I’M wary of even writing about this because it is so fraught with difficulties and controversy, but in recent weeks, a thought keeps coming back to me in the wake of the ever-growing number of sex scandals.

So let me start by saying any man who is guilty of sexual misconduct deserves to have the book thrown at him. It is quite right that he should lose his career, his social standing and his liberty. And no woman who is a victim is at fault or worthy of blame in any way.

But the thought that keeps plaguing me is this: I am disappointed in my fellow women.

We all understand the scenario of the wannabe Hollywood actress and the seedy casting couch. It doesn’t make it right, but I think we can understand to a degree how a woman would give in to a situation not entirely to her liking if her desperation for success is that great. It is wrong but we all know it happens.

But there are plenty of Hollywood actresses who are rich, powerful and respected who are now saying they knew all along how low-lifes like Harvey Weinstein were behaving. Why did none of them say something sooner?

I know some say they did report him, and others like him, largely to men who largely ignored them. Which makes those men culpable too.

But I can’t get my head around the notion that these women, some of the wealthiest, most powerful figures in the world, really couldn’t shout louder and insist something be done to stop the scumbags in their tracks. Are even the most successful members of our sex still so powerless in this day and age?

The only conclusion I can draw is that yes, they are. The fact that Hollywood, and other industries as has been revealed in recent weeks, is rife with sex offenders and women are aware and either ‘let it go’ without saying anything or speak up and are ignored is distressing beyond belief.

And here was me thinking the feminist battle had been won and equality was a given.

May we march on all year LITTLE did a bunch of well-meaning folk know, several moons ago, when they rebranded November as Movember that they would unleash a gaggle of ironic hipsters upon the nation.

Now that almost every man under 40 has some form of stylised facial hair, I can’t help wonder what the Movember chaps are up to. Shavember doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.

Still, Movember was a laugh. Seeing your mates looking like Second World War fighter pilots, or Magnum PI or Charlie Chaplin was rather a hoot.

And I must confess, I felt rather uncharitable as I spluttered out my coffee the other day and muttered, ‘that really takes the biscuit’ to myself.

Runvember? Really? Come on. It doesn’t sound anything like November. It might be for a perfectly good cause, but there’s no excuse for a bad pun.

You can get away with Stoptober, but frankly Veganuary is pushing it and Runvember is just a step too far.

What next? Mapril, when we’re all encouraged to ditch our sat navs and keep the nice folk at Ordnance Survey in business by reading nothing but real maps for the month? I can see the news reports now: “Lay-bys across the country were clogged with bickering couples as millions joined in with Mapril, only to find they were rubbish at navigating. Some people have been lost for several days now... concerned family members are appealing for them to turn on Google maps and be done with it.”

Or how about Pawgust when we could all raise funds for the RSPCA? Or Sepsistember when we raise awareness of the perils of sepsis? The lunacy could know no bounds. Or we could all go back to calling the months by their proper names and carry on raising the millions for charity we as a nation do anyway.

Ever had the feeling you’re being followed?

I’M being followed by several whippets, a couple of greyhounds and more hedgehogs than I count.

Sounds like a scene from an adorable Disney movie, but no. They’re following me on Instagram.

I’ve been really embracing the heady whirl of social media lately and, great though it is, the more I get into it, the stranger it becomes.

I started using Instagram in a bid to promote the beautiful, handmade crochet purses (ideal for Christmas presents!) I can’t seem to stop making and in the hope of selling a few (this isn’t a shameless advert, I’m just putting it in context, you understand).

The aim of Instagram, whereby people share pictures of their pets, their meals, their works of art, their beach holidays... whatever you’re into, seems to be akin to a playground popularity contest.

You can’t sell anything directly over the app, you simply share photographs, follow people and hopefully get people to follow you.

And I love it - there are some amazingly clever people out there making astonishing things.

But the whole ‘I’ll like yours if you like mine’ is both addictive and disturbing.

You go about liking other people’s pictures, following them and hopefully they reciprocate. The goal seems to be to have more people following you than you are following. There are articles galore online about how to do better at this. One suggests I need to buy a camera and a tripod. Another reckons targeting people who follow everyone in sight but don’t have many followers themselves is a good bet.

So you follow people you’re not interested in in the hope they will follow you, even if they’re not interested in you, in the hope of making your followers number bigger than your following number. And you can spend hours doing it.

But help is at hand. And this is where it gets really crazy. You can get an app to tell you who has unfollowed you so you can unfollow back. It will monitor and analyse your Instagram account and even remind you when to post.

So now I have an app to help me use my app. I think I’m disappearing down the rabbit hole, followed by several whippets, a couple of greyhounds and more hedgehogs than I count.