Baths, prunes and World Records.

After a lovely Christmas with family and extended family we are now having a weeks break in Sidmouth. We normally book to stay in rural holiday cottages but this time we are in a lovely Victorian townhouse. Billy dog loves the view from the large bay window seat where he can watch the passers by, and we are enjoying being in a town for a change.

One thing that I do always insist on in holiday accommodation is a bath tub. At home, as my flat is the size of a postage stamp, I only have room for a shower so it's always a treat to have a soak in a bath when on holiday. We have a lovely big bathroom in this holiday house at the top of the first flight of stairs, so after a walk yesterday I was looking forward to coming back for a bath. A cup of tea later I ran the hot water, added some bubbles, stripped off and climbed in.

The one problem with the bathroom here is that there is no lock on the door, this should not have been an issue as we agreed that if the door is shut then the room is in use. I lay back in the scented water, letting the bubbles engulf me and anticipated lieing there until I resembled a wrinkled prune. Bliss.

This was when I understood why there was a door wedge on the floor behind the bathroom door, not to hold the door open as I had mistakenly assumed but to keep it closed. It seemed that the hot steamy air had a lubricating affect on the door catch because as I lay back in the water the bathroom door slowly  but inexorably opened.

My next realisation was that the bathtub was in line with the glass paned front door. I had a direct view from the bath down the stairs and out the front door. With a vague sense of amusement I realised that if it had been light outside I could have lain in the bath and watched people walk by outside. A bath with a view. Unfortunately as it was dark I couldn't see out.

My third epiphany, which struck me almost at the same time as the cold draft from the front door, was the realisation that although it was too dark outside for me to see people going by, it was in fact very bright in the bathroom. Thanks to some very efficient lighting the people going by would have no problem seeing me! I sunk down below the water, not only to avoid prying eyes but to try and keep out of the Arctic breeze that was racing up the stairs towards me.

Needless to say my bath wasn't very relaxing after this as I spent most of the time trying to keep out of sight, stay warm and planning how I was going to get from the tub to the radiator, where my towel was warming, in the shortest and least exposed period of time. If there was an Olympic sport for getting out of a bathtub I feel sure that yesterday I set, not only a personal best, but a new world record.

Happy new year everyone, please bathe safely.

Christmas, yoga and anticipation.

I drafted this post yesterday whilst having my hair done. My last post therefore before Christmas comes to you live (well nearly live) from the salon.

I am writing this post whilst sitting in the hairdressers, you can probably smell the dye, coffee and hair products as you read. I am having my Christmas haircut. I was considering having my hair braided and teased into the shape of reindeer antlers, however have decided instead to have it dyed green and cut into a Christmas tree shape so that I can festoon it with tinsel and baubels. Only kidding, I'm actually having my grey roots touched up and then my split ends are being trimmed.
The dye is on, I'm having a coffee and biscuit, there are Christmas songs on the radio and there's a gentle buz of conversation from stylists and their clients. I really love having my hair done, I like feeling spoilt and pampered, I enjoy chatting to the stylist who does my hair and who always amazes me by remembering what we talked about at the last appointment (I wonder if she makes notes of conversations as a reminder?) and I love the anticipation of knowing that for one day out of six weeks I'll have good hair.
I know people who don't enjoy it though, who worry that they won't like the cut, who when they get home immediately wash their hair as they aren't happy with how its blow dried and I know one person who doesn't like going to a hair salon as she hates sitting in front of the mirror and is embarrassed to stare at herself. I don't have this problem though as I take my glasses off whilst there so all I can see in the mirror are blurred colours and movements. The down side of this is that I have to hold books and magazines right up to my nose in order to be able to read.
I started enjoying having my hair done a lot more when I began to take a book with me to appointments. Before then I read the magazines that the salon provided and there's only so many perfume adverts, photo shoots of clothes I can't afford and wedding details of celebrities that I've never heard of that I can put up with.
The one thing that I don't enjoy about getting my hair done is the torture of leaning back over the sink to get my hair washed. The basins in salons have got to be one of the world's most useless design products. The curved groove which is supposed to craddle your neck has in fact been ergonomically designed to dig into your vertebrae and cut off the circulation to the rest of your body. To get into position where your head is anywhere near the water you need the flexibility of a yogi as your neck is required to twist itself into the lotus position. So you lie back, getting a crick in your neck, your head at such an angle that the rest of the salon can see right up your nose and still the scalding water can only actually rinse your forehead and ears and leaves your hair, especially at the back, full of suds. The price of beauty eh. I wonder what it says about me that I still enjoy getting my hair done.
This is my last post before Christmas and so my new hair and I just wanted to wish you all a very happy Christmas. I hope that the magical fairy of happiness sprinkles you all liberally with a sparkly, cinnamon fragrant dusting of joy and that at least one of your wishes comes true. I need to go now as the sink of torture is beckoning. I hope Santa brings me a neck brace to help me get over the inevitable whiplash.
Happy Christmas everyone.

Sellotape, space and Goldfish bowls.

So Tim Peake has headed off into space and I can't help but think that it should have been me.

I always fancied the idea of being an astronaut, to be able to view Earth as a globe must be amazing. If I had made a couple of different life choices it could be me up there now. Just minor changes in the decisions I made such as; studying Engineering instead of Psychology, learning to fly a plane instead of buying a house and joining the services instead of working in civilian street. So as you can see it could so easily have been me heading off into space. Of course I'd have also needed different eyes as astronauts are required to have excellent eyesight, I'd need to be a lot fitter and be about twenty years younger. Infact Tim and my almost parallel lives can be summed up perfectly in the words of John Bradford,

" There but for the grace of God go I".

So instead of heading off into space, this week I have mostly been wrapping presents. I have bought this brilliant new sellotape dispenser that fits onto the back of my hand. This means that you can cut the sticky tape one handed, essential when one hand is busy trying to hold the wrapping paper together. Earlier in the week, before I had the dispenser,  I instead cut lots of strips of sellotape and stuck them onto the edge of the coffee table. Then it was just a matter of trying to unstick the tape from the table edge, pulling it off Billy dogs ears, which just happen to be the same height as the table and trying to pull the tape apart when it curls back on itself. Now that I have my amazing new dispenser wrapping presents is a sinch, especially as the wrapping paper I've bought has lines on the back so I don't even struggle to cut straight lines. The only difficulty I have now is that Billy insists on "helping" by sitting in the middle of each piece of paper that I cut.

So OK I haven't gone into space this week and don't get to look out of my rocket window to see the Earth as a sphere. And I won't be a national hero, with the media tracking my progress, but I'm not bitter.  At least I don't have to go to work with a goldfish bowl on my head; my name doesn't sound like a 90's TV show (Tim Peake/Twin Peaks) and I won't be eating my Christmas dinner in tablet form. No I'm not jealous at all.

Reindeers, mince pies and the tooth fairy

Dear Wendy,

Thank you for your letter dated 2nd December. It is a long time since you last contacted me, about 40 years in fact! Your handwritting hasn't improved! I hope that the years have been kind to you.

I can confirm that you have in fact evaded the naughty list again this year, but I should point out that it was by the skin of your teeth. Each year you seem to get a bit naughtier and you really are skating on thin ice now. You have been warned!

I wanted to reply to you in person as there may be a slight problem with a couple of the items on your Christmas list and I don't want you to be disappointed on Christmas morning. As you say in your letter, the festive period does get more and more commercialised each year, but I'd like to point out that it's easier for me to get actual material things compared to your requests. Let me go through your list point by point.

• World peace, end of famine and cure for cancer. There's good news and bad news on these items. Let me start with the good news; I'm very pleased to say that we already have the ability, science and natural resources to achieve all of these lofty aims. The bad news unfortunately is that mankind has chosen at this time to use its resources to instead fund warfare, so peace, food for all and medical break throughs are all currently on the back burner. 
• A self cleaning dog. I do feel for you on this one as it's not just little white dogs who are hard to keep clean. The reindeers winter coats are a nightmare to keep muck free and I swear that the hollow fibres of their coats are dirt magnets. Mrs Santa and I are busy from Boxing Day till about April trying to get the chimney soot out of their undercoats. I can however recommend a good whitening shampoo (I know its good as I use it on my beard occasionally. Ho ho ho.)
• To win at games. A tricky wish to grant this one as if I were to grant it, you would be cheating and as a cheat you would have to go on the naughty list and not get any presents. Therefore I think you're just going to have to do your best to win by skill and luck like everyone else, you'll have more fun that way too.
• Good weather. Slightly outside my remit this one but I've had a word with a higher authority ie. the Met Office and we're on the case, you might want to keep your wellies and a waterproof handy though, just in case.
• A year of sleeping soundly. A good nights sleep is certainly a gift and I'd like to therefore give you an early present by telling you how to improve your sleep. Mrs Santa and I have a rule that we don't take phones, tablets, IPads etc to bed with us. Since we've started this we sleep much better. The wife also insists that we don't have any caffeine after 7:00pm, we have a milky drink at 9:00 and have sprigs of lavender under our pillow. What the lavender is there for, except to get tangled in my beard, I've no idea, but hey ho it helps to keep the elves busy in the summer harvesting the lavender.
• Enjoyment of tinned oily fish. I'm working on this one for you, hopefully by this time next year you'll be eating much more oily fish. I'm afraid that I don't have any fish recipes for you as we pretty much eat roast turkey all year round here, except on Christmas Eve when I have to eat approximately  six metric tonnes of mince pies.
• A red and blue box kite. I feel almost sure that I've delivered one of these to you before, however at this time of year I'm just too busy to look back through the archives and I've only had the current database for the last 8 years. Perhaps you could double check if you already have such a kite.

As you see I'm having a bit of difficulty with your list, so if you'd like to rethink your requests please let me know. Although you thought that you were being good by not being materialistic, you have made my job just a bit more difficult. Just a thought but have you ever considered asking for a set of ghd hair straighteners, my wife Mary swears by them and, no offence, but you look like you might benefit from them?

