Yesterday was a scorchingly hot day in Normandy - about 31 degrees in the shade, which made it the hottest May day since 1953, according to Meteo France.

A good day, then, to decide to do a 7km hike? Well, maybe not. I'd planned a riverside walk, through woods, in the shade, but a field of cows and my dog wasn't good combination, which meant a detour down some very hot, dusty, unshaded roads in full and blinding sunlight in order to get back to the river. 

Nevertheless, we ended the day feeling fine and the reason was that we had enough water. A litre (with a little salt) on each of us, and another two in the car.

How much water do you need?

The worse advice I was ever given, about 15 years ago, was to only drink when I was thirsty. I've got used to simply ignoring thirst - I simply don't recognise it when it occurs. If I only drank when I was thirsty, I'd never drink at all.

And telling someone 'eight glasses a day' isn't much help either. Assuming that's an 8oz glass, that's 64oz of water a day. But not all people, whatever their weight or lifestyle or location, need this exact same amount of water. 

Better methods are to drink until your urine runs clear, or to calculate your needs by body weight then amend for lifestyle and diet. If you're not active, you need half an ounce per pound of body weight, and if you're active you need more, which means that at my current weight, 133 pounds, and only moderately active, I would need 8.3 glasses of water per day. That equals 1.8 litres.

Unfortunately, I know from bitter experience that if I drank this little water, I could kiss goodbye to a bowel movement for EVER. The causes are that I like a glass of wine with meals, I have coffee for breakfast, I walk a brisk 3 miles every morning and I follow a high-fibre diet. All of these things mean I need more water.

You too may need more water if you do ANY of the following:

* Live in a hot climate. 

* Eat high-fibre foods such as wholewheat.

* Eat dried foods such as dates and raisins.

* Eat a lot of cheese. 

* Eat a lot of starchy foods such as root vegetables.

* Take daily exercise that makes you sweat. 

* Drink alcohol or caffeine. 

* Take saunas or steam baths (this one is never listed, but they make you sweat - you need to replace this lost water). 

As you can see, the average Western lifestyle might lead to you needing more water than you might realise.

Signs you may be dehydrated are:

* Headache. At the first sign of a headache, try a good glass of water rather than a painkiller. 

* Heartburn. 

* Unspecfic pain such as low back pain. 

* Constipation. 

If you have any of these symptoms, start first by modestly increasing your water intake by half a litre a day. Don't overdo it, as your kidneys need time to adjust to the extra work they'll have to do. The main reason people have become ill from too much water is drinking too much at one go.

What if you hate drinking water?

On the bright side, 'water' can be found in forms other than 'water' as such. Fresh fruits and vegetables are generally pretty high in water, especially above-ground veg such as salads, broccoli, cauliflower, peppers, courgettes and aubergines. Herbal teas can count towards your water intake because they don't contain caffeine, and so can modest amounts of fruit juice (that word was 'modest'). But don't count drinks with caffeine, or fizzy drinks (sodas). In fact, if you can, cut sodas out of your life - your body will thank you for it.

Obviously, 'wet' meals such as soups and stews have a lot of water in too. But if you follow a diet of white-bread cheese sarnies and chips with a beer, watch out...

How to work it out

It took me some time to work out a method of water consumption that worked for me, but here it is.

* I calculated my needs by body weight = 1.8 litres. 

* I added up the things in my lifestyle that can cause dehydration and there were three major ones: exercise; high-fibre diet; alcohol/caffeine intake. 

* For each factor, I added back in half a litre of water. 

Total = 3.3 litres of water. This is about what I drink a day 'as water', and it seems to work for me. Others may find they need more or less. But yesterday I drank over 6 litres because of the heat and I needed every bit of it.

How to get it down

Personally, I find plain water quite difficult to drink, and having sips during the day, as you're recommended to do, just doesn't work for me. I suffer from reflux, following a car crash, and if I sip all day, it gets much worse. Instead, I drink my water at set intervals throughout the day. I also drink it warm, which makes it easier to get down, and with a little cider vinegar added for both flavour and for health reasons (it's anti-inflammatory). It goes like this:

* On rising, two 400ml glasses.

