Dispatches from the Continent - Tuscany, to be specific. There, the highest court in the land has come up with an exciting new law for the Italian ladies: should you have an affair, you are legally entitled to lie about it, to “protect your honour”.

The court gave its landmark ruling after hearing the case of Carla, a 48-year-old woman. She had lent her mobile phone to her lover, lied about it, and was subsequently convicted of giving false testimony. On appeal, however, the court decided that perjury was justified to conceal her extramarital affair - and the law was changed accordingly.

“The fact of having an affair is a circumstance that could cause damage to her honour, in the minds of family and friends,” said the Court of Cassation (Italy's highest appeal court) - sounding a little bit like those friends who are supposedly “on your side”, but who reveal, through their slightly sarcastic choice of phrase, that they really think you're a wanton harlot whom any sane person would wish to stone to death.

All this raises many points, of course. Not least it causes a worldwide frisson of surprise that, given the subject matter, the French law courts didn't get there first. This is a logic that, surely, is right up their infidelity boulevard. (Of course, there is the possibility that the French already have got there - but are lying about it, to protect their honour. Or Your Honneur, as the case may be.)

My main puzzlement revolves around the exact nature of “honour”. We don't really have a concept of “honour” in this country any more - it seemed to die out at some point between the end of the Second World War and Kerry Katona: Crazy in Love. I'm of the wrong generation to understand it.

Still, even I wonder just how much honour you actually have left to “protect” in a month where you've been both knocking off some bloke from the book club and lying under oath during a court case. Frankly, short of screaming “LOOK OVER THERE! Is that ABBA re-forming!?!” during a crucial moment in a gentlemen's duel, it's hard to see how you could be much more of a weasel. To quote a stock response from my cutting friend Martin: “Protecting your honour? That's scarcely something you need worry about.”

And, of course, honour is the least of your concerns, in the event of your infidelity. What you need to concern yourself with is the fact that you are making the decision of a lunatic. You are driving yourself mad! You will have no mind left by Christmas!

Of course, I know what I invite by writing this. Some manner of accelerating hubris, which means that the next time I see my husband, it will be on Kerry Katona: Crazy in Love, with him drunkenly pawing at her, and leering: “I've never done ‘it' with someone as sophisticated as you before.”

But yet, if there were anything that was the foundation of our marriage - before the advent of Katona - it was our mutual terror of infidelity. Or, to be more specific, our mutual terror of all the infidelity admin. Dear Lord, shagging around is certainly hard work. I observe my friends and acquaintances who are engaged in their “giddy, intoxicating” affairs, and it looks like an experience only slightly less onerous than bringing the Olympic Games to London. The organisation, forward-planning and paperwork involved are insane. Cover stories. Hidden receipts. Running a second - secret - mobile phone. Briefing your friends on your current lies. It would drive you NUTS.

That someone as scatty as Boris Johnson has managed several side portions of woman is truly incredible. He must, surely, have had to sign up to some manner of infidelity concierge service, which could text him with appropriate lies on Christmas Day. How could anyone get involved in a dangerous liaison without possessing a series of colour-coded box files, labelled “MY AFFAIR”? And as for scheduling, it would be murder. For myself, unless I could find someone to knock off who lived either on the direct route to the kids' school, or above Budgens, and could come down and have sex with me when I'm in the Five Items or Less queue, then it's simply not going to happen.

And on top of all this, there's the showering. Unfaithful people are always having showers, aren't they? To scour away “the guilt”. Well, right there, that's pretty much the deal-breaker for me. If I wash my hair more than twice a week, it goes all frizzy, and starts creating its own electrical force-field. If I ever had an affair, I'd have hair like Yahoo Serious in the film Young Einstein.

People who have two lovers perplex me in the same way that people who have second homes do. Although, theoretically, I can see why they might think that it's a good idea - twice the fun! All your options covered! One for work, and one for play! Makes you look flash! Erm, it's an investment, for old age! - the reality just looks exhausting. First, it's ruinously expensive to maintain two set-ups; secondly, you spend all the time you should be “enjoying” yourself shuttling between the two; and, thirdly, you can never remember where you left your glasses. In an era in which you can buy ready-grated cheese, it seems incredible that people would go to such effort for a few dozen shags.

So yes. While I should imagine that there will probably be a time when I will be tempted by the notion of infidelity - if Boris Johnson is going about things alphabetically, I think my shift is due around November 2010 - there is one thought that will, hopefully, stop everything in its tracks. And that's that while honour can be restored, from what I gather in novels, simply by not shouting “LOOK! ABBA re-forming!” during a duel, all that adultery paperwork is much harder.

A deluge of 'facts' about global warming

A strong scientific case is being made that last year's floods - you remember: the River Severn turned into Lake Severn, Tewkesbury became an island - were not down to global warming, after all. It was just a bad summer. You know, like Britain always has.

Of course, this suggestion has immediately been countered by those who say that such assertions will confuse the public over an unquestionably urgent problem. However, if I were them, I wouldn't bother arguing the toss about why it happened. I'd just say: “It doesn't matter whether or not global warming caused it. The important thing is, that's what global warming will be like when it does happen. Very floody. Pretty unstoppable. Wholly incompatible with living in Tewkesbury.”

Potty about the girl

I have been astonished, nay borderline obsessed, with the story about the woman who was stuck on her boyfriend's toilet for two years. According to every paper in the world, Pam Babcock, 35, of Ness City, Kansas, was found on the toilet by policemen, after her boyfriend dialled 911 and said: “There's something wrong with my girlfriend.” When the police arrived, they found that the woman's legs had wasted away and her skin had grown around the toilet seat. I know! I know! Believe me, I've been thinking about it for nearly a week. The skin of the story has grown around the toilet seat of my mind. Apparently, her boyfriend had been bringing her food and drink, and asked her, every day, if she would leave the toilet. “Maybe tomorrow,” was her reply. But what strikes me is what a strong, loving relationship these people have. OK, it's an unconventional romance, but there was a man in love with a woman's very soul.

It has put my own marriage into perspective. I don't think I could ferry trays of nachos and Gatorade into my en suite for two years without getting a bit snappy.

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