You also asked about how I got the job as Santa in the first place. Well I left school and got an apprenticeship with the Royal Mail. Whilst doing my training I spent some time as a postman, I also worked in the sorting office and central operations. Eventually I got a promotion into international projects, the experience I gained there was what I needed on my CV to apply for the job with Santas Deliveries PLC. Of course the fact that my Aunt is the Tooth Fairy and my second cousin on my mothers side is a Leprechaun probably helped too, we all know its not what you know, it's who you know that's important. I guess for young people interested in a job these days as Father/Mother Christmas then the more obvious route would be to take a degree in Logistics, like the one that Aston University offer and where I occasionally guest lecture.

So anyway must go, busy, busy.

Be good!

Love, Santa

Santa, oily fish and kites

Dear Santa,

There are already two windows open on my advent calendar and only 23 sleeps left till Christmas so I thought that I better send you my Christmas list as I don't want another mishap, like the year I forgot to send my list and you gave me a very unwelcome shoe cleaning set! 

I'm sure that you, of all people, will agree that Christmas is getting more and more commercialised and I expect that this has seen an increase in your workload, so I'll make this years list less materialistic than previous years.

First I'd like to point out that I have in fact been very good this year, so do deserve a present. I may have had a couple of minor misdemeanors such as the time I shaved Billy dog, borrowed veg from Mums garden, flashed a fisherman and stole five pence of petrol, but no one was harmed and I've done loads more good things, none of which exactly spring to mind.

So this Christmas I would like:

• I know it's a cliché but the first item on my list is of course world peace, the end of famine and a cure for cancer.
• A self cleaning spray for Billy dog. White dogs might look cute but they're the devil to keep clean.
• To win at least one game over the festive season. My family and I love to play games but are all super competitive, so I'd love to win at least one game, ideally more.
• Some good weather over the holidays. I'm not expecting balmy sunshine but some cold, bright and frosty days would be lovely. A light dusting of snow on Christmas morning would of course be perfect.
• A year of good sleep. I don't always sleep very well so I'd love to get a guaranteed seven hours a night to recharge my batteries.
• I'd like to be able to enjoy tinned oily fish more. I know they are very good for me but just don't like them. I eat tinned tuna but unfortunately it doesn't have the same health benefits as sardines, pilchards or mackerel.
• If you're struggling with any of the above then could I please have a red and blue box kite instead.

I was also wondering if you've got time, if you could answer a couple of questions for me. As someone who works as a Careers Adviser, I was wondering how you got into your line of work? Wish Fulfillment must be a hugely competitive job area to get into and it's always interesting to hear about peoples career journeys so that I can pass accurate information onto the young people that I work with.

So good luck with this busy time of year Santa and please pass on my best wishes to the reindeer and elves.

Thanks in anticipation,

Love Wendy.

P's There's still no mobile signal and dodgy Sat Nav in Porthtowan so you may need to bring your street atlas.

Stir up Sunday, soya sauce and shopping

Well Christmas is definitely on its way; stir up Sunday has been and gone, I've baked my Christmas cake and the shops are bedecked with festive goods. I'm well on the way with my Christmas shopping  but for those of you who are still searching for that elusive present for a hard to please friend or relative I may well have the perfect solution.

You see I have invented a new game which I hope that I'll have time to get patented and onto the shelves of all good toy shops in time for Christmas. This blog is by way of market research, so I'd love to hear what you think of it.

The game is called "Where on earth have I parked the car?". Like all good games its quite a simple premise but should afford hours of entertainment. All you really need to play is a car and a supermarket, complete with carpark. The rules are simple, it can be played by one to five players (perhaps more if your car seats more people). You park your car in the large, crowded carpark and head into the store congratulating yourself that you've remembered to bring your shopping bags.

At the entrance of the store you have a tousle with the coin operated trolley and then head in to start your shopping. It's best if you have written a detailed shopping list, which you then leave at home so that you have to wander up and down each aisle in the hope that the things you need will catch your eye or in a perfect world leap off the shelf into your trolley. Ideally you have gone shopping at a time when the store is busy with other shoppers who don't give a fig for shopping etiquette ie they leave their trolley in the most inconvenient place possible, let their children push the trolley right into your unsuspecting calves and stand chatting to friends and blocking the aisle, completely unaware that anyone else in the world needs tea bags or soya sauce.

Trolley laden, you make it to the tills and select the one with the shortest queue, only to find you're being served by shop assistant of the month, who won this accolade by being especially chatty. Don't get me wrong, its good to be served by a friendly face but I don't feel the need to discuss every purchase I've made, yes the wine does look nice and yes we all do deserve a treat, now hand it over!

Eventually goods paid for, the game starts properly because as you head for the exit, hobbling slightly from your bruised shins, you will find that you have no recollection of where you parked your car. The ordeal of trying to remember what you need, playing dodgems with fellow shoppers and being rammed painfully by a large trolley inexpertly driven by a small child, not to mention discussing the cold weather with Miss Conviviality at the till, has induced a state of shopping amnesia and you now have no idea where your car is. You wander off hopefully in one direction only to find that although it's the right colour car, it's the wrong make. You do a u turn and search in another row of cars to no avail. You walk up and down the carpark and are just starting to wonder if your car has been stolen when you realise the car you are standing next to is indeed yours.

The winner of the game is the person who takes the longest to find their car. There are of course bonus points if it's raining, if you're in a hurry and late for something, if you have a white car and if you get home and realise that you've forgotten the one item you went out for. The beautifully presented game will contain, a stop watch with which to time your search, details of the complicated scoring system and score sheets so that you can compare times for previous shops. There could even be online groups where you could see how your time compares to other people.

So what do you think, surely it's destined to be this Christmases must have gift? I wonder if I should be pitching it to The Dragons Den? Let me know if you'd like to reserve one of these highly sought after games but I should point out that due to the high demand I may have to limit purchases to one per household, terms and conditions apply.

France, chicken soup and the common cold

This week I felt that I should write something deep and meaningful about terrorism, but where to start. I don't want to live in a world where human life is used to make a political or a religious point, where a tiny minorities actions can cause distrust and intolerance amongst cultures who previously had lived together harmoniously and where a small group of people can seemingly start a war. So although I am not ignoring the events in Paris I don't feel that I can write about it, I just don't have the words.

So let me tell you instead about my attempt to make chicken noodle soup.

I've had a cold and a cough this week and spent some time looking online for home cures. I didn't fancy a salt water gargle or chewing on a raw garlic clove and I really couldn't imagine how a mustard footbath was going to help, but a reoccurring remedy I kept reading about was chicken soup so I decided to give it a go. It took me the best part of the day on Monday to make and filled my house with savoury aromas.

First I brought a couple of pounds of chicken, a carrot, an onion, a leek and some water up to the boil. I then simmered it for two hour, skimmining the scum off the top every fifteen minutes or so. Next I took the chicken out, took the meat off the bones, put the bones back in the stock together with a paring of lemon, a slice of ginger and a handful of parsley stalks. This was boiled for an hour, strained and left to go cold.

When chilled I removed the fat from the stock and then reheated it. I seasoned it, added finely chopped carrot and leek and cooked it for a couple of minutes. Next I added the noodles and brought back to the boil, then finally added the chicken meat back in to reheat and some chopped parsley.

A lot of love, effort, time, care and attention went into making that soup. I don't really like touching raw meat but had laboriously skinned the chicken portions, ignoring how squeamish it made me feel. I had cut the veg into perfect tiny dice, I'd even pealed the carrot for goodness sake. Despite my cold and blocked nose even I could smell the wonderfully comforting aromour and Billy dog was salivating so much I was practically paddling in puddles of his drool. So after spending seven hours labouring over a hot stove, making my kitchen into a chicken scented steam room and driving Billy dog into a feeding frenzy, what did I eventually end up with and did it cure my cold?

The results of my cooking was a steaming bowlful of golden broth, floating with jewels of veg, parsley and noodles. It looked perfect, better than the recipe picture in fact, and it tasted like a steaming bowlful of hot water. Yes you read correctly, hot water with no flavour at all. I think that all the chicken taste had evaporated into steam and was now clinging to my soft furnishings, I would probably have got more flavour out of my rug and curtains than from the actual soup. Talk about an anticlimax, I had put in all that effort to effectively boil a kettle. I adjusted the seasoning and now had a steaming bowlful of salty water. And my cold? Would someone mind going to the chemists and picking me up some Lemsips please? Aitchoo!

I really wanted to end up with a steaming bowl of deliciousness instead of my watery imposter. A bowl created from a disparate group of ingredients, all coming together in a yummy combination, each ingredient complimenting the other. So this week I have learnt that things it don't always work out the way that you want; my soup was tasteless and France and the world are in mourning. Was it the recipes fault, the ingredients fault or had I done something wrong? Please let's not look for blame, judge by appearance or give up on soup, I'm convinced there's a bowl of perfection out there somewhere, we've just got to keep practising making it. Also we need to remember that there is more good soup out there than bad. Now does anyone know how to remove the smell of chicken from curtains?

Routine, porridge and Shakespeare.

I'm not a person who is big into routine and order but there is one routine that I like to follow religiously; a routine that if I stick to it, ensures that my day runs smoothly and productively, but that if it goes awry heralds hours of chaos and disaster. It's my morning routine.

It starts just before six, when I wake and initially panic, thinking that I've overslept. A glance at the clock reassures me that all is on track. I lie in bed planning my day until six when the alarm goes off, then downstairs to put porridge oats and sultanas in a bowl and to make a cup of tea which I take back to bed to drink whilst I read for half an hour. Then it's up, and into the kitchen where my bowl of oats sit waiting, I pour on the milk and then put the bowl into the microwave which I set for twenty minutes on defrost.

