What’s orange and not the same as it was?

I have been a sick woman.

Halfway through a day with the three grandsons, I had to give up on having a lovely time and go home to nurse my raging temperature, thumping headache and aching joints. Just getting in the car to go home (my husband was driving) was an effort. It was touch and go as to whether I would get my foot over the door sill.

My husband says, quite correctly, that I am a bad patient. I do not comply with doctor husband’s recommendations, instructions or advice. Why? Because I know best. After all, I’m the one with the symptoms.

He says: “Why don’t you go to bed?”

“You should drink more water.”

“Do you want a pillow?”

“Is it okay if I watch Masterchef?”

I am not amenable to any of these suggestions, especially the last one. I don’t want to watch John Torode and Gregg Wallace eating.

“What do you fancy for lunch?”

“Nothing.”

“Shall I get some bread?”

I’m not complaining, mind, because he is brilliant. Attentive, caring, prepared to wait on me hand and foot and the other hand and foot.

The really bad thing about this recent bout of illness was that the Lucozade Moment didn’t happen. The iconic bright orange-hued glucose drink (first available in 1927) can be the only thing you fancy when reclining, like a flopsy Elizabeth Barrett Browning, on your chaise. After a day without eating, it becomes truly desirable. The sweet fizziness with its big, lazy bubbles percolating to the top of the refrigerated bottle can be the only thing in the world that you truly want.

An object of desire.

But, sadly for me, no longer. It tastes different and when I opened the bottle it foamed rather than fizzed. My taste buds may have been affected by my malaise but, somehow, it just wasn’t the same. The trouble is, I imagine, the recently-imposed sugar tax has meant that soft drinks manufacturers have reduced the amounts of real sugar in their beverages and are using artificial sweeteners to make up the shortfall, thus avoiding the tax hit... while, at the same time, I am cruelly denied my sugar hit.

I would happily pay more for the true “original Lucozade” so that I never again had to drink the new “original Lucozade”. If there are any Lucozade dealers out there...? At time of writing, more than 11,000 people have added their names to a petition for Lucozade to bring back the old recipe. I am one of them.

Abby Lewis, who started the petition, writes: “This new recipe makes the product taste awful... There was no warning either about the products having a change in recipe; it was just changed, then announced after.

“If you Google Lucozade you can find articles confirming there is a change.”

I don’t know if it will do any good, Abby, but I hope so, otherwise my husband is likely to have an even rougher time than usual when I’m under the weather.

“Would you like a drink?”

“Just water... don’t worry about me.”

“I might just move out for a couple of days.”

It’s a sad state of affairs when the perfect drink for an invalid is no longer in existence. I have previously also moaned about Marmite, which is not the same consistency as when I was young, making it more of a challenge to spread on buttered toast. I extract (pun intended) some of the yeasty paste from its awkwardly shaped jar onto a knife and then push it across the toast. More often than not it traverses the toast without leaving any Marmite behind at all. So I have to blob it around the toast like a contestant in the Jackson Pollock paint-alike competition; but at least Marmite tastes the same – not that this will be particularly good news for the percentage of the population that can’t stand the stuff.

• It was always likely to happen. Since my schoolfriend Ruth revealed, c1972, that her barrister sister wore men’s underpants, I have always wondered if they might be more comfortable, maybe more life-affirming, than women’s knickers. The lingerie always looks so insubstantial – except the underwear with extra built-in support which is very substantial indeed, positively architectural.

After a long struggle with my femininity, I decided to give the men’s pants a go. Heading for the high street store well-known for undergarments, I forsook the girly frillies in their many styles and headed for the men’s department. For obvious reasons, I was not looking for any extras in terms of frontal adornment so, after investigating the styles on offer, I opted for something called slips. Isn’t that a cricketing term?

My husband says he’ll have them if I don’t find them comfy and it occurs to me there could be a market for unisex underwear. Not that I am thinking of sharing my knicker drawer.