This week has been mostly filled with two things:

1 Trying to find women who've had threesomes
2 Turning my flat into a deluxe city-chick style pad (more of which later)

The threesomes piece has, of course, been a total nightmare. I finally found three women who were willing to talk about their experiences, through a combination of emailing mates (one of whom posted it on Popbitch which seems to be populated by many people who have threesomes, if the amount of responses I got is anything to go on) and visiting swinging websites (ah, the stories my compute cache could tell).

The magazine then decided that, actually, they'd like all three people who took part in the threesome to be photographed. Leaving me with one couple who I could use and, 48 hours before deadline, now having to find another two sets of swingers. Who are attractive and aged between 18-25, just to make things even tougher.

Posting messages looking for people who've had threesomes isn't for the faint-hearted; I've had more emails from people saying 'I can't help, but my wife and I will have a threesome with you,' than I've had people who are willing to be interviewed. I've sent them all polite 'Thanks, but no thanks,' emails (the online equivalent of making my excuses and leaving?).

I can tell that my rapidly approaching birthday - my 30th - is having an impact on me. Despite being offered numerous threesomes this week, the thing that's really excited me is Spring-cleaning my flat.

It started innocently enough; trying to turn one of the rooms into a second office. But then the cleaning bug kicked in (I must have caught it from someone, because it's certainly not been in evidence before.) Now, every cupboard has been emptied, and every inch of the flat has been hoovered, polished or otherwise cleaned.

I didn't think that the place looked that bad before, but clearly, my eyes must need checking as I somehow generated about ten bags of rubbish (I decided to go with the 'if you haven't used it in five years, chances are you never will' theory). And there are another five or so bags filled with old clothes and books to go to the charity shop and library (assuming you can donate books to London libraries; I know that you could in Cheltenham, where I grew up, and I like the idea of loads of people having access to more books.)

I'm now utterly blissed out by the place. It sparkles, and has some very funky ambient lighting things going on. To give you an idea of how bad it is, one of my friends came round, saw the place and asked 'Have you turned into a Stepford wife?' I fear the answer may be 'Yes' as I'm now emptying the ashtrays after ever fag and washing up as soon as I finish every cup of coffee (I estimate this behaviour will continue for up to a week before I slide back into my old slovenly ways.)

Other than that, I'm spending a fair amount of time talking to people in India, because I'm still waiting for a computer to arrive from Dell (not hyperlinking because I don't want to get them any more business) nearly a month after I ordered it (estimated delivery time was 7-10 days.) The call centre people are very polite, but sadly appear to do absolutely bugger all. I called them last Friday and they said 'it will be with you at the beginning of next week. By Wednesday, it still wasn't here. I called again. 'It will be with you tomorrow or Friday at the latest.'

It's still not here.

I'm getting distinctly narked; it's got a lovely shiny 17 inch flat screen monitor (because size does matter.) and will look fab in my flat now it's all sparkly. If it ever arrives.

Ah well, back to searching for women who've had threesomes. What a way to earn a living.

After news of two HIV cases amongst adult stars in the US, porn producers including Vivid and Private have decided to take a break from production.

This is a good sign of how responsible the porn industry *can* be; spreading disese isn't what it's about. Certainly, all the models I know over here get tested for HIV and everything else at least once per month - meaning they're quite possibly the safest people you could have sex with (other than virgins).

Rumours may abound of dodgy certificates but, in reality, the people starring in the films have got the same sense of self-preservation - and responsibility - as everyone else, and insist on seeing people's certificates before they'll work with them. That's not to say that it's entirely safe; unprotected sex is involved, after all. And I have heard stories of untested cameramen asking for 'extras' on a shoot. Luckily, most girls I've spoken to refuse.

Let's hope that this is just an unfortunate but temporary problem - not so that porn can carry on being produced, but because AIDS is horrific - I saw a friend of my mum's die of it when I was 13, and wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

Use it as a reminder to always use condoms/dental dams - and if you haven't been tested (and have ever had unprotected sex of any kind) then get down to the clinic now. If everyone got regularly checked, then we'd stand a chance of stopping the spread of this awful disease.