The next step is to put a coat and a pair of trousers on over my pyjamas and take Billy dog out for a walk. If the tide is in we walk on the green, and if it's out on the beach. By the time we get home the microwave has performed its magic and the porridge has cooled to the perfect temperature to eat. Goldilocks couldn't wish for better.

Breakfast eaten its time to shower, then upstairs again to get dressed. Next its back to the kitchen to make a sandwich for lunch and grab an apple from the fruit bowl. Finally its bathroom again to clean my teeth and then back upstairs to change as I will have invariably dribbled whitening toothpaste down my top and we all know how this marks your clothes.

Then at eight or thereabouts I'm ready to leave the house to drop Billy at my Mums for the day before I head to work. My routine works like clockwork and has taken years of adjustment and fine tuning to reach this meticulous standard. It's really only when something happens to disrupt this routine that I realise how important it is. Take the other morning for example.

I awoke in a panic, oh no I'd overslept and was late for work, glance at the clock and phew all was OK. Six am alarm, then up, kitchen, porridge oats, sultanas and tea. Back to bed and had picked up my book when there was an awful noise from next-door. First there was a series of loud thuds, then a scream and then a half dozen yelps.

I live in a terrace and the sound insulation between my neighbours and myself isn't great but I've never heard such a loud scary noise. Although I couldn't see what had happened I knew immediately what those noises meant. You see our houses are small so when they were built, in order to save space, the builders put in paddle staircases. For those of you who don't know what this is, its a steeply pitched flight of stairs where each rung is only big enough for one foot and which takes up a lot less space than a more conventional staircase. They make good use of space but are steep and tricky to get used to. The neighbours on my right are new, in fact so new that I hadn't even spoken to them yet and I suspected that they still weren't completely used to the staircase. The noises that I'd heard, were I was sure, the sounds of someone falling down the stairs.

I lay in bed for a minute wondering what to do. Should I go and check that they were OK and run the risk of getting the reputation for being a nosy neighbour or should I drink my tea and read my book and let them sort it out? My mind replayed the sickening thuds and crashes and knew I had to check that all was OK. So trousers and jacket on over my pyjamas, I went next-door and knocked on the door. The door was flung open by a young woman wearing only a pair of pants.

"Help me" she cried " my boyfriend has fallen down the stairs!". She was already on the phone to the ambulance service.

So long story short, the boyfriend was lieing curled up in a foetal position at the foot of the stairs, wearing boxer shorts (have these people not heard of pyjamas?). He was conscious but said that he'd hit his head and hurt his neck and shoulder in the fall. His girlfriend was frantic and kept wanting to hold his hand, put a pillow under his head and wanted him to try and move his feet and legs. It took the ambulance about fifteen to twenty minutes to arrive and they seemed like the longest twenty minutes of my life. I'm not really designed to deal with crisis situations and felt like a cross between an iceberg and a swan: I was calm on the surface but seven eighths of me was below the icy water paddling in a frenzied way that felt horribly close to panic. I persuaded the girlfriend to get dressed and get her bag and phone etc so that she could be ready to leave with the ambulance, anything to keep her busy and stop her from trying to touch or move him. I had very strange conversations with them both, what with him lieing on the floor and her running around topless. I tried to keep them talking to keep her calm and him conscious, I've forgotten the details of what we talked about but wouldn't be surprised if I asked what their first pets were, their favourite colours and if money was no object where they'd go for a dream holiday. I have never been so pleased to see blue flashing lights in my life and was happy to let the paramedics take charge.

Back home, my tea was getting cold and my precious morning routine was irretrievably ruined. This resulted in me setting the microwave incorrectly, so got back from my walk to find my porridge had boiled all over the microwave and I had to have muesli for breakfast, I left the house late so got snarled up in traffic, I forgot my diary which I find very unnerving and for the rest of the day every spare second I had I kept remembering the sound of the fall and the almost inhuman cries that followed and could picture that poor man lieing on the floor. A really rubbish day.

However it could have been so much worse, as it turned out that my neighbour was not seriously injured, he spent the day at hospital being checked out but was home that evening. He had hurt his elbow and was sore all over, but other than that fine. So that night I was happy and relived as I cleaned the cold congealed porridge out of the microwave. Yes my day hadn't started very well, but had ended OK. I had met my new neighbours, even if the circumstances hadn't been ideal and I had seen a lot more of them than is normal at a first meeting but they were both uninjured and seemed very pleasant, despite the lack of pyjamas, I had a sparkling clean microwave and they had bought me a lovely box of chocolates as a thank you. So in the words of the bard,

"All's well that ends well".

Petrol, Atticus Finch and Tescos

I'm sure I've heard that one is supposed to learn from mistakes; that the word mistake is in fact a Swahili one which when translated into English means lesson, actually I may have just made that bit up. But I'm sure that if you do something that you regret you should make changes so that you don't make the same mistake again.

Well not me, once I make a mistake it seems to establish a pattern of behaviour that I then keep repeating. I have now made the same mistake three times and am worried that this hat-trick means that this mistake has become a habit now. Admittedly the three errors have occurred over a twenty year time period, but a pattern is a pattern even if it happens over ten year cycles, the latest of which happened yesterday.

You see yesterday I knew that I was getting low on petrol, so headed to the petrol station. It was unusually busy so I had to queue for a free pump. Eventually my turn arrived and I filled the tank with unleaded, fastened the cap,  I grabbed my handbag and went into the kiosk to pay. As soon as I reached into my bag to get my purse out I realised my mistake. The purse was there OK, but without even looking I knew that it didn't contain my debit card. I knew this as I knew for sure that the card was in my pocket, in my jacket....at home. The same as had happened the other two occasions. I'd taken my card out with me the previous day and hadn't wanted to take my purse or bag so just slipped the card in my pocket. Seemed like a good idea at the time but not such a good idea when I realised that, although I had my purse, I couldnt pay for my petrol.

The first time I did it I was living in Surrey and explained to the cashier what I'd done and offered to leave my wallet at the garage whilst I nipped home to get my card. Luckily she agreed to this. If she'd have looked in the wallet the attendant would have found my kidney donor card and library card, so pretty good collateral, as although only offal a human kidney must be worth at least a tank of petrol. The second time, I had to fill out a form before I dashed off to get some money. Yesterday, I knew I had a twenty pound note in my purse, the only trouble was I'd taken thirty three pounds fifty six worth of petrol. As I queued I started to try and surreptitiously count out the coins I had to see if I had enough money. This plan failed when I managed to drop all my loose change over the floor. I crawled around trying to retrieve all the bits of shrapnel, no copper too small or insignificant to be searched for. It was nearly my turn at the till and by my rough reckoning I was only a few pence short. I wasn't yet at the front of the queue but already had everyone's attention.

I got to the till and with mounting shame and embarrassment explained my predicament to the cashier and in turn to the rest of the queue. I explained that I had some money with me and she kindly offered to count it for me. It's amazing how long it takes to count thirty three pounds out when thirteen pounds of it are loose change and when you are shrivelling up inside from humiliation and the queue of people behind you is getting longer and longer.

It turned out that I was just five pence short, five little pennies that spelt the difference between me being a law abiding citizen and a thief. Five pence that meant that instead of carrying on with my day I would instead have to go to the police station and the rest of the day would be spent trying to wash the ink off my hands after being finger printed. I was busy imagining myself playing a staring role on Crimewatch, my face plastered on western style Wanted posters and standing in court with Rumpole trying to defend my indefensible actions, being prosecuted by Atticus Finch and sentenced by Judge Dred. In fact I was so busy imagining the worst I barely heard the cashier telling me that she'd let me off the five pence. When her words did sink in I felt huge relief and gratitude, winning the lottery could not have felt any better. I stammered my thanks and slunk away, making the walk of shame back along the queue and across the garage forecourt.

So unfortunately I don't seem to learn from my mistakes and have become a serial offender. But once again the Porthtowan One walks free, all thanks to a very kind lady at Redruth Tescos petrol station, just goes to show, every little really does help.

Bats, vampires and pumpkin soup

Halloween is fast approaching and I have a skeleton in the closet that I need to lay to rest. Whilst nearly every one else is excitedly planning their fancy dress costumes, which scary movie they are going to watch and what ghoulish tricks they are going to play on each other, I'm just waiting for the whole thing to be over. You see I don't really like Halloween or the horrors it entails.  So here's my list of nine reasons why Halloween and I don't get on.

1. I don't like being frightened. Other people seem to find being scared thrilling, but I just don't get it. I've tried to watch horror films many times and have either bottled out a few minutes in, often before the title scene has finished, or have regretted it for months after. I think that I have only ever watched 4 frightening films all the way through; Salem's Lot, Con Air, Carrie and Scream, all of them have given me nightmares for weeks, and in the case of Con Air I've had bad dreams for years. I reckon that there must be a gene, which I'm lacking, that's responsible for the enjoyment of fear. It's a well known fact that nature abhors a vacuum so instead of the scary appreciation gene I was given an extra ah! what a cute puppy gene.
2. I'm allergic to cats so the iconic black cat of Halloween really is an evil omen to me as when one comes near I start sneezing.
3. For years I've bought sweets in the expectation of trick or treaters calling only for none to come knocking, so I've been left with a load of cheap sweets I don't really like. For the last couple of years I've bought chocolates that I enjoy instead. So if any trick or treater's call this year they'll be offered dark chocolates with sour cherries, I'm not sure how popular these will be with kids though.
4. I'm not keen on spiders, severed limbs, ectoplasm and call me fussy but zombies and the living dead leave me cold. 
5. If I hear the noise of a door creaking eerily on its hinges, as a candle splutters and an owl hoots, I am tempted to reach for the WD-40 and turn the electric light on rather than go looking for the phantom who is probably lurking in the cellar.
6. I'm confused also about when vampires became so sexy and often goodies in modern media portrayals. I'm sure that Bram Stoker's Dracula would be turning in his, well his coffin if he could see how vampires have become the stars and often heroes of teen dramas and literature.
7. Orange and lime green really aren't my colours.
8. Werewolves? Unlikely, to say the least. In fact when I think about it I'm not convinced about ghosts, goblins, ghouls or Frankenstein either.
9. Bats are really cute and not the evil creatures they are made out to be. One flew into my living room the other day when I had the patio doors open, it swooped around the room a couple of times then headed upstairs. I followed it up to the bedroom and after a couple of circuits of the room it alighted on my bedside cabinet and I was able to get a good look at it. It had brown fur, was bigger than I thought it would be and although looked very elegant when in flight whilst it was trying to pull itself across my cupboard it looked most ungainly. I opened the bedroom windows and it soon found its way out.

