don't have to deal with the underlying issues that made you overeat in the first place.

The Fern Britton story also raises another matter. Like Anne Diamond (another TV presenter - maybe it's a fat job), Britton chose to keep her operation a secret and, on top, made a nice packet on the side out of advertising diet foods. Both women claimed to have lost weight by diet and exercise. I'm all for being private over medical issues, but in my view, what they have done is fundamentally dishonest. They could quite easily have told their agents 'No'.

My personal attitude towards diet and exercise is hard line, as it happens. Women (and we know it's women, don't we?) are so bone idle when it comes to health and fitness. I've been fat and I've been thin and I don't believe a word of this cobblers about 'having tried everything' and having been unable to lose weight. Barring a tiny minority of people, if you diet and exercise, you lose weight - it's as simple as that. As my old driving instructor said one day as we stopped to let an enormous woman inch her way across the road: "They can't ALL have gland trouble..."

"I'm of the opinion that no-one should need that drastic an intervention," says Dr Dr Funke Baffour, who specialises in the psychology of weight management, on the issue of gastric banding. "I have had patients who are thinking about it, tell me they have done everything they can to lose weight, but, after discussing it, they haven't."

In an article by Anne Diamond, I was struck by these words: "Now I can do what I never thought I'd be able to - eat half a pizza and happily watch the waiter take the rest away." Now what, exactly, is so very difficult about that? For that matter, what is so difficult about saying no to pizza altogether? I eat maybe four a year, dear reader. And no, I don't find it easy. I LOVE pizza. I love bread and biscuits and cakes and chocolate. That's why there aren't any in the house.

Yeah, yeah, I know we all have 'issues'. Who doesn't? Who doesn't wish their parents had been kind instead of control freaks? Who wouldn't rather have a great job with more money? But doh - who wouldn't rather lie in bed than go jogging? Who wouldn't like to eat chocolate every day? Issues with food - and comfort eating - have to be dealt with the same way you deal with issues with drugs and alcohol and sex. See a shrink, not a surgeon.

Lifestyle, I feel, remains the main factor and it's no surprise that fat parents raise fat kids. I grew up in a lardy Celtic family with a thick line of obesity running through it - my paternal grandmother and aunt, my mother and my sister were all clinically obese and we ate chips with everything, along with huge mounds of bread and butter. But you don't have to accept your fat destiny any more than become an alky just because your parents were. In her 20s my sister lost over seven stone with diet and exercise - that's 98 pounds - and she struggles with her weight every single day. Her overweight son in his turn has now lost about five stone (70 pounds). This has entailed huge changes in their lifestyle, and iron-willed discipline.

This may not be the easy option, but it is by far the longest-lasting. In my view, gastric banding shouldn't be a lifestyle choice - it's just another example of whining adults wanting someone else to step in and sort out their problems for them.