A mate of mine is running in the marathon tomorrow to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Relief. As I'm a chain-smoker, I figured that it was only fair to chuck some sponsorship his way. If you feel like being nice, you can sponsor him here.

Careful what you masturbate with.

Sometimes my job really is 'challenging'. I've just had a brief through from a women's mag asking me to find three attractive couples aged 18-26 who've had a threesome. They need to be willing to be photographed and talk about what they did.

Most of the time, I can go down the pub and find people for features, assuming that it's the usual kind of 'what is great sex?' or 'what's your fantasy?' piece.

I don't really fancy going round a pub asking people ''scuse me, have you ever had a threesome?' I fear it may lead to misunderstandings.

So, if you *have* had a threesome and would be up for talking about it and being pictured, please let me know...

No, not there.

I've been hovering on the brink of insanity for the last month (OK, even closer to the brink than normal) thanks to my boiler. It decided, as is its annual wont, to stop working. Usually, someone comes round after a week or so of me shivering, hits it in some magic and very expensive way, and it starts working again.

This time, after a week of no heat or hot water, a bloke came round and hit it hard enough to make it work for a whole day, leaving me to make endless phone calls and get endless promises from endless boilermen, all of whom have lied. They've promised faithfully to turn up and fix it. I've stayed in. They haven't arrived. One bloke said he'd be here on Friday. And then called to say 'oops, it's a Bank Holiday and I didn't realise so I can't get any parts'. You'd think he'd have noticed. Or at least found somewhere that was open and charged an outrageous premium for fixing it. But instead, he swore he'd be here on Tuesday. Sure enough, he was. He looked at the boiler and said 'it's broken.' The man is a genius.

After the first week of coldness hell (where it really was far too cold to work, or do anything other than lie in bed, shivering and feeling sorry for myself) my ex turned up with a plug-in radiator for me, which made things rather more pleasant (yes, I could have got one myself. But I was still at the 'believing the lies of boilermen stage) I could work. I just couldn't wash. This made meetings a little tricky. It doesn't tend to give a good impression to editors if they can smell you three tube stops before you arrive at a meeting. It's also made having a glam cocktail-filled lifestyle unfeasible, because there's only so chic a girl can look with unwashed hair.

After a month of no baths, (To be clear, actually, I have actually had some baths in the last month, but they've been at friends' houses or made using the oh-so-time-efficient method of filling a gazillion pans of water and transporting them to the bath, resulting in a) RSI and b) between three and five hours of time spent doing nothing but fill a bath) the boilerman was lucky not to get punched for blandly informing me 'It's broken.'

So, today, the man has returned and is apparently fixing the boiler. So far, he's come in, asked where the stopcock is, opened the boiler, said 'Oh shit,' and left again.

If he doesn't come back and actually fix the boiler, this may be the last post I ever write as I'll have exploded with anger and/or tracked him down and hit him over the head repeatedly with the bits he's taken out of the boiler. Which will be particularly likely to get me banged up as I won't be able to have a bath to wash the bloodstains off my hands.

NB: Apologies for the boiler-obsessed post. It has dwarfed everything else in my life. However, to summarise, my book - now at about 11,000 words - is under consideration by a couple of publishers, I'm up for a couple of editor jobs, I've written various shagging-related articles, have several sex toys to test, had a fab night at live punk karaoke talking about pubes with Lou Wener (her boyfriend is in the band. He suggested we sang together. I declined, partly because I really can't do the karaoke thing without feeling horribly embarrassed and partly because *it's Lou Wener*. I can do without that kind of competition.) had a fun dinner party, in which 'sleb stories' were being exchanged and one of the guests managed to utterly trump everyone else by confessing to having shagged Thom Yorke, and have eaten an awful lot of chocolate. Enough to have gone up a dress size (I'm not normally a chocoholic but when you're lying in bed and can't work because it's too damned cold, chocolate and Baileys is the only solution).

Hmmm, OK, the boilerman claims the heating is now working. The bath beckons...