So this Halloween I won't be getting my ouija board out, or heading down to the graveyard at midnight dressed in a sheet with eyeholes cut in. But be reassured I'm not a complete killjoy, I'll probably get a pumpkin to make some soup and may well serve it with garlic bread, just to ward off the vampires you understand.

Squirrels, Zebedee and Freddy Krueger.

This week Billy dog has been getting in touch with his inner squirrel. He has decided that he likes nuts which he gathers from underneath trees. It started with hazel nuts a few weeks ago which he crunches up to get the nut out, discarding the shell, and now he has discovered chestnuts.  Again he chews up the tough brown skin, which he spits out to get to the kernal inside. He's becoming a bit nut obsessed, like Scrat from Ice Age he's always on the look out for them and refuses to let me prise them out from his tightly clenched jaws. It was when I got home after a walk where he'd been eating nuts and checked online, that I found that acorns and beech nuts can be toxic to dogs. I'm not really sure how discerning he is, so I think I'm going to have to discourage all nut eating from now on. It won't be easy though as  it's the time of year when natures bounty comes raining down from the trees. The woodland floors are littered with hazel nuts, acorns, beech, chestnuts and conkers and I have one greedy little dog who although he likes meat and bones seems to be toying with the idea of becoming a vegan, like his squirrel mates.

Generally when we go for woodland walks he is on the alert looking out for squirrels and if he thinks that he has heard or smelt one he takes off through the undergrowth in hot pursuit. If he knows that there is a squirrel up a particular tree he practically tries to climb up to catch it, bouncing off the ground like Zebedee from the Magic Roundabout. He's never got near catching one though. Unlike my sisters dog Ceilidh (pronounced Kayley...yes I know, but that's my sister for you. Can you imagine the various names the dog gets called at the vets! I always like to spell the name differently, as if it's not spelt strangely enough).

My Mum and sister took Keilijh out on one occassion and she was chasing after every pesky little rodent she spotted. My Mum was worried about her catching one, as our cousins dog was bitten by a squirrel and lost his toe as a result, so Mum kept trying to call Cmayligh back. My sister assured her that Khazum would never catch one. Famous last words, no sooner had she said it than the dog catches the end of a squirrels tail and flips it up in the air. Apparently there are 44 breeds of flying squirrels, well this one wasn't officially one of them but by all accounts it did a pretty good impersonation. The story goes that the squirrel did some aeronautical gymnastics that the Red Arrows would have been proud of before landing neatly, pausing to get its breath back and then scuttling up a tree, none the worse for its encounter and no doubt still dining out on the tale. I'm not sure who was more surprised Mum, my sister, the dog or the squirrel.

I've just remembered another dog versus squirrel incident that happened in my family. When I was young we had a spaniel called Suzy and like most dogs she liked to chase squirrels. One autumn day we were walking through a wooded area when we came upon a squirrel ahead of us on the path. Suzy took off after it and for a few seconds the squirrel took flight, suddenly though it changed its mind, stopped and turned to face the dog. Suzy immediately put the brakes on and came to a skidding hault just in front of its twitching whiskers.  Dog and squirrel stood and stared at each other just inches apart. We stood watching expecting a squirrel massacre any second, a Freddy Krueger moment, or quite literally a nightmare on elm street. I suspect that the squirrels life flashed before its eyes: it probably remembered snuggling with its litter mates in the drey; possibly it looked back fondly on its first excursion onto the forest floor and learnt what a rich larder it was and maybe it thought about its own children waiting in the nest for him. It was a tense moment but then Suzy, upset that the squirrel wasn't playing by the rules, tucked her tail between her legs and scuttled back to us whimpering.

So in my family, despite what you might expect, it's squirrels 4, dogs 0. The natural order has been reversed but despite this the world keeps turning, night still follows day, toast still falls butter side down onto the carpet and the thing that you have lost is still always found in the last place you look. I guess this is all a long winded way of saying that the world won't end if you do something unexpected or unpredictable, in fact it might turn out surprisingly well. If you're still unsure then ask a squirrel.

Strictly Come Dancing, Margaret Thatcher and sandals

"To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven" (Ecclesiastes 3:1)

This is one of my favourite Bible quotes and always seems appropriate at this rather melancholy time of the year as we start to move towards winter. Autumn is finally, definately here. I know that officially it started a few weeks ago but for me it has now undeniably arrived.

You might be wondering what has brought me to this realisation. What were the telltale signs that drew me to this conclusion? Maybe I should have realised sooner: the leaves changing colour and drifting to the ground like golden confetti; The Great British Bake Off ending (go Nadia!) and Strictly Come Dancing re-starting; the sloe gin is steeping so that it will be ready for Christmas; the mornings and evenings getting darker; Halloween goods appearing in the shops; going to a cafe and fancying hot chocolate instead of iced tea; getting a flu jab and buying some Lem-sip just in case; people firing up their central heating and lighting their log burners and the general drop in temperature should all have given me a clue. For me though the definite sign that summer is over is that I bought a pair of sandals.

The rest of the northern hemisphere is probably buying boots at this time of year but like the fashion magazines I always plan for a couple of seasons ahead. It's not that I am organised but rather that I am a cheapskate. I wait to buy my summer sandals for the following year till right at the end of the sale so that I know that the price isn't going to be reduced any further and that way bag myself a bargain. So ok this does mean that I occasionally have to jam my feet into shoes that are too small if they've sold out of my size and yes I am always wearing last years styles in some unusual colours but as I am not exactly a fashionista I don't care. So for me Spring starts when I buy next winters boots, summer begins when I get the following Easters pastel Mary-Janes and Autumn begins with the purchase of flip flops and sandals.

I've been thinking a bit about time passing and the cyclical nature of history recently. Not just because of my bargain sandals but because of the new job that I've just started. You see I've got a job back in the secondary school I attended when I was a teenager. It seems really strange to be back there, its familiar in many ways but also so different from how I remember. The basic structure of the building is the same and familiar, there have been some new additions and some of the rooms have moved around, but most of it is as I remember.

It's the people who have all changed. I walk around the corner of a corridor and expect to see my friends waiting to meet me after lessons, but there are strange young people there, kids waiting for their own mates. Teens wearing blazers and ties who look way smarter than we ever did. When we attended the school the uniform was much more lax and as long as you wore something vaguely blue you passed inspection. They also now seem so much more confident and assured than I ever felt, maybe this is down to bravado but I hope not. These pupils are noisy, enthusiastic and so full of potential and looking back I think that I was probably like that at their age too, what happened to that energy and passion I wonder.  I remember sneaking into the 6th form common room after lessons one day to put up CND and anti Reagan and Thatcher posters, convinced and passionate about my political beliefs. This year in contrast I had trouble deciding who to vote for in the General Election. So maybe it isn't the school that has changed, maybe it's me.

So Autumn is here, a time to reflect and take stock. A time to make soup and stews and buy t-shirts and sandals, a time to remember being young and to try and resurrect some of the passions I felt then, a time to put on wellies and walk through the woods kicking up leaves.

I started this post with a quote from the Bible and I'd like end it with another quote, not the Bible this time, but Elton John via The Lion King.

" From the day we arrive on the planet
And blinking, step into the sun
There's more to see than can ever be seen
More to do than can ever be done
There's far too much to take in here
More to find than can ever be found
But the sun rolling high
In the sapphire sky
Keeps great and small on the endless round".

Autumn is here but I have sandals ready for next summer, thus the circle of life goes on.

St Francis of Assisi, kilts and optimism

Another new month, that means another new job, how time flies. This week I was going to write about the changing of the seasons and the passage of time but events on Sunday have put paid to that. Maybe I'll write about Autumn next week.

I stayed at my Mums house on Saturday night, she lives about 20 minutes away from me. Sunday morning Mum and I met bleary eyed in the kitchen, at the kettle, both having been woken up by the desperate need for a cup of tea. Ah, the first cup of tea of the day, there can be no finer drink. The first sip, maybe still just a tad too hot, but delicious and reviving none the less. So we stood at the kitchen counter, mouths drooling in anticipation, as we waited for the tea leaves to perform their magic, and Billy dog sat expectantly on the back door mat, drooling too as he waited for his breakfast, when Mum remembered that the church she attends were holding  a pet service that morning. She wondered if Billy and I would like to attend.

I have not attended church for many years now except to go to weddings and funerals and I'm ashamed to admit that Billy has never been, but Mum attends religiously each week (pun intended). I suggested that Mum take Billy herself, but she wasn't keen on this idea, so with some trepidation I agreed to go with her. We both looked at Billy and realised that he wasn't looking his best, he was less West Highland White and rather more West Highland Beige, I wondered if we could pretend he was a Cairn terrier but decided that he would need to be spruced up a bit before he could make his premiere appearance in church. This meant the dreaded bath!

