12 rolls for 50p was a mistake.  Rolls don't go in the toaster (at least, not happily).  I should have held out for sliced bread.  I charge myself 20p for two breakfast eggs.  I have 2 rolls and tea.

The morning is spent on e-mails.  William has found a fantastic picture of the mushroom cloud for the 6.30pm service on August 3rd - but do tourists who come to Westminster Abbey for a quiet evening service really want to think about the horrors of Hiroshima and the mushroom cloud?  I remind William we have to make it clear that the Feast of the Transfiguration - Jesus seen in glory - is also the date on which the atomic bomb was dropped: August 6 1945.  I'm hoping a Japanese friend will do the Scripture readings.  

Lunch is two spuds (40p) - crispy, with melting spread and half a can of baked beans.  Delicious.  Then an orange cut into four quarters, half-time style (do they still do that for school matches?).

Post-prandial ziz, with Kim.  Today's 'orientalism': 'his Buddhist friend has levanted after taking my name and address.'   'Levant, vb, intr, colloq, from sb Levant, north east Mediterranean, Beirut etc; to levant: disappear, vanish in suspicious circumstances, behave in manner characteristic of natives of Levant.'

Wife and I levant to Alnmouth where there is an exhibition of paintings by John Fieldhouse.  At first they all look like sideways-on barcodes, hand-sploshed, in blues, purples and gold.  Examining them one-by-one (which is free) I begin to see how each is subtly different, like variations on a musical theme.   The one I like most (which would take three years to buy at £10 a week) has already been sold.  Doubtless shortly to levant elsewhere. 

Then to favourite bookshop: Barter Books at Alnwick, where coffee used to be 20p.   Alas, no longer: it's now an impossible 30p.  I am careful not to get emotionally involved with books at stratospheric prices, like £4.60.

For dinner, I finish the spag, I finish the tomato splodge, I finish the onion, I almost finish the spread.  I eat the penultimate orange. 

It's a long evening; I lose my blog (again). 

So, what have I learnt?  You can get by on £10 for a week if you have good friends who transport you round the place, let you use their phone and read their newspapers.  You eat lots of carbohydrate and a bit of fruit.  You don't eat protein (much), fresh veg, jam, or drink coffee or alcohol. You don't have to live off pilchards and biscuits.  When you're distracted it's fine; when you are on your own you struggle. I've had interest, friendship, activity, and the knowledge that this only lasts for a week to sustain me.   Blogging helps.  I'm not ill, frightened or traumatised.  I can't imagine how my friend survives week after gruelling week on a £15 food parcel.   The real cost of maintaining me this week (ninety-five per cent borne by others, of course) must have been well over a hundred pounds.  I've lots to digest.

Spent on food: £5.00  Extras: £4.22 (plus mad moment in Glasgow Cathedral, £2). 

'Blog: cf blag, vb, intr, colloq: to assume (unjustified) air of knowledge; talk at length about things of which you know little.'

End of blog.