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BING Crosby never crooned about dreaming of a white Easter, but, according to statistics, here in Britain we are more likely to experience snowfall while we pick the foil off our chocolate eggs than when we unwrap our Christmas presents.

If I were a betting girl I would have taken full advantage of the fact that bookies throughout the land were open for the first time ever on Good Friday and put a fiver down on the likelihood of snow on Sunday.

As it was, I was so intent on huddling up in front of the fire while rain, sleet, snow and hail stones the size of Cadburys Crème Eggs, lashed the windows that I never made it further than putting the recycling bin out.

To be honest, I quite enjoy a bit of house arrest. There's nothing finer than knowing that the elements have conspired against you to such an extent that all your plans for lunching with friends, delivering chocolates bunnies to children in far-flung counties or dragging round the shops in search of a new bed for the spare room (yes that was pretty much going to be our exciting Easter folks) have to be abandoned.

Secure in the knowledge that our travel plans were cancelled and that no one was going to arrive on our doorstep, I breathed a deep sigh of relief, pulled on a pair of roomy lounging pants with an elasticated waist, snuggled into the shapeless woolly embrace of an elderly, moth-eaten, but much loved jumper, and put on an extra pair of socks.

I then plumped up the cushions on the sofa until they achieved a suitably nest-like level of comfort, retrieved a packet of mini chocolate eggs from the kitchen and retired to the living room where an afternoon of low impact exercise in front of the telly (erthat's switching channels with the remote control) awaited.

While you digest this vision of loveliness, I'll add that the menu for my afternoon of TV torpor largely consisted of recorded episodes from the new Delia TV series, which I'd missed during the past couple of weeks.

I have to admit that I sat there open-mouthed, and not in drooling admiration.

To those who say that Delia has sold out and shouldn't be tempting the nation with things like tinned mince and frozen mashed potato I say, get over it.

What I do think, is that it's extraordinary that Delia appears to have got her mitts on my own dinner-party recipe book of culinary secrets and has made a whole series based on it.

As far as I'm concerned, opening up a jar of Loyd Grossman's Jalfrezi sauce and pouring it over several lumps of lightly browned chicken before popping it into the oven for 30 minutes, represents the height of cuisine achievement.

It's the kind of thing I tackle on days when I've got the time and energy to completely immerse myself in the cooking experience.

If you are lucky, and I'm feeling really creatively motivated, I might even add a couple of freshly diced peppers and garnish the final dish with a few sprigs of freshly chopped coriander and maybe a dash of soured cream.

When it comes to that classic spaghetti bolognaise, my own signature recipe, which has been widely admired and complimented I might add, contains a special secret ingredient - that's a pot of Ragu from the Sainsbury's chiller section combined with a generous slug of Chianti.

And what about my world-beating vegetable chilli? - a dish largely composed with the help of two tins from M&S and quite a lot of cheddar.

I am frankly appalled at the cavalier way Delia is treating my hard-won culinary mystique. It might be short-cut cooking to her, but to me - a woman for whom piercing the plastic before microwaving on full power is a challenging technical achievement - opening a jar and gently heating the contents is practically cordon bleu level.

To be frank, I'm quite disappointed that the BBC didn't come to me first when they were looking for someone to present this ground-breaking series. Delia might be a whiz when it comes to frozen potato, but there are still a few things I reckon I could teach her with a snip n' serve packet of Uncle Ben's rice and a Pot Noodle.

I WAS interested to see the report in last week's Watford Observer on the film crew who used the Hooley family's 1930s-style Croxley Green home to shoot scenes for a new Richard Curtis movie.

I hope the family enjoyed the experience, although I couldn't help noticing Mr Hooley's comment at the end of the article: " it isn't really for the faint hearted - it's a lot of hard work and means a lot of disruption".

Wise words indeed.

Although it might sound rather glamorous to have a film crew and some well-known actors hanging around your house for a week or so, the reality is that they completely take over your home, re-arrange your possessions and in some instances re-decorate your rooms too.

I always thought it might be fun, not to mention lucrative, to rent out our house as a film set, but my husband, who used to work in the industry, has so many bleak tales to tell about what the crew actually do once they have access to your living room, bathroom, bedroom and fridge that not even the though of finding George Clooney in my shower would now induce me to offer up our home.

Apart from the bitter experience of one of our previous neighbours, whose initial delight at having her beamy old house used for a detective series soon turned to regret as she realised the levels of intrusion involved, my experience of the horrors of filming is limited to a holiday in Cornwall several years ago when Wycliffe took over the entire village of Mousehole for the one week we were there.

One day, returning to our cottage, we found the quaint path to our door was blocked by a team filming scenes for this interminably dull TV series.

After hanging around politely for half an hour or so, asking several times if we could please pass through, we decided to take the law into our own hands and made a break for it.

"Cut!" shouted a furious director, adding "I hope you know you've ruined our scene."

"I hope you know you are ruining our holiday," retorted my husband.

9:05am Thursday 3rd April 2008

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