Billy loves water, he will happily splash around in muddy puddles, paddle in streams and loves to lie and cool his belly in the sea, but warm water when combined with shampoo is, in Billys mind, a particularly cruel forms of torture. Over the years of trial and error I have come up with a routine at bathtime, its not a good routine but it's the best I've been able to find. First I get undressed, normally I'll take my trousers off and just keep a T-shirt on, then I put Billy in the shower cubicle, close the screen doors slightly and the kneel in the door opening with the dog towel over my lap. This way I don't get too wet, although I am often wetter than Billy, and my body blocks him from escaping. Then its simply a matter of trying to get some water and shampoo onto him as he writhes, wriggles and piteously cries. Once rinsed and towel dried he runs around the house, growling and moaning whilst rubbing himself on accessible furniture and carpets. The final part of the ordeal is to dry him with a hairdryer, although he minds this less as he gets lots of treats during it. I didn't have time to dry him completely on Sunday as we were running late, but he certainly looked a lot cleaner.

Off to Church we went, desperately hoping that Mum hadn't got the date wrong. As we approached the Churchyard I could tell that this indeed was the right Sunday for the pet service as people with animals were all making their way towards the Church, the bells pealing out a welcome and adding to the cacophany as dogs barked, chickens clucked and children laughed and shrieked. I saw a tortoise in a cardboard box being taken in, Guinea pigs wrapped in towels and held in children's arms like babies, there were rabbits, rats and lots and lots of dogs. One little lad who I don't think had any pets brought an armful of soft toys.

Once inside the Church we found that preparations had been made and that at the base of the font were plenty of poo bags and baskets containing disinfectants and cleaning products. A sensible precaution I thought. The service started, the dogs joining in with singing the hymns and generally making their presence known through out the sermon and prayers, but overall the animals behaved very well. A couple of dogs went walk about during the service, no doubt keen brass rubbers or stained glass window fans, a few dogs sat up on the pews next to their owners probably so that they could get a better view of the flower arrangements, but Billy sat well behaved and quietly at my feet through out.

As we sat in the pew listening to the story of St Francis of Assisi, patron saint of animals, whose Saints day it was, I was suddenly transported back to my school days. No we didn't have any animals at our school but my memory was stirred because of a particular smell, the girls at my primary school wore red and white gingham dresses in the summer and red kilts in the winter. Sitting in Church on Sunday as the aromour of wet dog rose up from Billy to meet me, it smelt exactly like wet kilts drying after a rainy break time. I can clearly remember the classroom after a wet playtime being filled with the fug of our kilts drying and it smelling rather more like an Australian sheep shearers convention than a primary school. Funny how such a horrid smell can bring back such a warm memory. Yes Billy was clean but he definitely wasn't dry and the smell of his wet fur would have out-ponged any incense, if it had been an incense burning type of Church.

Part way through the service, everyone who had brought an animal was invited to take their pet up to the altar rail for the animal to receive a blessing. What a motley procession we looked, all shape and size of dogs queueing alongside Guinea pigs, chickens, rats and rabbits. I had to keep Billy away from a certain Chihuaha, who I knew from previous encounters really hated Billy, and from the other Westie present who was beautifully groomed and would have shown Billy up, but other than that it all passed off without incident. Billy sat reverently at the altar rail, looking as innocent as any choir boy, and no one was to know that he wasn't actually showing respect as he was in gods house, but was actually hoping for one of the treats I had in my pocket. Put a dog collar on him (again pun intended) and I think he could look like he was a candidate for a papal election.

On the way out of the Church the dogs were given a dog biscuit, Billy did embarrass me a bit by insisting on sitting on the coir mat inside the door to eat his and then triple checking the mat and surrounding area to make sure he hadn't missed any crumbs. The trouble is now, I suspect, Billy won't want to walk past the Church as he will expect to go in and have a biscuit.

I'm not a very religious person, but you've got to admire the church for being such optimists to lay on such a service. It could have gone very differently, there could have been fights, wee and poo everywhere, animals escaping and a real hullabaloo. I do think that if you expect things to turn out well, they probably will do though. So maybe it was the churchs' optimism that made the service a success, maybe it was us all having well behaved pets, maybe it was because there were no c, a, t, s present and maybe there was intervention from a higher level. Billy doesn't care, he had a biscuit even if he did have to suffer the ignominy of a bath to earn his treat.

Caravans, birthdays and Lilliputians.

I went away this weekend with family as it was Mums birthday and also a belated celebration for my nephews birthday. I'm not sure that they would want me to say how old they are, so let's just say that my nephew is in his early twenties and Mum in the late squillions (a squillion and eight to be precise). We were five adults and two dogs staying in a small caravan in the Blackdown Hills. As I've mentioned in previous blogs I love a caravan holiday and we had a really good time. The caravan was comfortable, modern and clean, if somewhat compact, but had a few strange design foibles.

The first is the fact that the living room led into a narrow corridor with one bedroom on the left, the other bedroom at the end and the bathroom on the right. The issue was that the hall was so narrow that only one person could walk along it at any one time and also all the doors opened into it. This meant that if someone was coming out of the bathroom you couldn't open the bedroom doors and if anyone was in the hall they were liable to get a black eye when a door opened unexpectedly into their face. This meant that everyone getting up, toileted and showered in the mornings was a bit of a logistical nightmare and likewise at bedtime. Not to mention the added complication of two excited dogs getting under feet.

The second quirk was in the dining area. Like many caravans the table was a rough triangle shape with bench seats on two sides and a stool on the other. The strange thing about this caravan was that the bench seats were too low for the table so that when seated your plate was rather nearer your chin than etiquette traditionally demanded. I guess the bonus of this was that there was less chance of spilling food down your front but it did feel like we were Lilliputians eating at a giants table.

Another slightly weird design feature was that the fridge was to the right of the kitchen, near the back door. Nothing too unusual about this, as like I said the caravan was small so we're not talking about it being a long walk from the kettle to the fridge when making a cup of tea, but for some strange reason the fridge door opened on the right hand side. This meant that there were two options to get the milk out of the fridge: option 1 (my preferred method) was to stand on the left hand side of the fridge, open its door and then lean over the door to reach inside and head butting the microwave oven in the process, option 2 was to open the back door, go down the 3 steps outside, turn around, open the fridge door and gain access to the milk that way. It would have been much simpler to hang the fridge door the other way, but that would have made it a bit boring and predictable I suppose.

The other oddity in this compact caravan was in the double bedroom, which my sister and brother-in-law shared. There was a large walk-in wardrobe, in fact it was such a spacious closet, it was almost a dressing room. When space was such a premium, so much so that there was not enough room for a dog to wag its tail without it hitting both sides of the walls in the hallway, let alone being enough space to swing the proverbial cat, why have such a large walk-in wardrobe? Why not instead use the space in the twin room which was so small only one person could stand up in there at a time, and the beds were so narrow it was impossible to turn over without knocking your elbows and knees on the wall. My sisters dog slept in the dressing room area and she probably had more room than the rest of us.

Luckily we all get on well so our snug accommodation did not put a damper on our weekend and we had a good time. Despite the fact that we got charged by a mad cow whilst on a walk, my nephew sunk up to his knees in a bog whilst wearing his new walking boots, the site swimming pool being so shallow that everyone scraped their knees whilst swimming and I even grazed my belly on the pool floor, my brother-in-law having a cough and cold and Billy dog being head butt by a sheep. Sometimes though being together is more important than little luxuries, like being able to see what's on your dinner plate, remembering to open the microwave before opening the fridge to avoid concussion or having to wait your turn to get up in the morning.

Envy, The Amazon and Linford Christie

I'm not a catholic so can't seek absolution for my sins in the confession box but I do feel the need to own up to one serious flaw, in the hope that you, my fellow blog readers, will forgive me.

You see I am guilty of one of the seven deadly sins, the sin of envy. I am not a generally envious person, I don't envy those who are richer, prettier or more successful than me. I don't envy those with better cars, bigger houses or the latest Apple products, but I do suffer from a very specific form of envy. Lunch box envy.

I'm not referring to the Linford Christie type lunchbox (get your minds out of the gutter please) rather the plastic container that fellow colleagues bring to work to sustain themselves through out the day. I suppose that it would be more accurate to say that I am envious of the contents of their lunch boxes rather than the tubs themselves, however I am still impressed by people who carry pretty insulated bags and pots to better display their goodies.

To save money I am making a concerted effort to always take a packed lunch in to work and most days I succeed. However I generally leave it too late to make anything interesting, and even if I have the time to make a nice lunch the contents of my fridge rarely cooperates. So I have to resort to slapping something uninspiring between a couple of slices of slightly dry bread. Last week to ring the changes I bought some tortilla wraps but forgot to get anything tasty to put in them, so ended up with having a rolled up wrap smeared in peanut butter then shoved in a sandwich bag along with a handful of wrinkly grapes.

Compare this then to the people who bring their matching picnic sets filled with meticulously chopped and diced salads, as lush looking as the amazon rainforest and containing tasty morsels, such as perfectly ripe avocado and crispy bacon, maybe feta, vine ripened tomatoes and black olives or grilled chicken and croutons. They then get their separate little container out and pour over the freshly prepared dressing, which always seems to perfectly match the salad, they have balsamic for the avocado, a vinaigrette for the feta salad and Caesar to dress the chicken. Next follows a premium brand yoghurt (in date) then a fruit salad which they eat with a fork. My boring lunch has gone before they have even poured the dressing over their mixed leaves and so I have to sit and enviously watch them tuck into their feast.

If I were to attempt to bring a salad one day it would probably contain rather sad, limp lettuce, some tomatoes (probably cherry tomatoes that would burst and squirt me with juice when I try to eat them), chopped pepper if I'm really lucky, mushy peas (it's all I had, the dish was too empty and I panicked) and tinned tuna. I don't have a little pot to put dressing in, so would add oil and vinegar in the morning which, by the time I ate my lunch, would have made the veg even slimmier and the whole lot would look and smell like the contents of a rock pool. I ask you, who is going to envy that?