* An hour later, following exercise, two 400ml glasses.

* Before lunch (about 12.30), two 400ml glasses.

* Before dinner (about 7.00pm), two 400ml glasses.

Total = 3.2 litres.

Plus, I drink:

* Water during the day if I feel thirsty. 

* After dinner, a pot of herbal tea. 

* Nothing after 9pm at the latest (to prevent reflux). 

This is the method that works for me, but I can't stress enough that people must listen to their individual body's needs. I drink a LOT of water for my body weight, and others may not need to. But if you suffer from constipation, or headaches, or back pain, do think first and foremost of drinking a little bit more.

Came across a concept here that I find kind of strange - 'gaining'. People who want to gain as much weight as possible.

Rather like trying to lose as much weight at possible, this seems rather unhealthy to me. I would imagine that it's better to stay at a stable, natural weight for your height and level of activity rather than beating yourself up one way or the other. And surely deliberately making yourself obese will kill you in the long run?

Still, interesting reading, especially for anyone who's ever felt browbeaten by the diet brigade - so many women diet down to 7-10 pounds lower than they're really happy with, and some gainers, it would seem, eat very healthily, just too much of it.

Weight, though, is one of those things that is always a question of balance. For instance, I gained about seven pounds over Christmas. This is normal - I gain at least this much every year, then shed it again in the spring. But this year I kept an eye on it because last year I gained 27 pounds, due to the winter being very cold - and I didn't manage to shift it all.

A modest amount of winter weight gain, I always feel, is a natural process, and one that I observe with my animals, who all plump up quite deliciously in the winter months, then get skinny again as soon as the weather gets warmer. 

But only when the weather is crying out for salads and gazpacho will losing weight be a natural process, not a starvation diet. And the kinds of 7km walk I did last Sunday also help it to drop off fairly easily.

For me, the balancing act is that I look my absolute best at 8st 3lb (optimum weight for my height), but can't be arsed because that means watching every damn thing I eat. At 8st 12lb I can eat everything I like, but feel a bit too flabby. Maybe 8st 7lb will be a good compromise this summer - and the good news on that is that suddenly a whole raft of my clothes that didn't get worn last year would become available again as if they were new. 

The UN has warned that AIDS is now the biggest killer worldwide of women of reproductive age.

One reason is that the majority of women worldwide - some 70 per cent - have at some point been forced to have unprotected sex. Fundamentally, new research shows, it is men's violence against women that is leading to the rise in AIDS. 

A bigger argument for the empowerment of women could scarcely be thought of. Women throughout history have been subject to violence and rape at the hands of men, and now that can lead not only to injury, unwanted pregnancy and psychological trauma, but also to death at an early age.

It is sometimes easy for us to forget this in the West, where we kid ourselves that we're 'equal', but in much of the world, women cannot even control the most basic matters about their own lives such as their reproductive rights, who they have sex with, whom they marry, how they work or whether they can own property.  

In South Africa - one of the most 'macho' nations in the world - HIV infection is three times more common in young women than in young men, partly due to the prevalence of rape in that society. And in sub-Saharan Africa, the biggest risk factors for AIDS are not to be gay, promiscuous or an intravenous drug user but to be a young married woman. Marriage effectively makes a woman a chattel of her husband in many societies, and their subordinate position makes it impossible for women to insist on safe sex.

In the light of this new research, the UN says it will now incorporate action against violence against women into its worldwide programme to conquer HIV.

After the excesses of Christmas, it's been a relief - and a necessity - to get back to eating normally.

Our Christmas turned out remarkably festive in the end, but four parties in eight days is a long chalk from our normal practice, and the late nights and overeating (and drinking) that accompanied it left us feeling totally exhausted. It was all very lovely, of course, and we thoroughly enjoyed it, but it was time to get to get back to our normal routine. 

It began on Christmas Eve with a gourmet dinner at a friend's. S is a cordon bleu cook and for her, a few nibbles is usually a five-courser that would intimidate the most accomplished cook (amuse bouche of iced tomato coulis with avocado foam and blackcurrants, etc - you get the drift). Christmas dinner was amuse-bouche, foie gras, lamb cutlets with game chips, then pears, vanilla gateaux and creme anglaise.

