The day a podiatrist told me to stop doing Aerobics was one of the happiest days of my life! I tried very hard to hide my glee, but I'm quite sure he caught it. Nonetheless, I managed a tortured, "Oh no! I love my Aerobics class!!" For effect.

Who knew that when Benjamin Disraeli said that, "there are lies, damn lies, and statistics", one ultra-fib would embody all three degrees of his statement?

So, it turns out there is a single word for the life the average Nigerian - young and old - has deliberately and needlessly been plunged into over the last sixty years.

PRECARITY: noun

● “a state of existence in which material provision and psychological wellness are adversely affected by a lack of regular or secure income.”

I used to hate surprises, but liked being surprised. An oxymoron-gone-awry? Yup!

Surprise? You arrive home with bad hair, in boyfriend jeans, grubby tee and flip-flops, only to be serenaded by thirty runway-ready eager guests...

Being surprised? The totally unexpected, but with distinctly unembarrassing possibilities... Note my caution either way; latent control-freak dreading one, but circling the other.

Back in the day, I had some crazy friends. Great fun, but out there! They either had me in fits or shocked into silence; but sainthood wasn’t exactly my forte, sooo...

One rainy weekend, we eschewed London, cooked up a storm, drank copious amounts of alcohol, and had a very deep discussion (with how-tos!) about life and how to survive our teens and twenties. I guess we unconsciously looked into the future, and prepared ourselves for the abyss.

Who remembers their student days?! When you'd just thrown the ultimate party, seen the last guests off, and settled down on the sofa to reminisce with your housemates... Only to hear a thunderous snore, and in-between snorts, discover the class bore behind it - spluttering the kind of stuff you'd hesitate to say in a confessional box.

Rumour has it that some die-hard atheists think the Bible is quite a good yarn: highly unlikely of course, but not a bad read all in all! Well, they're right about one thing - it is a collation of many good stories. About real people, places, and events. And the Book of Esther, the eponymous tale of a young Jewish orphan made queen by the Persian monarch Xerses when he rejects his wife Vashti, is emblematic of all three.