Don't even get me started on people who bring leftovers for their lunch. People who smuggly heat up last night's lasagne, stew or curry, filling the office with a cacophony of savoury aromas that has me salivating onto my keyboard. Yes I cook extra in the evening, planning for there to be leftovers for lunch the next day, but invariably I've eaten it all before I've gone to bed.

In my present job you're not allowed to eat at your desk so everyone has their lunch in a little dining area and there is no escape from watching others eat their lunches and in turn feel eaten up by envy. Therefore when I was approached and offered another job last week, one of the reasons I accepted was in the hope that I won't feel quite so envious of my new colleagues lunch boxes. Yes you read correctly, I have once again handed in my notice and will start my third new job in the space of 4 months. Nearly 16 years in one job and now 3 jobs in 4 months, and all because of lunchbox envy (well maybe not all because of envy, but possibly a little iddy, biddy bit). Now I've got to go as I know that I have to scrape the mould off the cheese before I can make my cheese and tinned tomato sandwich, I wonder if I've got any bread?

Macaroni cheese, Pit Pads and gerkins.

When I was working full-time I tended to cook up a couple of days worth of dinners on a Sunday evening, now that I work part time I usually prepare meals for the rest of the week on Tuesday afternoon or evening. Yesterday I cooked up a big dish of macaroni cheese, except I didn't have macaroni so used penne and also added brocolli, cauliflower and, of course, runner beans (I'm a big fan of one pot meals) I kept 2 portions in the fridge and froze the other couple of meals. I know its not exactly haute cuisine but I enjoyed making it and the end results should taste good, except for a couple of minor hitches.

The first hiccup was Billy's fault. Billy is a typical terrier and obsessed with cats, chasing birds, trying to climb trees after squirrels and catching flies. I live in a first floor flat with a balcony and when I'm home Billy spends most of his time out on the balcony. There is railing around the edge of it but by lying as flat as possible Billy can get his head under the railing, onto the edge of the ledge so that he can watch the cats in the garden below. He spends hours out there, whimpering occasionally as the cats taunt him by parading up and down.

Well yesterday the pasta was cooking and the cheese sauce was just getting to that crucial stage where it is starting to boil and thicken. The stage where it needs constant stirring to stop it sticking to the base of the saucepan and getting lumpy, when I suddenly realised that I hadn't heard anything from Billy in a while.

I abandoned the sauce and going outside leant over the railing. Billy had somehow managed to get under the railing and was out on the ledge that runs along the front of the building, he was balanced at the end, three flats along from where I live. The ledge gets narrower as it goes along and where he was standing it wasn't wide enough for him to turn around to come back. Cats I know have nine lives and have been reported to fall off 20 storey buildings and walk away unscathed, you don't hear the same anecdotes about westies, so I was worried about what would happen if he fell the one storey. I grabbed some shoes and dashed around to the front of the building where I was able to stand on my downstairs neighbours garden wall and reach up and grab the dog. I swear, to get under the fence, he must have had to dislocate his shoulder blades and would need to take his back legs off at the hip, throw them over the rails and then reattach them, or he wouldn't have fit.

That crisis was averted but back inside my worst fears were realised. I had lumpy and slightly burnt cheese sauce.

The next issue with my Mac cheese wasn't my fault either, I don't think. If I was to blame anyone I would probably accuse Mabelline, the cosmetic company, of producing faulty goods.

 I was grating the cheese to go into my lumpy sauce and I suspect that you can guess what happened next. Often when grating things I manage to graze my knuckles, well yesterday instead of my knuckles I somehow managed to grate my finger nails. So not only did my cheese sauce have lumps of flour and flecks of burnt sauce in, it also now contained flakes of Coral Reef coloured nail varnish.

This got me thinking about a conversation I'd had the other evening when out for a meal with some ex-colleagues. We'd been talking about business ideas,and two friends who'd been made redundant at the same time as me, both reckoned that they had brilliant, new and life changing ideas for inventions. One was for Pit Pads, absobant pads you could stick to the underarm area of your clothes to stop you from getting damp patches when hot. The other idea was to invent edible string for tieing up bales of straw and hay for livestock. Both my colleagues were passionate about their ideas and were convinced that if they were produced they would make a fortune. Unfortunately when I looked online the next day I found that both were already being produced. At that point I decided that everything needed has already been invented, although I am prepared to concede that technology is still coming up with a few new ideas. The human race has been inventing and coming up with new products for centuries, so surely by now everything new and useful has already been made.

I had an amusing hour looking at some of these inventions and was especially impressed by the:

• Heated butter knife which solves the problem of not being able to spread butter straight from the fridge
• Slippers with lights built into the toes so that you don't have to turn the main lights on during nocturnal bathroom visits. On a similar theme you can also get fluorescent toilet paper.
• Dog umbrellas which fit into the dogs lead, to try and avoid that wet dog smell on rainy days.

Yesterday after my slightly problematic cooking experience I realised that there are still some vital inventions needed and not all of them related to macaroni cheese. The first that I'd like to suggest is grater proof nail polish, think about the gallons of cheese sauce this could save. Manufacturers of cosmetics make claims that their varnish will dry in 60 seconds, will strengthen and condition your nails, but for some reason none have come up with a polish that will with stand a cheese grater. My second idea is for dog food that becomes fluorescent when it exits the dog, this will make it much easier to pick up when the light is poor. Manys the time that I take Billy dog out in the early moning or late evening and I've had to resort to feeling around, hand in poo bag for a warm deposit. Finally someone needs to come up with a jar opener that works, I know that there are dozens on the market, my Mum and I probably have most of them between us, but they just don't work. I have a jar of pickled gerkins in my cupboard, unopened since about 1978, which I just can't get into. 

So any would be inventors out there who are stuck for inspiration please give these a go, and should you end up making a fortune from them remember who gave you the idea. Now anyone for macaroni cheese anyone?

Vultures, adders and adrenalin

So this has been a week full of danger and taking risks for my family.

The first perilous event happened on Sunday when Mum, Billy dog and I went for a walk around a local reservoir. It was a lovely day, the sun was shining and there was barely a breath of wind. We had walked about 3 quaters of the way around the lake and had filled our tub with blackberries, ready to make a crumble, when we met a group of people also walking a dog. They told us that they had seen a couple of adders out sunbathing and to be careful.

Adders are a type of viper that are native to Great Britain. They are venomous but only mildly so and do not present a threat to a healthy adult. However to a small Billy sized dog they can be fatal. Therefore for the final mile of the walk Billy had to be kept on a short lead and was not allowed to sniff around in the long grass which he likes to do. Mum and I spent the walk talking really loudly and stamping our feet to try and scare the snakes away. In fact we were stamping so much I think that we both gave ourselves shin flints, we created such a rumpous that we were probably in danger of attracting the snakes to us, as I imagine they thought a herd of elephants was on its way by.

Luckily we survived this threat but our family wasn't out of danger yet.

On Monday, my day off, I was having a coffee at home and decided to check Facebook. My niece and her husband are on holiday in France and to my horror my niece had posted a picture of herself and her husband, dressed in hard hats and overalls, standing next to a colourful paraglider. The comment she'd posted said,

"Just jumped off a mountain".

That was it! No mention of whether they had landed, why she'd decided that jumping off a mountain holding onto what is basically a kite was a good idea, or if they'd had lessons or anything.

I know that technically speaking her and her husband are adults, the fact that they are married kind of implies this, but how did we get to the point where she can make that sort of decision without consulting her parents, much less her Aunt. Yes she's an adult but it only seems 5 minutes ago since I pushed her on a swing; 10 minutes since she was a toddler and needed help to wipe her bottom when potty training, and it only seems 15 minutes since we were changing her nappy and exposing the multi coloured horrors within. Incidentally I'm sure her husbands nappies were just as bad, it's just I didn't know him then.

Now suddenly she's throwing that same arse over the edge of a mountain, without a thought to the care and attention that has gone into keeping her safe over the years. I can't imagine how both sets of parents felt as they pictured the bodies they protected from nappy rash bouncing down canyons, to be trodden on by mountain goats and pecked at by vultures. I'm not even exageratting, that could happen.

What really worries me is that paragliding might be another step along the slippery slope to becoming an adrenalin junkie. Kids start out on swings, urging parents and carers to push them higher and higher, so the addiction starts. Before you know it they are experimenting at funfairs, they ride their bikes too fast, but assure us they didn't inhale. Next they learn to ski and inform us they can handle it. They try a climbing wall, then climb a mountain, stating it's not a problem, they are just social adrenalin users. Then they jump off a mountain and tell us they can stop any time they want to. What's next, skydiving without a parachute into shark infested waters, whilst smeared in blood?

So I request that you stop this dangerous habit now. I suggest that you go cold turkey and cut all risk taking behaviours out of your lives. Maybe it would be sensible to never travel faster than 40 miles an hour, to never have your feet off the ground for longer than 11 seconds and to avoid activities that could involve injuries that require more medical treatment than a sticking plaster can provide. Yes this won't make you popular on motorways and will rule out flying, but there are still loads of fun things to do. There's walking, skipping or even bowling.

This week my niece jumps off a mountain and I walk along a snake infested path. She loves it and posts a picture on Facebook, I hate my adventure and can't wait to get to safety. I am not an adrenalin addict, she's becoming one. So this post is by way of being an intervention, let's stop this young couple ending up as vulture food all because they couldn't resist the allure of adrenalin.