So adroit is she in her little kitchen that I feel nervous at the idea of having her over, as we eat very simply, and focus mainly on vegetables and starches. Yesterday, for instance, my main meal was a simple concoction of steamed spinach, shaved Cheddar and cherry tomatoes. It barely constitutes a meal at all.

On Boxing Day we had another slap-up meal at the daughter of the above cook (and an equally good cook herself), which was based - as is the French taste - primarily on meat. Smoked salmon and caviar for the amuse-bouche, duck as the starter, great hunks of beef for the main course.

It was all fabulous, especially the orange and tomato sauce for the meat, but this is more meat than we would normally eat in three or four days, all in one meal, and it was at this point that my digestion began to protest. Our hostess lacks a freezer, so we took home the leftovers and this week they did us six more helpings with the addition of copious amounts of veg, finishing up as a curry soup last night.

Our own party on the 28th was the Black and White affair, so the foods were mostly based on caviar, black olives, white cheese and the like. Everybody brought a dish, and I had done enough food for an army, so the next day we gave away the greater part of the salads to a visiting family with six children, and lived for the next three days on leftovers: blinis, choux puffs, coleslaw, celeri remoulade, potato salad, brownies and licorice. A balanced diet this is not.

New Year's Eve was the tipping point for me. I am just not used to these multiple late-night finishes, or so much food, and I normally wilt at 10.00. After snacking on amuse-bouche and champagne all evening, we began to eat in earnest at 10.30pm and by the time we'd finished our main course, it was 2.00am. At this point, I had to concede defeat, so we left to cries of wimpishness. Our undaunted friends finished at 5.00am, got up early and headed for the coast for the day - snow and ice notwithstanding. 

Since New Year, therefore, the DH and I have given our systems some time off - especially from the booze, as I am getting too old to spend every day with a hangover - and have tried to return to our normal habits. This means croissants and coffee for breakfast, a light main meal with lots of veg at lunch, soup or a roll in the evening, meat no more than once a day, a vegetarian day mid-week, and a litre of wine per week rather than aperitifs, champagne, wine and digestifs every day.

The chocolates sent from Yorkshire have all been consumed, the posh biscuits and cakes are nearly all gone, and finally, finally my poor liver can come out of hiding. 

Plenty of people have a problem with moles, but it's usually in the garden. Mine, unfortunately, are on the body.

As I type, I am trying not to think about the amount of pain I'm in. Yesterday I had two moles removed from the sole of my left foot, and next week I go back to have another one taken from my little toe. 

I did not know - as I find many others do not - that moles on the sole of your foot are inherently dangerous. This is a prime site for melanoma, as the sole of the foot is so vulnerable to injury. 

It was my podologist who spotted them and ordered me to see a dermatologist. It was a long wait for an appointment and I put it to the back of my mind until the actual day. My huge relief when she said they were not (yet) cancerous was replaced by apprehension when she warned me that the operation would be very painful and the anaesthetic can give you heart palpitations. 

When it comes to putting myself into other people's care, I am nervous at the best of times, so yesterday was quite a bad day. And having convinced myself that she was only covering her arse in telling me about the pain, I was taken aback by the unbelievable trauma of the injections. 

The reason, I suppose, is that the sole of the foot is well supplied with nerve endings and every one of them was jangling. It felt like the surgeon had put a spear in my foot and was crunching it around in the bones. Later, I discovered, grunting in pain, that I'd bitten a section off the inside of my cheek. 

All went fairly well then until some six hours later when the lidocaine wore off, to be followed by ten hours of searing nerve pain from the tips of my toes to my knee and, consequently, very little sleep. Luckily that has now reduced to a bearable level of 'ordinary' pain, so all that remains is for the wounds to heal. 

I have been ordered to walk on the foot as normal, which is no picnic. If I don't, the scars won't heal properly, as the natural tendency is to curl the foot up and keep weight off it. So, like love's young dream, I am hobbling around with a stick, feeling nauseous with pain and cursing the ineffectiveness of paracetamol. 

Oh la. Well, at least it is done, and it will be the worst of them, I hope. Fingers crossed for next week.