Runner beans, triffids and bank holidays

This week I have mainly been eating runner beans. The wet summer we have had in Cornwall must have been really good for beans as there seems to be a glut of them at the moment. Someone brought a bag of them into work for us to help our selves to, so I took home a couple of meals worth. Then when I visited mum this weekend she also had loads. Over the past week I have had beans with roast beef, cottage pie, lasagne, minestrone soup and in my cous cous salad for lunch. I'm even starting to look like a bean, although admittedly a less green, not so skinny, more hairy and quite a bit larger version of one.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a bean as much as the next man/woman. I like all aspects of runner beans: I admire the vibrant plants that grow even taller than sunflowers, the triffids of the vegetable group; I love the crimson flowers that decorate the plants; I like the plants Latin name of Phaseolus Coccineus; I love eating them steamed, boiled and made into chutney and I enjoy searching among the lush foliage for the hidden beans, as I always feel a bit like a jungle explorer looking for treasure. But I am just starting to wonder if you can have too much of a good thing. I am eating them for every meal, yet still they seem to be taking over my fridge, there's hardly any room in there for milk, cheese or other veg, and I am having to drink warm wine as there's certainly no space in the fridge for cold plonk. I worry that one day I will come home to find that the beans have broken out of the fridge, taken over the kitchen and are planning their attack on the lounge.

Last night I went out for a pub meal for a friends birthday. I was looking forward to seeing my friends, but was also anticipating a beanless meal. Although we weren't served runner beans we did get their Gaelic cousin the French bean, so it wasn't really much of a change. Beans are taking over the world, brocolli doesn't stand a chance.

I love a collective noun (my favourites being a charm of goldfinches and an ascension of larks) and I wondered if there was a collective noun for runner beans. I checked on Wiktionary and the closest I could find was a "hill of beans, well I reckon that I have already eaten a mountain of them this week. I couldn't however find a collective noun specifically for runner beans so I'd like to suggest the following, see what you think;

• a Nike of runner beans
• a wigwam of runner beans
• a race or maybe a marathon of runner beans 
• or perhaps a fart of runner beans

A bit of audience participation would be good here, anyone got any other ideas?

In the brief moments between picking, preparing and eating beans, I have enjoyed the August bank holiday weekend, which incidentally I think should be renamed the Runner Bean bank holiday. I have seen some friends, had a barbeque, been for some good walks, bathed the dog and met up with my cousin and her family. But mostly this week, I've been eating beans.

So the answer to the age old question of " How many beans make five?" is probably about a trillion and not the traditional more conservative response of, a bean, a bean and a half, half a bean, and another two beans. Sorry this is a short post but I haven't got time write any more as I need to get ready for work and I haven't even chopped the beans to add to my porridge for breakfast yet...after all, waste not, want not.

Frizz, avocado and Lapland

I was a bit stuck for topics to write about this week and then happened to glance in the mirror and my inspiration was fired. I am going to review hair products and am not going to focus on just one shampoo or conditioner but am going to review the whole shebang. The reason for deciding to change the nature of my blog is that I had my haircut and blow dried yesterday, it looked really nice for a short while, a very short while. In fact if I'm honest it probably only looked good until the stylist put the brush and scissors down, certainly by the time I stood up from the chair to put my coat on it had started to revert to its normal state and by the time I got back to my car it was more a case of looking like I had just stepped out of the hedge rather than the salon. So here goes, my review of hair products, because believe me I have tried the lot.

Firstly for those who don't know me I should probably describe my hair so you know what the products have to tackle. I have very, very, very thick brownish shoulder length hair. It's not straight and isn't properly curly either, in fact it is the epitome of frizzy. My hair is what the word frizzy was invented for. When I was young my Dad used to call me Dougal, after the shaggy dog from the Magic Roundabout, as at that time I had long hair and it was much fairer than it is now. The other TV character that I resemble was again from the childrens shows of my childhood and that is Crystal, from Crystal Tipps and Alastair. Probably though if I had to chose my celebrity looky-like it would be Hugh Fernley-Wittingsall, pre 2003, a likeness that my family have been pleased to point out to me on numerous occasions. I know that I should be uploading photos here so that people who don't know these characters can see what I'm talking about but I find it too painful to have their frizzy bonces looking back at me (also I still haven't worked out how to do it, so you'll have to Google it yourselves). If you're having difficulty picturing it, just imagine a strange hybrid mix of Highland Cattle and thatched roof. Now you're getting the idea.

So we've established my baseline and you've an idea about my before look. There are a miriad of products on the market that claim they can tackle my problem locks and believe me I have them all. I guess that I must be an optimist as every time something new comes on to the market, claiming to be the latest miracle product, I'm straight down to the local chemists, sometimes so keen to try it that I'm waiting on the doorstep for them to open first thing in the morning. In fact I have wondered if the manager of my local branch of Superdrug thinks that I am a rough sleeper as I have often been standing in the doorway of the shop when he has arrived to unlock.

I now have every shampoo and conditioner ever made. But I don't draw the line there, I also have every serum, hair mask, spritz and balm. I have hot oils, leave in conditioners, deep treatments, hair putty, heat protection spray, glossers and waxes. I've tried natural bristle brushes, straighteners, ionic hairdriers, paddle brushes, afro combs and even smoothing my hair with a silk scarf to remove static. I've used products that claim to be infused with natural products such as flower extracts, honey, pearls and all sorts of oils such as coconut, aragan, almond and avocado. Some however rely on science and make claims about the wonderful affect of various vitamins, keratin, pro-v and ceramide. In fact I probably have more chemicals in my bathroom cabinet than Sadam Hussein had in his weapons factories.

As you can see I have some expertise in this area, so I feel that I am qualified to give my opinion. In all my vast experience which of them do I recommend and which have lived up to their claims? That would be a big fat none, nil, nada, zilch and diddly squat. After annointing my hair with all of these products, not a single thing has made any difference. I should have saved my pennies and would probably have enough money to buy my very own island, probably not a big island like Jersey, but maybe one of the smaller uninhabited Scilly Isles. Instead I have spent out a kings ransom and have ended up with hair that would have looked exactly the same if I had washed it in Billys' flea repellent dog shampoo, with the added benefit of being repellent to fleas, always a good thing. 

I haven't always had bad hair though. There was one glorious week in my life when my hair was sleek, glossy and wonderfully frizz free. It was when I went on a skiing holiday to Finland with some friends. It was so cold that all the moisture in the air froze and there was zero humidity, we all know that humidity is the arch enemy of frizz.  It was either this lack of humidity which gave me and my friends perfect locks or else being so close to Santas home.

So my advice to you if you have frizzy hair, buy the cheapest shampoo you can find and save your money. Put the money you have saved into a piggy bank until you have enough to pay for a winter trip to Lapland. You like me may have bad hair for the rest of your lives, but you'll have the memory of one week of hair perfection to compensate you. My other piece of advice, avoid mirrors at all costs, enjoy the memory and ignore reality.

Apocalypse, blackberries and pillars of salt

I was sort of expecting to see the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse riding by when I opened the curtains this morning, luckily I didn't. The reason that I thought that it might be a possibility is that we've had our own version of the biblical Ten Plagues this week here in Cornwall. In typical Cornish fashion our version of the Ten Plagues has been on a smaller scale as we only had four of them, but still.

The first happened when I was driving home from work the other evening. It had been a warm day and as the car felt like a furnace I opened the windows and sunroof and was singing along to the radio, which was turned up quite loud to cover the sound of the wind buffeting the car. I became aware that there were things flying towards the windscreen of the car. At first I thought that there must be a tractor up ahead and that the things I could see were ears of wheat or barley. But then I noticed that as they hit the windscreen they left a spot of blood, so surmised that they were some sort of bug.

As I drove on I noticed that they were hitting the car more frequently and they were so big that I could hear them striking. We're not talking the gentle tapping noise of knitting needles, more the doof doof doof noise of the drums signalling the end of EastEnders. It was only when a few made their way to the inside of the car that I realised that they were flying ants. I closed the windows and roof lickety split and slowed down as I didn't want them to break the windscreen. This might have been overly cautious as an ant breaking a car window may seem unlikely, but I tell you these weren't your normal ants, these were ants on steroids, who had been drinking protein shakes and working out, a lot.

When I took the dog for a walk that evening I could see what I thought was wet marks on the tarmac, like where rain drops had landed but they were actually squished ants. It resembled a massacre. The only thing that could have made it more gruesome was if each one had been outlined in the white tape that is used in crime scenes. Yes the ants swarm each year, but I've never seen it quite like this.

The next days plague in Cornwall may just have been specific to me. It was the plague of broken nails. I broke four finger nails in one day and it wasn't like I was rock climbing or gardening. This may seem irrelevant and unimportant to most people but the one thing that I am a bit vain about are my nails. I have awful hair, poor skin, rubbish eyesight but good strong nails. I find it easy to grow my nails and think that having longish nails makes my stubby fingers look a bit more elegant, so breaking 4 in one day was quite a blow. I'm not very good at maths but think that that's 40%, much too high a percentage to have happened by coincidence so I realised that it must signal another plague.

The following days plague would have seen Noah reaching for his hammer and chisel, as according to the Met Office it rained more in 4 hours than it has done in the last 27 years (I may not have got the statistics quite correct but it was something like that). No chance of having the car windows open driving home from work that day. When I got home I met my neighbour, also returning from work, I offered him 50p to take Billy dog out for a walk but he declined. Its true what they say, there's no sense of community anymore, at one time a neighbour would have been pleased to help out. At least the heavy rain has washed away the ant carcasses.

The final plague is, I suspect, again specific to me and is the plague of falling out hair. When I washed my hair this morning it seemed to come out by the handful, in fact when I cleared the hair from the plughole it looked like a medium sized rodent had shared the shower with me, I'm not talking little vole here, more like a generously proportioned hamster/Guinea pig hybrid. I have very thick, strong, frizzy hair so I can easily afford to loose some without worrying unduly, but it did seem a lot. My Gran used to say that your hair falls out more during the blackberry season so it could just be that I supose, but that would only leave me with 3 plagues and I think that Cornwall is worth more than that.

So what with plagues of flying ants, broken nails, heavy rain and falling out hair its been quite a week. Maybe if I were to be completely honest less a case of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and more like One Girl on a Pony going to a gymkhana. I wonder what has brought these cataclysmic events on and what Cornwall is being punished for? I suspect it's the state of the roads, although it could also be parking prices or  maybe Cornwall Councils decision to close all the public toilets as a money saving measure. On reflection the most likely reason has got to be the toilets. Anyway I've got to go now, I have to clear the pillar of salt off the drive so that I can get to work.

Sealife, buoyancy aids and unicorns

There have been some interesting mammals spotted in the sea around the Cornish coast this week. My sister, brother-in-law, niece and nephew-in-law having all been down to Cornwall and together with my Mum we have been enjoying spending time together. We have been lucky enough to encounter some of these marine animals whilst out walking with our two dogs.

On Sunday we went for a walk at the Helford, a series of saltwater creeks fringed by beaches, woodland and countryside walks. There had been rain overnight on Saturday but on Sunday this stopped, the clouds cleared and the sun came out. As the temperature rose so did the humidity and soon I was feeling really hot. After climbing up through a fairly steep wooded area we arrived at a pretty little secluded beach. Both of the dogs (mine and my sisters) were panting well, despite the fact that Billy still has very little fur on his back following a grooming incident (see last weeks post for an explanation of why this is). We therefore decided to go onto the beach to let the dogs paddle and cool down. When there the water looked so inviting my niece and I decided to paddle. Walking boots off, we waded in up to our knees. The water was cool but not cold and felt wonderfully refreshing. We discussed how we wished we had bought our swimming costumes with us, as the water looked so tempting we would have loved to swim.

Those of you who know me may well be surprised by this as I very, very rarely go in the sea. Although I live right by the beach I am scared of the sea. I guess it would be more accurate to say that I am scared of what's in the sea rather than the sea itself. My main fear is sharks and I blame Jaws for this, particularly the poster that was used to advertise it. I remember seeing the poster outside the cinema when I was young and it epitomises what frightens me about the sea. The picture showed idylic blue water with a woman swimming on the surface, unknown to her a shark is heading up towards her from the depths, its teeth glinting horribly. Since then, whenever I'm in the sea, I imagine all the things below the surface that are waiting to come up and bite me in half.

That's why my family was surprised when I said that I'd like to go swimming, in fact I was quite surprised myself. The more I paddled and watched the dogs splashing about in the shallows, the more I wanted to get in the water. The problem was that I was hot; the solution, the water was cool so get in the water. The problem was I didn't have a swimming costume; the solution, go in without a costume. No one else wanted to swim so I decided to take a dip on my own.

Despite it being a secluded spot I didn't feel confident enough to go skinny dipping so decided to take all of my clothes off except my pants, somehow I felt more decent that way. Asking everyone not to watch I undressed and started to walk into the water, before the sea had even reached my knees my sister had stripped off and had joined me. And that is how it came about that 2 middle aged women went practically nude bathing. When the water was waist deep the temperature dropped significantly, but we had to swim or else stand exposed and topless, scaring the seaguls. The water was cold but it was exhilarating and quite liberating.

What we should probably have thought about before we got in the water was what we were going to do after our swim. We hadn't brought swimming costumes with us as we weren't expecting to go swimming, so of course we hadn't brought any towels. My brother-in-law offered his cotton handkerchief for us to dry with and Mum a pair of socks, we blotted ourselves and tried to pull our clothes onto our still sopping wet bodies.

Whilst trying to drag our clothes on we could hear a gentle little phut phut noise. I listened to it for a while whilst contending with a very reluctant bra and keeping an eye on the coast path at the top of the beach to make sure that no one was watching. As I tried to untangle the arm of my shirt in order to put this on, I became aware that the phut phut was definitely getting louder. It occurred to me that the noise seemed to be coming from behind me so turned to look. A little fishing boat was approaching the beach, complete with fisherman and his small dog. My top immediately became a thing with a life of its own and the last thing it wanted to do was be worn. I coerced, cajolled, ranted at it and eventually wrestled it onto my still ringing wet body and in the nick of time was able to stroll nonchalantly down the beach, carrying my trousers, still wearing my dripping pants, with my shirt on inside out, collar turned under and arms twisted and contorted. I greeted the fisherman breezily and kept reminding myself that as far as he knew my wet pants could be bikini bottoms.

Later on that day we watched a seal bobbing around in the sea. It was so close to the shore we could even hear it clearing its nose of seawater as it exhaled. We watched it catch a fish and hold it in its front flippers and eventually eat it. We saw it watching the dogs and then it became interested in a man who was paddling. It was amazing to see it so well but also terrifying to think that a bit earlier we had also been in that very same sea.

The next day we saw another seal and a pod of five dolphins whilst we were doing another walk further up the coast. My nephew-in-law had just said that he'd like to see another seal when I spotted the dolphins which were swimming parallel to the coast so we had a good view of then for quite a while. For the rest of the day it's a miracle we didn't fall over the cliff into the sea as none of us were looking where we were going as we constantly had our eyes turned to the left searching the sea for whales, turtles, mermaids and sharks. In fact we might have walked past all sorts of amazing things on the inland side of the walk as we were so focussed on the water. If we had looked to our right we might have seen herds of unicorn grazing amongst flocks of dodos but now we will never know.

So an enjoyable visit from my family this week where we spotted some incredible sealife and discovered:

• You should always plan ahead and be prepared for spontaneous acts
• White pants aren't the best for maintaining modesty when wet
• When not confined by a swimming costume buxom women have 2 natural buoyancy aids
• If you keep your eyes peeled its amazing what you see (apologies to the fisherman who I suspect saw more than he anticipated)
• Wet bodies and dry clothes make dressing in a hurry nigh on impossible
• Even people you have known your whole life can still surprise you
• I think my sister may well have been a stripper in a previous life as she got her clothes off in a nano-second
• I have the best family, as not only did they look away when requested, there were no incriminating photos taken and they didn't hide our clothes.

The jury is still out on the merits of going commando though.

Orange peel, Dog clippers and GI Jane

Something bad has happened, something really, really bad.

The first time I used those words was many years ago and my family and I were on a coastal walk. We had stopped for a snack and were sat on top of the cliffs having some reshments and relaxing. We had a drink and an orange each and sat enjoying the view. Before we had stopped I'd been eating a piece of chewing gum, so after I had peeled my orange I put the orange peel on the grass next to me with the chewing gum on top. I ate my fruit then lay back in the sun. That's when the really, really bad thing happened. Mum, who was sitting next to me also decided that she too would like to sunbathe. As she lay back onto the grassy bank I realised that she had lain ontop of my orange peel and chewing gum. Not wanting to just come right out and say

"Did you know, you have chewing gum stuck to the back of your favourite blouse?"

I decided to break it to her a bit more gently, which was the origin of the now infamous family phrase of;

"Something bad has happened, something really, really bad".

I guess all families have these phrases and sayings that mean a lot to them, but to outsiders don't make a lot of sense. For instance other phrases we often use are;

"Don't put the plug in your mouth"

"I'll just avail myself of the facilities" and

"You're not my mum". But those are tales for another day.

I believe that it's repeating phrases like these, and the shared experiences that brought them about, that help to cement family relationships.

So what was the "really, really bad thing" that happened this week? Let me explain.

When I was made redundant one of the ways I decided to save money was by buying some dog clippers so that I could groom my dog Billy myself and not have to take him to expensive grooming parlours to be spruced up. I clipped him a couple of months ago and he looked OK so I decided to do it again as my sister, brother-in-law, niece and her husband are coming to visit this weekend and I thought that Billy was due a haircut.

Billy is a Westie and unlike some of his breed, he has always preferred a scruffy, shaggy hairdo. We live on the coast, near a surfing beach and I think that Billy bases his style on the surfer look. If he was a human he would have sun and saline bleached, shoulder length, tousled hair. He'd go for the "undone" look and would probably be wearing board shorts, an ethnic inspired tatoo and flip flops. But this week I decided to ignore his protests and smarten him up prior to our visitors arriving.

I gave him a brush then got the clippers out. The instructions said to use the shortest setting on his ears, which I did and they looked OK. Now bearing in mind it's summer, I decided to give him a shorter haircut than normal to try and keep him cooler. As his ears didn't look too bad on the short setting I thought it would be alright to use it on his body. So I clipped off a line of fur starting at his collar and continuing down to his tail. It wasn't very even so I went over it again a couple of times. Yes the instructions tell you only to go over the same area once, but I like to think that these instruction manuals are more suggestions than the law. A bit like the arrows in carparks, which I interpret as optional guidelines. So I ran the clippers down Billys back once, twice, certainly no more than nine times, trying to get the length even, his hair getting shorter and shorter each time. I then sat back to admire my handywork which was when I realised that something really, really bad had happened.

And that is how I now have a dog with a three inch wide bald strip running the length of his body. I had wanted Billy to look smarter and to feel cooler for when my family arrived this weekend, but actually he looks like he's got mange and I can't take him out in the sun for fear that he'll get sunburn. Less surfer chic and more like a monks tonsure. Less Seann Walsh, more GI Jane. Less Westie, more Chinese Crested.

It's 4 days now since Billys extreme makeover and its not really looking any better yet. There's only 2 more days before the first of the guests arrive so I'm not holding out much hope that he'll be back to normal by the weekend. How come when I shave my legs the hairs are long enough to plait by the next morning, but cut my dogs hair a little shorter than intended and he looks like he's been scalped a week later? I don't honestly think that Billy is really trying to get it to grow, so its his own fault if my sisters dog laughs at him.

When I was made redundant I did consider training to become a dog groomer, I think that the canine world will be rejoicing that I found alternative employment (by the way, the new job's going OK).

Right I better go now, I have an item for sale on eBay and its getting near to the end of the auction time. So if you want a little used set of dog clippers you'd better get your bid in soon or you may miss out, and if you do get them don't forget to read the instructions.